One Wild Year Enthusiasts Could Offer Little Help As Nature Resculpted Its Ever-Changing Face

Floods, landslides, ice storms and elections dramatically altered the region in 1996.

But when left to its own ways, nature provided generously for wildlife.

With an eight-year drought nearly out of memory, waterfowl populations responded to a second year of ample precipitation with breeding populations at their highest level in a decade.

“If you haven’t hunted waterfowl for 35 years, you could go out this season and think the good old days never went away,” said Frank Lockard, Ducks Unlimited regional representative in Olympia.

Geese might be doing too well in some areas. Special September hunting was allowed for the first time along the Snake River to discourage Canada geese from fouling parks, docks and playgrounds.

Goose hunting was allowed in Hells Gate State Park near Lewiston and along a 30-mile stretch of the Columbia River near Wenatchee that hadn’t been hunted in 36 years.

Spring weather was dry at just the right time to allow for a good hatch of pheasants, partridge and quail. But weather raised havoc with the landscape at other times of year. Floods caused by rain-on-snow events that started late in 1995 re-arranged rivers throughout the Northwest. Poorly conceived forest roads were blamed for many of the countless landslides that muddied Idaho’s fishing streams.

Fall spawners such as bull trout and brown trout, chinook salmon and mountain whitefish were hit hard.

The sediment in streams could impact all fish spawning for years.

The floods themselves weren’t universally bad for fish, experts pointed out.

“Nature has done something we couldn’t afford to do in a heck of a shorter period of time,” said Bill Bakke, director of the Native Fish Society. “People who care about rivers and understand how they work are excited by the potential this natural event has created for making healthier streams.”

Problem was, many people couldn’t leave nature’s work alone. They rushed into streams with heavy equipment to remove logs and rock deposited by the floods. Some people in southeastern Washington clearcut cottonwoods along the shorelines in a dark ages attempt to reduce potential for future flooding.

Nature periodically puts large debris into a river to create its own holes, gravel bars and riffles that can improve fish spawning and holding habitat, wildlife experts tried to explain.

On Feb. 9, a rampage of water blew out banks of the Tucannon and Touchet river systems, damaging 25 of Columbia County’s bridges and dikes and causing $30 million in damage.

Fisheries experts said the initial flood damage to steelhead and salmon habitat was minimal.

“The major impacts occurred when the county, the Corps (of Engineers) and the farmers got in the rivers with their bulldozers,” one biologist said.

Wildlife officials warned that Columbia County was doing damage to fish and wildlife habitat by taking advantage of emergency leniency in state shoreline permitting to do work that wouldn’t otherwise be allowed.

County Commissioners made no effort to deny this.

Backpackers, campers and hunters were reminded of the floods all summer and fall. Downfall blocked trails; washouts closed roads.

The impact on fishermen at Lake Roosevelt, however, was the most devastating, if not for slightly different reasons.

A snowpack 120 percent of normal in the Columbia River watershed caused the Bureau of Reclamation to empty the reservoir behind Grand Coulee Dam to accommodate runoff.

Angler hopes drained as the biggest drawdown since 1991 flushed kokanee and trout over the dam.

After spectacular kokanee fishing seasons in several preceding years that attracted anglers from throughout the region, fishing at Roosevelt was a bust in 1996.

On the brighter side, the heavy snowpack provided the Northwest with the best river rafting season since 1978.

The mood for recreation was bleak at the beginning of 1996. A government shutdown forced by a Congressional impasse on the federal budget closed virtually all of the National Park System from Dec. 16 through Jan 7.

The shutdown turned away nearly 400,000 visitors who would have visited park sites each day. Ironically, while the fight in Washington was over balancing the federal budget, the U.S. Treasury lost $104,000 in park entrance fees each day of the shutdown.

Moreover, the total loss to local communities caused by closing the parks was estimated at $14.2 million each day.

A virulent outbreak of a bacterial pneumonia devastated one of the West’s most promising herds of Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep.

