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Other
Partnerships
- The department reached agreement with treaty Indian tribes in 1997 for mass marking hatchery coho salmon to differentiate them from wild stocks. The marking entails clipping the adipose fins of hatchery coho so that they can be identified easily while their wild counterparts are released. The agency in 1997 marked more than 18 million hatchery coho from the Columbia River, Willapa and Grays Harbor; 12 million 1996 brood year coho, and 3 million 1996 brood Puget Sound yearling chinook.
- The Jobs for the Environment Program, administered jointly by the departments of Fish and Wildlife and Natural Resources, employs displaced timber workers and fishers in projects that restore habitat for declining fish stocks. Currently in its fourth year, the program employed more than 200 workers in the 1995-97 biennium. The program received nearly $4.4 million in state and federal funding for 28 projects in 14 counties. Local partnerships contributed $2.1 million in cash and in-kind matches to the program.
- The department continued to cooperate with the tribes in developing management plans for razor clams, coastal and Puget Sound Dungeness crabs, coastal and Puget Sound shrimp, sea urchins and geoducks.
- Working closely with the fishing industry, environmental groups and federal government, the commission passed a rule minimizing incidental death of seabirds that become entangled in fishing nets. The commercial fishing regulations protect common murres, rhinoceros auklets and other diving seabirds that sometimes swim with schools of salmon in northern Puget Sound.
- In a joint program with Seattle’s Woodland Park Zoo, the department reintroduced into the wild more than 70 endangered western pond turtles, rescuing the species from near-extinction in Washington. The program includes both captive breeding, and “headstarting,” in which newly hatched turtles are gathered from wild sites and nurtured in captivity until the tiny turtles grow large enough to avoid being eaten by bullfrogs. They are then returned to their original habitat.
- Wildlife biologists from Idaho, Washington, and Oregon captured bighorn sheep in the tri-state Hells Canyon area to give them an experimental vaccine that may protect them from a fatal disease. In December 1995, more than 100 bighorns along the Snake River in southeast Washington, northeast Oregon, and west-central Idaho died from a pneumonia-like disease caused by Pasteurella spp. bacteria that produce toxins deadly to wild sheep.
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