Washington Wildlife First

We have continued to expand our science-based advocacy and watchdog program. We attend every meeting and committee meeting of the Washington fish & Wildlife commission, closely monitoring commission actions and providing frequent testimony, in addition to submitting letters and comments on a wide variety of issues. We have mobilized our coalition and grassroots supporters in a number of public campaigns, including one that brought a permanent end to washingtons inhumane and deeply unpopular recreational spring bear hunt. We also campaigned successfully against multiple efforts to weaken protections for washingtons gray wolves, including a proposal to removal all protections from most of the state wolf population and another to downlist wolves from endangered to sensitive on the state endangered species list.

Our strategic partnerships have facilitated significant progress on many fronts. We helped transform the nine-member state commission that controls all state Wildlife policy from a group dominated by hunting, fishing, and commercial interests to one primarily composed of scientists, lawyers, and other experts whose First priority is conservation. We formed and now lead a powerful coalition of more than 60 local, state, and national fish and Wildlife advocacy groups that have joined our call for state Wildlife agency reformthe First coalition of its kind in any state. Thanks to this coalition, we obtained passage of landmark legislation providing funding for a year-long independent study into the reforms that must be made to the Washington department of fish and Wildlife so it can fulfill its responsibilities as a public trustee and effectively protect our Wildlife from the threats of climate change, habitat loss, and a global decline in biodiversity.

Through our legal program, we used a variety of tactics to hold the Washington department of fish and Wildlife accountable to the law and to its responsibilities as a public trustee. We drafted and submitted a rulemaking petition to end the overhunting of bears and cougars, which has endangered the bear and cougar populations and increased the likelihood of conflicts with humans. We also spearheaded a rulemaking petition to stop the state from continuing to shoot state endangered gray wolves as a result of conflicts with cattle that roam unprotected in national forests. In addition, we filed litigation to challenge the departments violation of the state environmental policy act when it began to dramatically increase state hatchery production without any analysis of the potential environmental impact, even though its own scientists had said the expansion was likely to jeopardize wild salmon.