At least three dozen bighorns died along the Snake and Grande Ronde Rivers, even as three state wildlife agencies took emergency action to airlift survivors to an Idaho veterinary treatment center.

Despite the medical efforts, virtually all of the 72 airlifted bighorns eventually succumbed to the disease.

The two hunting permits Washington normally gives for the area each fall have been withdrawn.

Heavy snowfall early in November and December were stressing big-game herds throughout the region before winter officially began. Elk were piling into feeding stations earlier than normal. Roadkills were mounting up.

But the ice storm that caused millions of dollars of damage to trees and power systems throughout the region in December could be a boon to wildlife.

Broken trees eventually will provide feeding and nesting sites for a variety of critters, including squirrels, woodpeckers and ospreys, to name just a few.

The sport of hunting had its ups and downs in 1996.

The endless procession of tribal hunting rights litigation got a new featured attraction.

Joe Young, a Yakama tribal member, was arrested for shooting two bull elk near a Washington Fish and Wildlife Department feeding station in January.

A judge found Young guilty of hunting out of season off the reservation, giving some teeth to sportsmen’s contentions that tribal members shouldn’t be able to kill game anytime they please.

But by dropping other charges, the judge’s ruling seemed to say that Young was not required to abide by the state bag limit of one elk a year, nor was he required to have a state license to hunt off the reservation, nor was he prohibited from killing elk at the feeding station.

“This isn’t over yet,” said Yakima County prosecutor Jeff Sullivan.

Support for hunting was verified in 1996 with a report from a three-year study commissioned by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

The study found that 40 percent of Americans strongly approved and 33 percent moderately approved of hunting. Just 11 percent strongly disapproved and 11 percent moderately disapproved.

Just over 80 percent of Americans believed that hunting should remain legal while 16 percent said it should be illegal.

But animal rights activists continued to prey on emotional elements of hunting. Initiative campaigns to limit hunting or trapping in seven states siphoned millions of dollars that could have been used to help urgent wildlife needs and plugged it into media hype.

Washington voters changed the way state officials will manage bear and cougar populations by approving Initiative 655. The measure banned the use of bait or hounds for hunting bears, cougars and bobcats.

The ramifications are still being calculated. Washington Fish and Wildlife Department officials estimate $1 million of taxpayer money will be required to respond to increased damage and danger complaints involving bears and cougars.

There’s no effective way to hunt cougars without dogs, they say.

Biologists worry about effects increased cougar and bear numbers will have on struggling elk herds in certain areas.

Because of Washington’s vote, Idaho Fish and Game Department officials are considering more liberal cougar hunting on their side of the Selkirk Mountains to protect endangered caribou. Cougars have been identified as a major limiting factor in restoring the struggling species.

Idaho voters rejected Proposition 2, which sought to eliminate the spring hunting seasons for black bears and prohibit the use of bait and hounds to hunt bears.

Nearly a million dollars was spent on this single campaign.

Meanwhile, the serious threats to wildlife went unabated.

Washington continues to lose about 30,000 acres of habitat to development every year. Idaho can generate only $44,000 a year from the income tax check off that provides money for the state’s non-game wildlife fund.

Interest is lacking to stem the incredible carnage of pesticides. Up to 20,000 Swainson’s hawks that summer in Oregon and Washington died from insecticide poisoning while wintering in Argentina.

A milestone effort by the United Nations to assess the Earth’s biodiversity went virtually unnoticed by the U.S. Congress.

The report by 1,500 scientists for 50 nations, brought together unprecedented documentation regarding the demise of species.

Tony Janetos, director of NASA’s land-use programs, said the decline in biodiversity is “outside the range of anything ever experienced before,” including prehistoric mass extinctions.

The conversion of wilderness into farmlands is the single greatest cause of extinctions world-wide, the report said.

Among the other causes of biodiversity loss: rising populations, water and air pollution, and human failure to consider the long-term implications of habitat destruction.

Meanwhile, Congress couldn’t even agree on measures to reauthorize the Endangered Species Act.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 4 Color Photos; Map of southeast Washington area