Adventurers, wildlife made great strides

If you were a local skier or snowboarder or an employee at a winter recreation area that required snow, you want to forget the disastrous dearth of snow last winter. Enough said on that. But the year outdoors wasn’t all bad. If you look at 2005 in a bubble – without factoring in the distracting negatives of global warming, mercury contamination in fish, unleashed population growth and development that’s gobbling about 18 million acres of forests annually around the world – it was a good year for wildlife in the Inland Northwest. A succession of mild winters left deer herds healthy and Idaho reported the good-old days of elk hunting were back in a complete recovery from the devastating winter of 1996-97. The so-called School Fire that raged into the Blue Mountains south of Pomeroy this summer appears to be only a minor setback to wildlife, even though it cooked

roughly half of the big-game animals in the Tucannon Unit before the hunting season started.

Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife biologists estimated the 52,000-acre fire killed about 200 elk, 150 deer and eight bighorn sheep — roughly half the populations for each species in that unit.

But green grass was sprouting on the hillsides in October and biologists expect the herds to recover in a few years.

Wild turkeys had filled almost every niche in the region’s foothills, with gobblers and hens filtering into the city limits to wreak havoc on bird feeders and gardens.

Well-timed spring rains followed by another dry summer created the perfect recipe for upland birds. Quail and pheasants produced bumper crops of chicks throughout much of the region.

Even struggling game-bird populations got a boost as mountain quail from Oregon were reintroduced to the Asotin Creek area of southeastern Washington and Columbian sharp-tailed grouse were brought south from British Columbia to bolster endangered populations in Lincoln and Douglas counties.

Drought, however, continues to be a limiting factor for waterfowl and other species in much of Eastern Washington. Potholes are gone in Lincoln County. Some waterfowl hunters wondered if they should bag the season entirely after hearing about the possibility of an avian flu pandemic.

More likely, it was the record fuel prices that made some hunters consider staying home, with Hurricane Katrina contributing to spiking the cost of gas to nearly $3 a gallon during the fall seasons.

But while the 10 largest oil companies reported record profits of $118 billion, federal budgets for wildlife and recreation programs continued to shrink. The Colville National Forest announced it will be gradually eliminating 34 of roughly 150 jobs on the 1.1 million-acre forest by 2008.

The reductions are coming as national forests throughout the Northwest advance to new phases in revising management plans that affect issues of intense public interest, such as where off-road vehicles will be allowed, how fires will be managed, where loggers will work and how wildlife will be managed.

Even less money for forest recreation projects could be available in the next few years, as national forests in Oregon and Washington stopped collecting parking fees at 25 percent of the day-use recreation sites where the money had funded millions of dollars worth of trail projects. Overall, the Forest Service stopped collecting recreation fees at 480 sites in 27 states.

Hiking, biking, horse and motorized vehicle groups helped fill the void by continuing in their volunteer efforts to maintain trails. The Panhandle Trail Riders Association alone tallied more than 800 hours of volunteer labor.

The Washington Legislature authorized 19 new special vehicle license plate design options with proceeds going to outdoor causes, including national parks, bike safety and wildlife diversity.

A tsunami, hurricanes and earthquakes drained our budgets for charitable giving, but Spokane County residents continued to invest in their quality of life by paying a small percentage of their property taxes to the Conservation Futures Program. Three new natural areas were protected from development this year:

“The McKenzie Conservation Area on Newman Lake, 421 acres. Cost $1,582,367.

“A 79.6-acre addition to the Iller Creek Conservation Area near Tower Mountain. Cost: $200,000.

“Austine Ravine Conservation Area near Five-Mile Heights, 24.5 acres. Cost: $887,633.

Since it went into effect in 1994, the Conservation Futures has secured 3,896.5 acres of natural areas in the county.

Conservation efforts were too little too late for the Rathdrum Prairie, which was declared officially doomed to development this year, but Potlatch Corp. and the Trust for Public Land worked out a $4.4 million conservation easement that will keep 23,154 acres of private timberland above the St. Joe River forever open to public use and protected against private development.

The forest land is critical to the future of the St. Joe and its world-class trout fishery, which attracts an honorable crowd to North Idaho.

Indeed, far from the marble halls of the U.S. Supreme Court, Associate Justice Sandra Day O’Connor was fly fishing in the St. Joe River this summer when she finally offered her definitive decision on Row v. Wade.

“I don’t want to be confined in some little boat when you can have a whole river around you,” she said. “I sit on my butt enough. I want to wade.”

Fisheries elsewhere are not doing so well.

Oregon’s first status report on wild fish in a decade suggested that nearly half the native species in the state are at risk of extinction, and the variety of species in the world’s oceans has dropped by as much as 50 percent in the past 50 years, according to a paper published this year in the journal Science.

A combination of over-fishing, habitat destruction and climate change has narrowed the range of fish across the globe, scientists said.

“Where you used to put out a fishing line 50 years ago and catch 10 species, now you catch five species for the same amount of effort,” said biologist Boris Worm of Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia. “That’s a recipe for ecological collapse and disaster.”

Meanwhile, in Washington, D.C., Congress was tinkering with issues that conservationists considered disastrous.

The House in particular invigorated serious ongoing campaigns to water down protections in the Endangered Species Act and the National Environmental Protection Act. Despite Senate approval and bi-partisan support from the Washington delegation, House Resources Committee Chairman Richard Pombo (R-CA), once again managed to stall a bill to create the Wild Sky Wilderness in Western Washington.

Without involving local constituents, Rep. Cathy McMorris introduced a bill that would give the Spokane Tribe jurisdiction over the Spokane Arm of Lake Roosevelt. The bill sailed through the House before a wide range of people, including fishermen, voiced their disapproval of being left out of the negotiations, leaving McMorris apparently relieved the measure appears to have stalled in the Senate.

The most dramatic environmental battle occurred in the week before Christmas, when the Republican majority allowed a provision to drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to be tagged onto a defense bill.

The controversial last-gasp effort backfired, as Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) tried to link the hotly debated issue of ANWR drilling to a bill written to fund U.S. troops in Iraq and provide relief to victims of hurricane Katrina.

“This was an against-all-odds victory for wildlife, wild places and all Americans and proof that the fate of the Arctic Refuge must be debated on its merits, not as part of a sneak attack,” said Melinda Pierce, the Sierra Club’s senior representative in Washington.

“We cannot drill our way to energy independence, but we can embrace responsible measures and real, 21st Century energy solutions that make cars go farther on a gallon of gas, promote conservation, invest in clean renewable energy and protect our natural heritage.”