Speech to Inland Northwest Wildlife Council
January 20, 2001

VIDEO

Portions of a speech by WDFW director Dr. Jeff Koenings to the Indland Northwest Wildlife Council on January 20, 2001 A challenge to get involved in managing Washington's wildlife resources - 86 seconds The realities wildlife resources face in Washington today - 75 seconds

Thank you for inviting me here tonight. I feel fortunate to have the opportunity to address Washington's largest independent wildlife organization.

The Inland Northwest Wildlife Council has a strong tradition of working with the Department on many diverse projects, including moose and mule deer studies, habitat enhancement projects, turkey and quail relocation and environmental education, to name just a few.

For these and the many other challenges you've tackled, you have my sincerest appreciation.

Now I want to issue a new challenge to you, and that challenge is this:

I want you to help me re-invigorate and, if necessary, re-invent the way we involve people in this state in the decision-making processes affecting our wildlife.

I want you to help me look at what the Department of Fish and Wildlife is doing right, and what we are doing wrong.

In coming months, I want you to take a hard, critical look at our public involvement processes and help me find ways to increase the level of citizen participation, find ways to attract people from all walks of life with an interest in wildlife.

I want you to examine both the Department's existing Game Management and Wildlife Diversity Advisory citizen councils, and determine if they are functioning the way they should function.

I want you to examine whether we need more advisory councils to focus on specific issues.

I want you to look at the relationships between advisory groups and the Department, and advisory groups and the Fish and Wildlife Commission, define those relationships, and recommend ways to strengthen them.

And I want you to look at the role of technology, such as the Internet, in expanding citizen participation in wildlife issues.

I'll go into the major reasons why I think we need to take on this challenge in a moment, but first let me say I think the Department has made progress the past year or two in its attempts to reach a broader segment of the public and include them in fish and wildlife resource decisions.

In fact, some of you may have heard me mention "the new era" in fisheries management that we have embarked on in this state, and era defined by a reliance on strong science and strong partnerships, or citizen participation.

I want to create this same type of new era for wildlife management. And we've started to do that. Our Watchable Wildlife Program, for example, has been innovative in its approaches to reaching out to the public, including creating Wild Watch Cams that allow people to watch wildlife live on the Department's home page.

Also, in our Game Program, manager Dave Ware, a person many of you undoubtedly know and have worked with, has successfully bolstered input from citizens on hunting issues and game seasons through use of the Internet.

But despite these successful efforts, despite the hard work of our advisory councils, despite all our existing public involvement efforts, genuine, meaningful participation in wildlife issues by a cross-section of citizens is often lacking.

Indeed, from my viewpoint, such participation often seems to be the exception, rather than the rule.

So why should we care about increasing public participation? There are, I think, several important reasons why we should care.

The first revolves around the resource itself.

More than a half century ago Aldo Leopold, the noted conservationist who is widely acknowledged as the father of modern game management, remarked, "Wildlife management is comparatively easy; human management is difficult."

After serving two years as Director of the Department of Fish and Wildlife, I can tell you this: truer words were never spoken.

Washington State has experienced explosive population growth in recent decades and five new Seattles are expected within 20 years. This growth, both existing and projected, will quite literally place our fish and wildlife populations in peril.

The most recent census information released in December showed the state gained more than a million new residents during the past decade. Washington, the smallest of the western states geographically, is the second densest.

This growth, in turn, has been a major factor in the alteration or destruction of an estimated 70,000 acres annually of fish and wildlife habitat. At last count, 52 of our state's fish and wildlife species were listed as endangered or threatened, and an estimated 700 of our state's rivers and streams failed to meet federal Clean Water Act standards established nearly 30 years ago.

I believe that without proper citizen participation in the processes designed to guide and channel this growth and manage our fish and wildlife resources -and this includes the processes already in place at the Department of Fish and Wildlife-this terrible toll on our fish and wildlife, as well as our other natural resources, will continue.

Citizen participation is also important in making use decisions concerning expanding recreational opportunity with growing game populations such as mule deer in north central Washington, cougar populations statewide, and moose and turkeys here in the northeast. There are many different ways to expand opportunity and the public needs to play a major role in shaping how it gets done.

Another reason we should care about increasing public awareness and participation is that by doing so, we stand a greater chance of increasing public understanding of the role of science in wildlife management.

We often hear strong support for using science as the base for wildlife management decisions, especially harvest decisions. Yet I'm not sure there is agreement on just what science is.

The greatest confusion for biologists likely comes from the interpretation of scientifically collected information, especially information that is not entirely conclusive. The basic premise of science is to test a hypothesis with a carefully controlled study designed to determine whether a hypothesis or question is true.

In wildlife science, it is often extremely difficult to control all the things that can influence the experiment. "Mother Nature does not accept human control." So interpretation of the results of scientific experiments, or the "science," often becomes somewhat of an art. This art is what biologists refer to as professional judgement.

The challenge for biologists is to separate science from professional judgement, and professional judgement from personal opinion.

To user groups, the greatest confusion on what science is likely depends on whether they trust what a biologist tells them, or if the results of a scientific experiment coincide with what they perceive to be fact.

It is clear that the Department's role is to provide the sound science from which management decisions can be made. But I also think we need to be more clear on the differences between science, professional judgement, and personal opinion.

And I think we need to relegate our own personal opinions to, for lack of a better term, a lower level. We need to be more objective. We need to make sure we don't turn our scientists into sociologists. The opinions, for example, on allocating use opportunities should come from the public and be formulated through participation in Department processes.

