WDFW Commission Approves Bear, Cougar Hunting Frameworks For Public Comment

Editor’s note: Updated Saturday morning, December 14, 2024, with more context, comments and votes.

Proposed Washington black bear and cougar hunting frameworks for the next two seasons will be sent out for public comment over the coming months following votes by the Fish and Wildlife Commission late this afternoon.

If you were worried that the citizen panel was out to end the hunting of either species, or both, in the wake of environmental groups’ petition that kicked off this long review of the science, policy, etc., this afternoon’s decisions should give you a temporary measure of solace, though to be clear a final decision is still four months out as WDFW files the official paperwork to invite input on the proposals and hold a public hearing before seasons are ultimately set early next spring.

It also remains to be seen what the Governor’s Office does in terms of the seats of two critical, hunter-friendly commissioners whose terms technically end December 31.

As it stands, under the bruin hunting framework that got the nod for further public discussion today, season would still begin August 1 with a bag limit of two across Washington, except in the Willapa Hills, where it would open August 15 with a limit of one due to higher sow mortality than the important population growth-rate benchmark of 8 percent.

The 8 percent figure comes from 10 years’ worth of datasets collected from collared bears in the greater Snoqualmie Valley and middle Wenatchee Valley and it represents what’s known as the population’s “intrinsic growth rate,” or how fast bear numbers would otherwise grow absent hunter harvest and timber damage and human conflict removals.

Adjusting the season in half-month increments and reducing the bag limit are meant to reduce female mortality. WDFW staffers had initially mulled pushing all the bear openers back to August 15 but landed on the first of the month for most black bear management units, or BBMUs, which have been expanded from nine to 14.

Statewide, bear season would continue to run through November 15, but new for at least 2025 and 2026, hunters would be barred from taking sows with cubs – now they are only “urged” not to, per WDFW’s regs – and there would be a new mandatory tooth submission deadline.

On the big cat side, the Fish and Wildlife Commission – remarkably – went with WDFW staffers’ recommended proposal instead of a more conservative alternative that just popped up yesterday in Commissioner Lorna Smith’s Wildlife Committee. It keeps the September 1-March 31 single season and bases quotas on a review of the average of how many cougars were killed regionally the previous three years.

I apologize because things are just kinda gonna get into the weeds here with all the new terminology that is being introduced, but if cougar mortality from human sources – conflict removals plus hunting – averaged greater than 16 percent of the estimated lion population at a regional scale, what’s called the cougar data analysis unit, or CDAU, then what are known as cougar hunt management units, CHMUs, or “schmoos,” inside that CDAU that were over 16 percent would be reset to a 10 percent cap while the rest would operate with the 16 percent cap.

Ten and 16 percent correspond to the scientifically estimated bounds of the intrinsic growth rate of cougars, the range at which they typically replace themselves over time.

The 13 CDAUs are similar to the overarching BBMUs in that they correspond roughly to genetically identified cougar populations, deer and elk herd ranges, and movement barriers such as I-5, the Columbia and Snake Rivers. Inside those baker’s dozen of analysis units are 58 CHMUs.

One way to think about these CDAUs and CHMUs would be to compare them to Washington big game herds. For instance, the Blue Mountains mule deer zone would be the CDAU, while the Grande Ronde, Tucannon and Wenaha GMUs inside it would be CHMUs. Another example would be with elk: The Yakima herd is the CDAU, while the Little Naches, Bumping and Cowiche GMUs are the CHMUs.

For CDAUs that stay under 16 percent mortality, CHMUs within them would remain set at a 16 percent cap. Twenty-four-percent mortality is considered the “danger zone” for cougar populations, according to a WDFW manager today, and 10 and 16 percent are considered “relatively conservative rates” of harvest. This year’s season is being managed under a 13 percent mortality cap, which allows for the harvest of as few as one cougar and as many as 13 in various hunt areas.

A wrinkle that would carry over from 2024-25’s hunt is that cougar conflict removals – for livestock depredations, human-safety issues – will continue to count towards the hunting quota, and that means that some units may not even see a season in the future.

A WDFW statistician’s review says that that’s most likely to occur in Northeast Washington, where conflict removals are highest, but otherwise some 75 percent of CHMUs in the state are likely to just always be open for cougar harvest, according to Anis Aoude, Game Division manger.

