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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Sportsmen In Idaho Fight For Independence

Fenton Roskelley The Spokesman-R

Veteran sportsmen know that terrible things often happen when politicians dictate fish and wildlife programs.

The Washington Legislature, during the final days of its 1997 session, passed a bad law that directed the Fish and Wildlife Commission to force pheasant hunters to buy a $10 “pheasant enhancement” stamp and to release thousands of pen-raised cocks in various parts of the East side.

Fortunately, the law may be an aberration. After years of meddling in fish and wildlife management, politicians have lost most of their power over the Fish and Wildlife Commission. Sportsmen and other citizens voted in 1995 to return to the commission the right to name the Fish and Wildlife director and to be the supervising authority.

As a result, the FWD now has a knowledgeable, fair and energetic director who is making good things happen. Director Bern Shanks has won the support of a high percentage of the state’s anglers and hunters.

Unfortunately for Idaho sportsmen, politicians not only are firmly in control of fish and wildlife management, they’re forcing career Fish and Wildlife Department officers to make bad decisions. The politicians have made clear that sportsmen, who pay the bills, are at the bottom of the totem pole.

Five of the seven commissioners are Gov. Phil Batt’s appointees and most have shown they’re ready to do the bidding of the governor, a man who places mining, logging, agricultural interests and development ahead of those of fish and wildlife.

Sportsmen have had little to cheer about in recent months. However, many were delighted when the new department director, Steve Mealey, was suspended without pay for two weeks after a “mooning” incident during a big party aboard a charter boat at Lake Pend Oreille.

Mealey, a former National Forest Service supervisor in Idaho, had already irritated sportsmen by writing in the department’s “Idaho Wildlife” magazine that personal ethics would prevent him from ever killing a baited bear or treed lion. That was after sportsmen convinced Idaho voters to turn down a proposal to ban baiting.

Sportsmen wondered where Mealey’s ethics were when he was convicted of placing a woman’s tag on a deer he killed in the Salmon River area several years ago.

Commissioner Jeff Siddoway, a Terreton sheep rancher, admitted he egged Mealey into mooning. He’s the commissioner who last year alienated biologists and Hispanics by saying the department shouldn’t hire more biologists at $80,000 a year but instead should hire $5-an-hour Hispanics to plant bitterbrush.

John Burns, commission chairman, was near Mealey when the mooning took place. While he was supervisor of the Targhee National Forest, he directed the massive clear cutting that one would think could be seen from spaceships.

He irritated the state’s sportsmen by saying Fish and Game officials should consult with constituents in the following order: Legislature, Gov. Batt, local governments and “groups affiliated with wildlife.”

Fish and Game officers have been pressured into agreeing to log department lands to raise money and to feed elk in eastern Idaho. Commissioners have considered abolishing the highly popular and outstanding Idaho Wildlife magazine and cutting the department’s staff.

All of the department’s $52 million comes from license fees and federal money. Now leaders of sportsmen’s organizations, believing that sportsmen who pay the bills should be on the top of the pecking order, not the bottom, are talking about sponsoring an initiative to get their Fish and Game Department out of the clutches of politicians.

They want a director like Jerry Conley, who had the guts to face down the politicians. Conley, backed by an independent commission, criticized loggers for excessive logging that degraded habitat, ranchers whose stock overgrazed the land and developers who destroyed habitat. Conley resigned last year.

For many years, Idaho Fish and Game was admired as one of the top fish and wildlife departments in the country. Now it’s in danger of losing that reputation as politicians dictate the department’s policies.

On the other hand, the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, which, for a few years, had to be unnecessarily wary of politicians, now is under the direction of an independent commission and a director who has shown he will not be intimidated by politicians.

Many Idaho sportsmen, aware that the majority of their commissioners are more interested in appeasing the politicians than in good fish and wildlife management, seem ready to try to promote an initiative that will result in an independent commission.

, DataTimes MEMO: You can contact Fenton Roskelley by voice mail at 459-5577, extension 3814.

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Fenton Roskelley The Spokesman-Review

You can contact Fenton Roskelley by voice mail at 459-5577, extension 3814.

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Fenton Roskelley The Spokesman-Review