I went back and read through our thread on this article (brawl in Spokane). It has a direct impact on this topic.
An emerging wildlife war has its first skirmish this week in Spokane where a reformist group is looking to deprioritize hunting and hunters.
www.outdoorlife.com
In it, Ed Arnet references the Resiliency Roadmap, a document made to guide wildlife agencies in the future.
I've read through it, and in light of the recent decisions from the WDFW commission, I can't say I support that road map, and I think hindsight will prove me correct. This was the wrong path to take. We shouldn't support state agency boards to be taken over by emotional agenda driven politics, which is exactly what you will get if you follow the road map. It calls for a coming together of the typical environmental community with the traditional hunting and fishing community; a push to get more people actively involved in wildlife management, while in the same breath knowing that these people are increasingly disconnected from wildlife.
That this, as HW and others have said, this incorporating of non-consumptive (I dislike that term, but will use it for now) viewpoints is the ONLY way for our wildlife agency professionals to maintain the public's trust is a fallacy. They already don't care what you say, they are not driven by reason, or rational thought, or even by science (lest they fund it for specific the results). WA is certainly at the forefront of executing the recommended approach. And look where it got the agency. You have these non-consumptive activist user groups, submitting applications for commission positions with people who vow to execute deliberate agendas; those same groups hosting invitation only retreats for sympathetic commissioners to strategize how to best accomplish their agenda, and worst of all you have them completely ignoring the recommendations of the actual professional staff to vote the agenda! How is that a preferred path to continued relevancy?
