By Dave Workman
Editor-in-Chief
Having already sued to force one member of the Washington State Fish & Wildlife Commission to obey state law by not serving in any other government capacity, the Sportsmen’s Alliance—a national organization of outdoorsmen and women—is looking at the Evergreen State as a battleground.
Todd Adkins, vice president of Government Affairs for the Ohio-based organization, said the Sportsmen’s Alliance Foundation took the action against Commissioner Lorna Smith, who stepped down from a county planning commission rather than give up her seat on the Fish & Wildlife board.
As reported earlier this summer by AmmoLand News, the Sportsmen’s group said the Smith case “is but one example of how off-the-rails the WFWC operates under the (Jay) Inslee administration. We view this lawsuit as the initial step of a long but important process to bring sanity and decency back to wildlife decision-making in Washington. It all starts here, but trust me, it won’t end here. The animal extremists are going to see a lot of the same in the coming weeks and months.”
In a telephone interview, Adkins told TGM, “I think in many ways the Legislature, together with the commission and governor, have left sportsmen and women in Washington to seek out redress in the courts.”
Another sportsmen’s group, Washingtonians for Wildlife Conservation (WWC), is currently tied up in litigation against Inslee and five members of the commission, alleging their appointments were made without required input from hunter and angler groups. Inslee, a Democrat, and an avowed gun control proponent who earlier this year signed legislation banning so-called “assault weapons” and last year banning “large capacity magazines,” is not running for re-election next year. This lawsuit named Commissioners Barbara Baker, John Lehmkuhl, Smith, Melanie Rowland and Tim Ragen as defendants.
The state Attorney General’s office has asked the court to throw out the lawsuit.
The current fish and wildlife commission cancelled Washington’s spring bear hunt, and last year moved back the traditional Sept. 1 grouse season opener to Sept. 15. The move ostensibly was to reduce the harvest of hen grouse, but many in the hunting community now suspect it was also designed to keep shotgunners out of the woods over the Labor Day holiday weekend, so as to reduce conflicts with late-summer campers, hikers and other non-hunting user groups. The state has millions of acres of national and state forest lands.
In a message now circulating on social media, the Sportsmen’s Alliance asserts, “The Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission is moving full speed to break the North American Model of Conservation and end hunting in the state. Gov. Inslee’s anti-hunting and animal-rights appointments have a large majority on the commission and chair the most important committees. They’ve ended spring bear hunting and have floated the ideas of ending beaver trapping, hunter access to wildlife refuges to protect snow geese and now they’re talking about further protecting bears and mountain lions with greater regulations during the fall seasons while turning all elk hunting into a draw-only permit system statewide. Their call for use of ‘social sciences’ and new Conservation Plan will spell the end of actual scientific wildlife management.”
In his chat with TGM, Adkins observed, “The North American (management) model is THE model” that has become “the envy” of wildlife managers around the globe. What appears to be happening in the Evergreen State, however, is a move to management by extreme ideology, he suggested.
“Extreme ideology has never worked anywhere in the world,” he said.
The Sportsmen’s Alliance is in the process of raising funds to help finance the battle. For example, there is an event at the Skookum Brewery in Arlington, a city about two hours north of Seattle, next Tuesday, Sept. 12, beginning at 5:30 p.m.
A generation ago, Washington sportsmen and women expressed disbelief that fish and game management in the state could ever get out of hand. Nowadays, many are alarmed that things have gotten so far out of hand that legal action appears to be the only course for them to follow.
