Washington State Department Of Fish And Wildlife
Biennium 2005 - 2007 General Information and Financial Projections

AGENCY OVERVIEW

Mission: "Sound Stewardship of Fish and Wildlife"
The Department's mission is to serve Washington's citizens by protecting, restoring and enhancing fish and wildlife and their habitats, while providing sustainable fish- and wildlife-related recreational and commercial opportunities.

Strategic Plan:
The Department has three strategic goals guiding the activities of its employees.

Goal 01: Healthy and diverse fish and wildlife populations and habitats
Goal 02: Sustainable fish- and wildlife- related opportunities
Goal 03: Operational excellence and professional service

Within the three strategic goals are 12 objectives. Within the 12 objectives are 33 agency-level activities that support the strategic plan. For the purposes of the Office of Financial Management's Activity Inventory, the 33 WDFW activities are consolidated into 27 activities. Performance Measures have been established for each agency-level activity.

Department Background:
The Department of Fish and Wildlife was formed in 1994 with the merger of the former departments of Fisheries and Wildlife. Another significant change occurred in 1995 with the passage of Referendum 45. The vote of the people transferred control of the agency from the Governor to the Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission. The Commission includes nine citizens appointed by the Governor and confirmed by the Senate. Three commissioners are from east of the Cascades, three are from the westside and three are appointed at large.

The Commission appoints the Director and approves the operating and capital budgets submitted to the Governor and Legislature. State law requires the Commission to establish policies that preserve, protect and perpetuate wildlife, fish, shellfish, as well as fish and wildlife habitat. Fishing, hunting, and recreational opportunities must be maximized and compatible with healthy and diverse fish and wildlife populations. In addition, the Department is charged with maintaining the economic well-being and stability of the fishing industry. To do this, it must promote orderly fisheries and enhance recreational and commercial fishing.

Capacity:
To accomplish its mission, WDFW uses a wide array of assets.

Most importantly, it employs approximately 1,800 people on a full-time or temporary basis, including some of the most knowledgeable fish and wildlife scientists in the country. These experts play important roles in interstate and international management organizations, such as the Pacific Salmon Commission, the Pacific Fishery Management Council, and the Columbia River Compact.

On the wildlife side, WDFW scientists deal with a range of issues from controlling dangerous animals such as bears and cougars, to restoring native species, such as caribou and western pond turtles. Some of these species are in danger of extinction.

Other WDFW employees enforce poaching laws, design culverts friendly to migrating fish, protect fish and wildlife habitat, teach safe hunting, manage valuable public lands, represent the state's interest in international negotiations, and a host of other activities. Employees are assigned to Olympia, regional offices in Spokane, Ephrata, Yakima, Mill Creek, Vancouver, Montesano and 17 field-level watershed teams.

Organizationally, five programs headed by Assistant Directors report to WDFW's Director and Deputy Director. The programs are: Business Services, Enforcement, Habitat, Wildlife, and Fish. Additionally, the agency has strengthened its Intergovernmental Resource Management Division to better coordinate fish and wildlife needs and values with other governmental entities. These include counties, states, Native American Tribes, and foreign countries.

The agency manages more than 826,817 acres of land, which offer critical habitat to native animal species, and provides recreational opportunities to state citizens. WDFW also manages some 583 access sites to fresh and salt water, as well as to public lands for hunting, dog training, hiking, hang gliding, and many other popular activities.

WDFW also manages the world's most diverse and complex fish hatchery system organized into 16 complexes with more than 90 rearing facilities. Those facilities, each year, collect more than 300 million fish eggs and produce more than 171.3 million salmon, 8.5 million steelhead, and 25.6 million trout, as well as warm water fish such as bass, perch, and walleye.

WDFW's total 2003-05 Biennial Budget Request is approximately $282.1 million. Fishing and hunting license sales and other user fees deposited in the Wildlife Fund supports slightly more than 20.9 percent of the operating budget. The State General Fund supports approximately 29.4 percent of the Department's budget request. The balance comes from other dedicated state funds, federal and local funds. Federal and local funds are designed to mitigate the loss of fish and wildlife habitat. Approximately two-thirds of the funding is dedicated to specific uses either by statute or as provisos in the Appropriations Act.

To improve its financial management, WDFW simplified, consolidated, and modernized its hunting and fishing license sales system four years ago. The automated system is more customer friendly for persons buying licenses, and brings license accounting practices into the 21st century. The automated system makes it far easier to identify license sales trends as WDFW collects some $25 million annually from the sale of more than two million licenses through 575 vendors throughout the state. During Fiscal Year 2005, the Department will be analyzing the automated licensing system to determine how best to issue recreational licenses after the current contract with MCI runs out on June 30, 2006.