Aoude also poured cold water on one commissioner’s concerns about a “malignant” feedback loop – that cougar hunting closures would lead to more conflict and more conflict removals and thus no hunting seasons. He said the science isn’t clear or strong that there’s a connection between the two.

Yesterday during a Wildlife Committee meeting, a more conservative cougar hunting proposal reared its head. It would have used triggers of 10 and 13 percent instead of the 10 and 16 percent seen in the rules that were approved today by the commission for public comment.

The difference between the upper triggers might have all boiled down to literally the death of a single cougar, but the higher quota at least provides more opportunity for hunters, perhaps a month’s worth on the ground, given the very low success rates of those with a mountain lion tag in their back pocket – an estimated 50,000 hunters against a harvest of 200 cats, according to Aoude’s off-the-cuff remarks.

That resonated with Commissioner Molly Linville of Douglas County. Over the past couple years, she said she’d seen lots of precautionary approach being applied to cougar hunting, including counting mortalities across all age classes and all causes of death, but she wanted to now start adding something meaningful for hunters.

“We could have a real win here if we added a little opportunity back in,” Linville said.

Much of the commission was actually receptive. Commissioner Woody Myers, the retired WDFW ungulate researcher, said he was OK with agency staffers’ recommendation.

“I was already there, surprisingly,” said Commissioner Melanie Rowland. “You guys will be shocked.”

For Rowland, locking in counting conflict removals towards negating hunter opportunity is a way to potentially change hunters’ views around calling out game wardens or the sheriff to deal with a cat hassling free-range chickens or haunting the back 40.

Commissioner Jim Anderson acknowledged it all might be a “tough” pill to swallow in Northeast Washington, where the sense is there is a cougar problem, but he added that “as a hunter, if there’s a feeling like there’s a straight-up kind of management process that’s based on science and that the staff has recommended this, they’re going to find a significant degree of acceptance.”

On the flip side, Commissioner Tim Ragen wanted to know what restricting cougar mortalities to 10 percent in CHMUs would do in following years to required hunter reporting, a reference to a black mark for sportsmen.

Ragen proved to be the only commissioner against WDFW’s cougar season framework proposal, which passed 8-1, and which will now be noticed to the public as a CR-102 in January ahead of a likely March public hearing and an April decision for the 2025 and 2026 seasons.

So too with the black bear hunting framework that the commission signed off on moving forward to public comment in late afternoon.

Linville was happy to see the August 1 opener, saying it allowed kids time to get out hunting before the start of school, “and that’s important for families.” Anderson said it would also spread out effort and make for more successful hunts. While Smith allowed that WDFW’s data showed the statewide August 1 start the past few years hasn’t been detrimental to the bear population, she said some state residents “have concerns about their ability to recreate at that time of year,” but ultimately didn’t offer any tweaks.

One new wrinkle under the framework in that is that bears wouldn’t be open for harvest in Game Management Units 157, 410-417, 419-424, 490, 522, and 655, a collection of off-limits watersheds, a national volcanic monument, and Puget Sound islands where bears are relatively rare to nonexistent.

For bear hunter Douglas Boze, who spoke during public comment this morning, it was ironic that the commission wouldn’t agree to a compromise during the spring bear permit season debacle that would have barred shooting cubs but would do so today for the fall season.

The commission has been in the news of late for a draft university think-tank study that found many observers to believe it is dysfunctional. While today some members did try to do their absolute damndest to go off the rails on the FEDERAL plan to kill lots of barred owls to recover FEDERALLY listed northern spotted owls that largely exist in FEDERAL forests in Washington, the state bruin and lion hunting season framework discussions might just have put a little function back in a panel.

Or not.

At the end of the day and on a related matter, rather than delegate final cougar and bear rulemaking approval to WDFW Director Kelly Susewind as with other game animals such as deer, elk and moose, they retained it on a 5-4 vote along the usual lines of close votes, with Chair Barbara Baker, Vice Chair Ragen and Commissioners Myers, Rowland and Smith against delegation and Commissioners Anderson, John Lehmkuhl, Linville and Steven Parker in favor, setting up a final April commission vote on the next year’s cat and bruin seasons.