Washington Fish and Wildlife’s new director draws from 30-year career

A month into his new job, Jim Unsworth was in Spokane Monday to meet the far-Eastern Washington portion of 1,600 employees he’s overseeing as director of the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife.

In addition to the staff, the 30-year wildlife professional and former Idaho wildlife official is also in charge of virtually all of Washington’s fish and wildlife.

“It’s a big job,” he said after meeting with Spokane Region staff who drove in from as far as Walla Walla and Colville. “But when I was doing my research while applying for this job, I was especially impressed by the science that’s come out of this agency. Washington has a top-notch professional staff.”

Unsworth, 57, impressed many of the regional staff as a wildlife professional who, as one biologist put it, “has worked his way from the ground up.”

“I’ve enjoyed every step on the way to this job,” Unsworth said.

“Even the field tech wildlife jobs were fabulous. My master’s work involved trapping black bears,” he said, adding that he’s also done field work on deer and elk.

For a wildlife professional, that’s all part of livin’ the life, he said.

But he didn’t hesitate to move up the ranks to supervisory roles.

“You always have the same interests, but you change from someone who’s hands-on to being an enabler for others.”

As Washington director, he earns $146,500 a year and manages a biennial operating budget of $376 million.

As Idaho’s wildlife program chief and deputy director, Unsworth’s greatest challenge was holding up buck deer and bull elk survival rates in the wake of two very hard winters at the peak of gray wolf recovery.

“Big-game hunting is hugely important to Idaho, and just trying to keep general hunting seasons going while maintaining bucks and bulls was very challenging.”

Wolf recovery in Washington is roughly at the stage Idaho faced around 2008 before the state had the authority to manage wolf numbers, he said.

Wolves are most controversial in northeastern Washington, where most of the wolves moving into the state are concentrated. Some Washington legislators are pushing for translocation – taking wolves from high-concentration areas and releasing them in areas vacant of wolves. “We did some of that in Idaho; the results weren’t all positive,” he said.

“I think I have an excellent understanding of the biology and I know the social side of wolf recovery – and they have to be dealt with on an equal basis,” he said.

“But Idaho solutions won’t necessarily work in Washington. Washington has 7 million people compared with 1.6 million in Idaho. We’re going to need different solutions here because the politics and interests groups are different.

“The truth and the solution are somewhere in the middle of the extremes on the issue. It will take time.

“When Idaho was able to start managing wolves, and hunting and livestock groups felt as though they had some options, it eased the tensions. It didn’t eliminate them, but it helped.”

Unsworth said his biggest learning curve in his new job will be in the fisheries quagmire of sport, tribal, commercial interests that stew in a pot of interstate, federal and international laws and allotments.

“The North of Falcon meetings are just around the corner,” he said, speaking of the meetings to divvy up shares of Northwest salmon stocks and set fishing seasons. “The former director had a fisheries background and was very involved in that process, but I’ll be relying totally on staff – very knowledgeable staff – this year.”

He’ll also be plowing new ground this winter with the Washington Legislature, a political landscape vastly different from what he’s familiar with in Idaho.

“It’s a clear two-party system as opposed to Idaho’s, where it’s overwhelmingly Republican,” he said.

In Idaho, he had a pretty good idea where the ideological bar was set when he walked into a legislative committee room.

“Maybe it will be more difficult to work under a real two-party system, but to us the biology is the same and the information fish and wildlife professionals provide to the lawmakers is based on science.”

By the end of the week, Unsworth will have visited staff in all six of the department’s regions during a two-week tour.

He’s also taken a few breaks to go steelhead fishing on West Side waters – the Satsop, Humptulips and Quinault.

“I’m familiar with the Snake River system, where I fished when I was based with Idaho Fish and Game in Kamiah,” he said. “It’s great to see the diversity Washington has from east to west.”

He said he’s also has had a chance to meet a wide range of hunters, anglers and other wildlife enthusiasts.

“There’s a lot of passion for our fish and wildlife resources,” he said. “That’s what makes this job so interesting and important.”