Persons without hunting or fishing licenses are required to purchase and display auto decals when using WDFW facilities. These conservation decals help WDFW recover the true cost of managing its lands used by non-hunting and fishing constituents. Finding adequate funding to support Department activities is a real challenge. Therefore, WDFW is increasingly turning to partnerships with enthusiastic volunteers who perform a wide array of services for the benefit of fish and wildlife. These services include enhancing and restoring habitat; raising thousands of salmon and other fish species; removing non-native plants, such as Spartina; conducting educational tours at hatcheries and wildlife areas; serving as the eyes and ears of enforcement officers in programs such as Stream Watch; feeding elk and other wild animals during the winter and clipping adipose fins from salmon and steelhead to distinguish them as hatchery fish for future fisheries.

Challenges:
Washington's economy has changed from a heavy dependence on extractive industries to technology and global marketing. Over the last three years, the state's economy has struggled, resulting in diminished general tax revenues available to support state government. In spite of these difficult times, people continue to migrate here. Urban expansion continues to encroach on fish and wildlife habitat.

Historically, the Department had focused primarily on providing hunting and fishing opportunities. Beginning with the Boldt Decision in the early 1970s, the scope of activities involving the Department has expanded dramatically. Prior to the contraction of the national and state economies, there was a trend with respect to the dependence of the Department on the State Wildlife Account to support its stewardship efforts.

Many of the fish and resource management activities supported by the Department do not involve hunting or fishing opportunities, yet State Wildlife Account spending has increased to support many of these activities. This has been especially true over the last four years due to a deteriorating economy forcing the Legislature to reduce State General Fund spending to stay within available revenue. The Legislature did not eliminate entire activities supported by the State General Fund but substituted State Wildlife Account funding to keep many non-hunting and fishing activities going. This trend does beg the question of whether a major dedicated department fund source should be used to support activities beyond the traditional core hunting and fishing activities.

Another societal change that impacts the sale of hunting and fishing licenses is the number of other recreational choices available to the citizens of this state. Going to the movies, sporting events or other non-hunting or fishing outdoor activities can be a higher priority. The Department is attempting to recruit new hunters and fishers through youth programs and non-traditional groups such as women and the disabled. Wildlife viewing is one of the recreational choices and participation is growing. Wildlife viewing participants do not generate revenue in any significant way to support watchable wildlife activities provided by the Department.

As the human population continues to grow fish and wildlife continue to be displaced as their habitats continue to shrink. Informed decisions about how to accommodate this growth are extremely important if we are to preserve enough water for people and fish, as well as wildlife. Loss of habitat due to human development increases interactions between humans and animals. Public safety has become a larger issue, as more bear and cougar interactions occur. Dear and elk damage to agricultural crops also is a growing issue facing the Department.

Correspondingly, however, is the increasing interest people have in wildlife viewing. Somehow, land use decisions that are conducive to protecting, perpetuating and conserving fish and wildlife populations into the future must be made to balance the demands of human growth and the habitat needs of fish and wildlife. The challenge before the Department and the citizens of the state is how to achieve the needed balance between these competing needs.

The aforementioned challenges place significant demands on the Department, but the complexity doesn't stop there. The following resource management and operational challenges overlay the fundamental societal changes:

• State Wildlife Account - A strategy for State Wildlife Account spending must be developed that includes either a recreational hunting and fishing license fee increase, or a reduction in account spending. During the 2003-05 Biennium, the Department spent more State Wildlife Account funds than incoming revenues can sustain in future years. That occurred because the account had a large fund balance at the beginning of the 2003-05 Biennium. However, the estimated June 2005 fund balance will be insufficient to allow spending at current rates. Therefore, the Department will seek legislative support to increase certain license fees. If support is lacking, a spending reduction plan will be developed prior to the start of the 2005-07 Biennium.
  
  
• Salmon Recovery Plan Implementation - Salmon recovery plans are currently being drafted statewide and are scheduled to be completed for all Ecologically Significant Units (ESUs) or regions by June, 2005. These plans must be implemented if recovery of listed salmon species is to occur. Implementation will require state coordination, resources and support of local watershed efforts. These efforts will include lead entity strategy and project list development, close coordination between lead entities and Regional Fish Enhancement Group programs, habitat and water policy decisions, and integration of recovery activities such as Shared Strategy, watershed planning, lead entity activities and co-manager compliance with harvest and hatchery production actions.
  
