Comments are due today. You have an hour, get them in. Here was mine.
To Whom it May Concern,
I have read the draft policy and listened to the public comments during the live meeting in Seattle last week. Below are my public comments on this draft policy.
Introduction
1. I support a conservation policy, but you already have one; Policy 5004. You also have your strategic plans. Both provide everything the commission and the department should need to administer a conservation ethic in WA.
2. We are not in a biodiversity "crisis". What percent of Washington species have been extirpated in the last 100 years? During a time when our population grew 700%. I'd say we're doing pretty well considering all things.
Definitions
3. You're changing the definition of conservation. Conservation is the management of something, in this case our wildlife natural resource, for sustainable use. Plus the definition is full of buzzwords and eco-jargon that mean both nothing, often aren't legally definable, yet could be used to achieve almost any means desired. "Equitable benefits to current and future humans and non-human life", what does that even mean? No more homes? Bull dozing the existing ones? Non-human life, does that mean the individual or the species? Are we not killing anything again because a non-human life must be equal to a human life? Please remove such language.
4. The definition for sustainability isn't even a complete sentence. Could it not be claimed that in order to manage an ecosystem for resilience we'd want to stock water water species in currently cold water environments; those fish would be more resilient to future climate change conditions? It just seems contrary to many actual goals of WDFW.
Principles
5. "Conservation first" could easily be interpreted to outlaw hunting, fishing, and any development. That majority rules and the eastside doesn't matter. That an increasingly disconnected society could ban any activity they don't see value in.
6. The Conservation of all species absolutely isn't true. Do we really want to preserve cheatgrass? Northern Pike?
7. Only making decisions based on science sounds good, but has it flaws. Sometimes it is good to make decisions based on, at least in part, ethics, morality, and culture. Those don't always jive with peer-reviewed research. Social science is a science that could say anything you wanted it to.
8. Innovation topic. I would like to hear when and where the authors think a failure is warranted, and who would deem something a failure, and what would happen as the result. Typically Trusts are managed to not fail, risk is something to be minimized as Trust managers.
9. Aligning... I would be careful with how much alignment you seek. Diversity of thought should not be looked down upon. If I was a WDFW staffer, that point would make me very nervous that it's going to be a "my-way or the highway" type of management.
Lastly, I just can't help but feel this draft policy was written in an echo chamber. It does not address a lot of very well known principles and processes that are already in place to protect and promote conservation. It deviates quite strongly from the WAC mandate. Which, I think, is really the intent of this policy, to create something to circumvent the existing mandates already codified in State law, something I don't support. We have a lot of struggles in WA with regard to our wildlife management. I'm not sure how this helps them.
wdfw.wa.gov