It is the job of Department scientists to continue to improve their science, exercise objective professional judgment and, at times, survey public opinion using the best social science tools available. It is up to the Fish and Wildlife Commission, working closely with people like yourself, to determine fish and wildlife policy.

Another reason I believe it's imperative we increase citizen participation in wildlife decision-making processes is this: We are in danger of handing over the management of our wildlife resources to special interest groups through the initiative process.

In fact, governance by initiative is rapidly becoming the norm rather than the exception to the rule - not only in Washington state, but other states as well. As the journalist David Broder points out in his recent book, "Democracy Derailed," there were 226 conservation-related measures placed on local ballots throughout the United States in 1998-a 50 percent increase over 1996. Of those 226 measures, an astounding 72%, or nearly three out of every four, were approved.

A good example of just how silly some of these initiatives can be occurred in 1999 in Beverly Hills when, according to Broder, residents went to polls to vote on an initiative that would have forced stores selling furs to put a tag on the clothing with the disclaimer that it was "made with fur from animals that may have been killed by electrocution, gassing, neck breaking, poisoning, clubbing, stomping or drowning, and may have been trapped in steel-jaw leg hold traps."

Another initiative in San Francisco would have made household and other pets wards of the state -- eliminating personal ownership. Both initiatives failed.

Here in Washington, as all of you here tonight know, we've had several examples of governance by initiative. One occurred in 1996 when a measure was placed on the ballot to ban cougar hunting with hounds. It passed overwhelming.

Another example occurred last year when another initiative, 713, was placed on the ballot to ban certain types of traps. It, too, passed handily.

Whether we agree or disagree with any of the initiatives that have appeared on the ballot here or elsewhere, the message, in my mind, is clear:

We are running the risk of allowing certain groups or individuals to formulate public policy in a vacuum without proper public involvement. Often armed with slick advertising campaigns, oodles of money, and simplistic slogans initiative backers threaten to derail the role of science and informed public debate in drafting wildlife policy.

I believe that if we do not succeed in increasing public awareness and increasing citizen participation in wildlife issues, these types of initiatives will continue to flourish.

We are also seeing more and more wildlife issues adjacent to urban areas that we used to address with hunters and open seasons. These situations are likely to be very sensitive, even if we are not talking about cougars. A good example is the growing elk population just outside of Spokane. It will take a broad cross section of the public to help make decisions on how to address the problems associated with urban wildlife that get into trouble.

As I said earlier, wildlife biology is a lot easier than the human management.

There is one final reason why I believe we need to draw more people into our tent: There is strength in numbers.

Unless we reach out to increase the number of people playing an active role in wildlife issues, unless we make more of an effort to engage hunters and non-hunters and bird watchers and bow hunters and others, including the couch potatoes who may never come closer to an animal than watching Animal Planet on television, but who nevertheless care about wildlife, we are setting ourselves up for frustration and failure.

In a nutshell, we will not gain the attention and support of state and federal legislators and others, whom we depend on to be effective.

If you think I'm wrong or being too paranoid, consider this:

Despite the massive challenges I mentioned earlier, despite the population growth, despite the loss of tens of thousands of acres of fish and wildlife habitat each year and despite the growing number of threatened and endangered species in our state, natural resource agencies have continued to see their slice of the state budget pie shrink.

In the current biennium, General Fund monies devoted to natural resources totaled $0.3 billion out of a total budget of $21 billion. And during the past decade, per capita expenditures of natural resource dollars shrunk by nearly 50 percent, from 71 cents a person in 1990, to 50 cents a person in 2000.

In many respects, I know that I am preaching to the choir tonight. I know the Inland Northwest Wildlife Council has a long history -50 years this year- of fishing and hunting advocacy.

I know that you are one of the most politically active wildlife organizations in our state. Your executive director, Jamey Layman, is always at Fish and Wildlife Commission meetings, representing your collective interests, just as he does at the state legislature from time to time.

I know that you have been innovative in your public education and outreach efforts.

Now I'm asking you to go that extra mile. Just like a baseball manager who turns to his ace pitcher to bail the team out in the bottom of the ninth, I'm turning to you for help.

What I want is your help in assembling a small group of people, a blue-ribbon panel if you will, to determine ways to improve and expand public participation in wildlife issues.

I would like members from both the Department's existing advisory groups to be members of the panel, as well as myself, a Fish and Wildlife Commission member and Wildlife Program personnel. But, I would also like most members of the panel to come from the public at large.

I'll announce more details next month, but I would like to encourage all of you hear tonight to contact the Department if you, or someone you know, might be interested in participating on the panel. Although the actual number of people serving on the panel will have to be limited for practical purposes, part of the panel's mission will be to solicit comment from as many citizens as possible.

As I mentioned at the outset of my remarks tonight, I want this to be a critical examination of our public involvement processes, a dynamic dialogue between the Department, the Commission and the public. One that concludes within a reasonable amount of time--one year--with concrete recommendations on ways we will improve existing communications and expand citizen participation.

I truly believe that if we are to going to protect and perpetuate the wildlife resources of this state for future generations, if we are going to ensure diverse recreational opportunities for a diverse public, if we are going to usher in a new era of wildlife management that reflects the best science possible coupled with the best public involvement possible, we have little choice but to start here tonight.

Finally, I would like to close with this metaphor: When I was young, mom used to hold our hand as we safely made our way through the heavy traffic. My friends, there is a lot of heavy traffic out there and we've discussed some of it. To make it safety through that traffic, we need to quickly join hands.

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