  
• Hatchery Reform - Progress needs to continue on the Hatchery Reform initiative to ensure the state's hatcheries become an integral part of the watersheds where they are located and serve two roles: support wild fish conservation goals and provide hatchery fish for sustainable fisheries. In 2004, the Hatchery Scientific Review Group delivered its recommendations for Puget Sound and coastal area hatcheries. Policy discussions with co-managers, legislators and others must continue, program specific actions need to be defined, and fiscal support must be secured to implement agreed-upon infrastructure and operational improvements.
  
  
• Lands Management - The Department needs to develop comprehensive criteria for the acquisition and disposal of lands, determine changes in land management practices necessary to comply with conservation needs of listed species, and identify funding for adequate operations and maintenance of all agency lands.
  
  
• Problem Wildlife - While confirmed dangerous wildlife incidents have decreased the past two years over previous years, certain areas of the state continue to be exposed to significant public safety issues and personal property loss. Likewise, deer and elk damage to agricultural and horticultural crops also continues to be problematic. Damage claim filings continue to increase, as well as the value loss associated with those claims. The Department, working with landowners, must find new ways to mitigate and reduce these losses consistent with sound resource management principles.
  
  
• Selective Fisheries - Continued improvement in wild fish production levels and higher rates of marked hatchery fish should allow new selective fisheries in 2005 in the ocean, Straits, Puget Sound, and several Puget Sound tributaries. However, the Department must meet several immediate challenges prior to the establishment of these fisheries: (1) Sufficient funding to pay for monitoring and sampling of new fisheries above those held in 2004; (2) Tribal agreement on new fisheries; and (3) Successful discussions with Canada over that country's continued sampling of marked fish.

• Puget Sound Shellfish Resource Management - The Department needs to address significantly increasing workload in crustacean management - high market value, commercial-recreational allocation policy disputes, basic catch accounting problems, Treaty/Non-Treaty harvest sharing issues, conservation planning w/co-managers requires more information and resources. For recreational fisheries, incremental improvements are being made to catch record cards (CRC), but the CRC system ultimately will need a comprehensive review of its viability with respect to current management needs vs. expanded use of direct survey estimates, and the relative cost of various alternatives. Additional IRM staff support is needed in inter-tidal and sub-tidal species management planning to facilitate an increased focus on workload for crab and shrimp. The long-term strategy needed is to shift current staff investment from allocation accounting to basic resource assessment conservation, especially shrimp. There is a need for additional support staff to be consistent and effective with various advisory groups and general public, especially on contentious issues.
  
  
• Fishing and Hunting Access - As Washington has continued to become more densely populated and developed, access to traditional hunting and fishing areas has decreased and become extremely challenging to maintain. Private landowners have become increasingly reluctant to allow recreational access to their lands, while some public landowners have imposed access restrictions out of safety and other concerns. In the coming biennium, it will be imperative for the Department to work with both private and public landowners to maintain and expand access to fishing and hunting areas and preserve recreational opportunity.
  
  
• Personnel System Reform - Personnel system reform will accelerate in the 2005-07 Biennium. As a Phase 1 participating agency, the Department of Fish and Wildlife has played a major role in the reform process. As collective bargaining, contracting of state services, an electronic payroll and personnel system, and other major changes are implemented, significant agency resources will need to continue to be allocated.

Conclusion:

Washington has a natural environment that can sustain both human growth and fish and wildlife habitat, if urban development can be managed wisely. The funding structure supporting the Department should be changed to more accurately reflect all the work that is being done by the Department for the citizens of the state. As a matter of financial policy, hunters and fishers should not be expected to provide for more than their fair share of funding to support Department activities. Much of our general public enjoys the natural environment we live in and bears some responsibility to support Departmental activities that are not directly related to hunting and fishing.

The Department's challenge is to lead the paradigm change resulting in the conservation of fish and wildlife for our children, grandchildren and beyond. The Department is working to ensure that Washington is a model for ecosystem management that will be valued by our citizens now and in the future. In order to accomplish this, stable funding is needed, and the hunters and fishers in the state should not be expected to subsidize the broader stewardship activities currently provided by the Department. Hikers, bird watchers, boaters, cross country skiers, and anyone else who enjoys our natural resources have a responsibility to share in the cost of maintaining and managing our natural environment.

The Department is hopeful that the Priorities of Government (POG) process will recognize the Department's contributions to several Result Areas. The Primary Result Area supported by the Department is Improve the Quality of Natural Resources in Washington State that is captured in Result Area 9. The Department also contributes to Result 10, Improve Cultural and Recreational Opportunities. Result 4, Improve the Health of Washington's Citizens. Result 6, Improve the Economic Vitality of Businesses and Individuals. Result 8, Improve the Safety of People and Property, as well as Result 11, Improve the Ability of State Government to Achieve Results Efficiently and Effectively.