State Budget Cuts Will Affect Washington Fishing, Hatchery Production

WDFW is laying off staffers for 29 positions, not filling many of 170 vacancies, shutting down a hatchery, closing a popular steelhead fishery next year and is being forced to let a predator suppression project largely lapse as a result of Washington lawmakers’ recently approved two-year budget.

“In short, the final adopted budget in response to the state’s budget deficit requires the Department to modify, scale back, or stop doing important work for fish and wildlife conservation. We’ve approached the cuts first through reducing costs across the Department in goods and services, then through vacancy savings, and as a final option, through a reduction in force,” said Director Kelly Susewind in an all-staff message on budget impacts.

Writing last Friday, Susewind stated that those affected by the reduction in staffing have been notified over the past month, and his memo also outlined program cuts of note for Evergreen State hunters and anglers, who themselves are facing a 38 percent increase in license fees passed along by legislators beginning July 1, as well as return of the Columbia River salmon and steelhead endorsement starting January 1, 2026.

In particular, the news isn’t good for Pugetropolis anglers, especially those who fish three North Cascades river systems.

“One-time funding for salmon and steelhead monitoring in the Puget Sound was not funded ongoing in the budget, resulting in eliminating the Skagit River steelhead catch-and-release fishery and reducing scientific work to improve escapement estimation methods. This reduction also reduces capacity to monitor other fisheries in the Snohomish and Stillaguamish River systems,” Susewind stated.

The Skagit-Sauk wild winter-run season is operated under a hard-won federal permit that requires fishery monitoring and needs a forecast of at least 4,000 steelhead to consider annual state C&R and tribal harvest fisheries.

“We know the loss of the Skagit steelhead fishery stings for anglers and guides in the North Puget Sound region and beyond,” said Kelly Cunningham, WDFW Fish Program director, in a prepared statement. “We’re disappointed state legislators chose not to fund the salmon and steelhead monitoring that makes this fishery possible.” 

He acknowledged that the towns of Darrington, Concrete and Marblemount would take an economic hit from the loss of the fishery in 2026. A WDFW natural resources economist estimated that this year’s 11,122 angler trips yielded $2.3 million in local spending, easily exceeding the $1.6 million the agency had requested in funding to monitor and police this fishery as well as other salmon seasons in greater Puget Sound.

Cunningham said WDFW will be encouraging lawmakers to fund fishery monitoring in the 2027 budget.

Funding was also cut in half for the Toutle and Skamania Hatcheries, resulting in the closure of the latter facility, which is located outside Washougal, impacting local steelhead fisheries in the coming years.

“We’re working to shift or modify production where possible, but we are disappointed in this outcome and recognize the implications it has for local communities, anglers, and conservation work,” said Cunningham. 

WDFW’s working plan for the Skamania Hatchery includes shifting some production to the Washougal and Beaver Creek Hatcheries, where there is capacity available, but the bottom line is that after the smolts on station now are released, the agency said it will have to eliminate the release of 40,000 winter-run steelhead into the Washougal, 40,000 into Salmon Creek and 20,000 into Rock Creek, along with 16,000 cutthroat trout that otherwise would have gone into urban lakes and Goose Lake in the South Cascades, as well as reduce the summer steelhead plant in the Washougal by 45,000.

Both the Toutle and Skamania Hatcheries are federal Mitchell Act facilities, but WDFW reports that “chronically stagnant” funding and rising operations costs are pinching production. State fishery managers had hoped for $1.9 million from Olympia, but lawmakers only doled out $750,000. Toutle will still produce 1.1 million tule fall Chinook and 90,000 coho.

Also halved, funding for a hatchery production evaluation “to assess and improve hatchery operations and adaptively manage hatchery programs under changing environmental conditions. This impacts management goals and natural populations’ ability to rebuild,” said Susewind.

WDFW’s ability to complete fishery management evaluation plans for Columbia River salmon and steelhead stocks, several of which are listed under the Endangered Species Act and require careful oversight, was reduced, slowing the completion of the plans and “putting the affected fisheries at risk,” he said.

Also impacted, funding for stewarding and maintaining agency lands, roads and accesses; responding to wildlife diseases except for CWD; and coordinating ecological assessments, streamflow policies and prioritizing fish passage barrier corrections. Game warden vacancies will go unfilled.

On the hunting side, funding for the Western Washington pheasant release program was reduced, though it won’t be impactful till after the 2025 hunt. The biodiversity initiative also saw a $2 million cut permanently from its budget, and that will affect, among other things, sturgeon work.

And funding for a project suppressing predatory fish populations on Lake Washington to help more young sockeye get out of the metro lake was “significantly” impacted. That isn’t sitting well with longtime sockeye fishery advocate Frank Urabeck, who is expected to make the case for including funding in WDFW’s 2026 budget request to lawmakers during this Friday’s Fish and Wildlife Commission meeting.

Next year is already on Susewind’s mind, as WDFW also keeps an eye on the “federal funding landscape” and how that affects the agency’s ability to work on fish and wildlife projects.

“As a Department, we’re also preparing for how we will approach ongoing budget uncertainty – as the saying goes, we are not out of the woods,” he stated in his memo. “The supplemental budget and the next legislative session that begins in January 2026 might bring similar budget dynamics. Regardless, we continue to work with state leaders and legislators to emphasize the value of WDFW’s full portfolio for fish, wildlife – and people.”

His memo also outlined how the coming license fee increase doesn’t actually boost WDFW’s budget.

“Although this bill is an increase to revenue for the Department, most of the revenue is used to cover increased costs due to compensation while the remainder of the revenue is used to offset State General Fund reductions as a fund swap. The swap is $10.1 million for 2025-27 and $7 million per biennium ongoing thereafter,” Susewind stated.

The increase is the first since 2011.