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

Vandals Blamed For Long Lake’s Shortened Season

Rich Landers The Spokesman-Revie

REPLAY: April 27, 1996 The address to get recently established big-game tag quotas from the Washington Fish and Wildlife Department’s home page of the World Wide Web was published incorrectly Thursday. The correct address is http://www.wa.gov/wdfw/quotas.htm.

Vandalism is gutting recreation budgets. Money that could be spent maintaining trails on public lands must be diverted to build bomb-proof gates. Outhouses must be designed with concrete walls thick enough to withstand the inevitable barrage of gunfire.

At what point, however, should we sacrifice camper convenience and stop installing facilities for vandals to destroy?

Outhouses are necessary for sanitation. But maybe covered picnic shelters, boat docks, water systems, garbage cans and information signs are impractical in some areas.

Maybe recreation in our ever-more crowded outdoors eventually will have to be treated like jail cells - bare of anything that’s vulnerable to abuse.

Consider the Department of Natural Resources campground on north Long Lake west of Tumtum.

Five years ago, this was an unadorned section of land with an outhouse, a few unimproved campsites and a rough gravel road that provided reservoir access for paddlers, hunters and anglers with small boats.

The campground and access were open year-round. Though it was primitive, this was a precious amenity because there is no other convenient public boat access on the 30-some miles of Long Lake from the mouth of the Little Spokane River to Long Lake Dam.

Five years ago, however, the DNR, much to the appreciation of boaters and anglers, began improving the campground and boat launch.

More than $250,000 has been spent to regrade and pave the boat launch road, install a dock, formalize the campground with specific sites, fences, a water system, outhouses that no longer creak in the wind and picnic tables that can’t be burned.

This spring alone, the agency has spent $7,000 to install a guard rail on the boat launch road. Another $38,000 is earmarked for wheelchair accessible facilities in the campground.

Last Memorial Day weekend, this spiffed-up facility was jammed with 2,000 boaters, campers and picnickers, DNR officials say.

Such a crowd was never heard of before the development. Now crowding is a problem, but not the only one.

The improvements have forced DNR to close the campground and boat access for nine months a year.

“We have this money to develop and improve the park, but no money to operate it,” said Dick Dunton, DNR assistant regional manger in Colville.

This rural but easily accessible area has a reputation for vandalism, said Steve Harris, DNR maintenance supervisor in Deer Park. “We barely had the new boat dock in for about a week before someone got in and did thousands of dollars of damage,” he said.

“To defend it and limit the abuse, the only time we can unlock the gate is when somebody like a campground host is on the premises,” Dunton said.

But DNR officials say they can afford to have campground hosts only during summer.

By the time you work your way to DNR headquarters in Olympia, there’s no straight answer for why an agency would sink a quarter million into a facility knowing that the improvements would force it to be shut down most of the year.

“The nicer we made it look, the more people we attracted and the more pressure there is to limit vandalism and keep the place looking nicer,” Dunton said.

DNR apparently has approached State Parks about managing the site, but that agency isn’t flush with dough either.

Meanwhile, canoeists, kayakers, anglers and hunters who would like to make use of fall and spring seasons at Long Lake are cut off by a locked gate at Highway 291.

“Everything we do is putting more money into it, but we still haven’t found a way to keep it open,” Dunton said.

“We spend more money on Long Lake than we do on the 16 other sites in five counties. On the other hand, in the three months it’s open, Long Lake gets more use than all the others combined.”

Time to apply: Permit quotas for Washington deer, elk, bighorn sheep, mountain goat, moose and cougar hunts were set last week by the Fish and Wildlife Commission.

This information is important to hunters applying for permits before the May 3 deadline. The quotas are posted at Department regional offices. They’re also available on the department’s World Wide Web home page at http://www.wa.gov/ wdfs/quotas.htm.

Deer permit quotas are down about 30 percent, but elk permit levels are similar to last year. No bighorn sheep permits will be offered for the Blackbutte unit, where disease devastated the herd this winter.

Moose permits, however, are up from 19 in 1994 to 31 this fall. Washington’s first moose season opened with three permits in 1977.

, DataTimes MEMO: You can contact Rich Landers by voice mail at 459-5577, extension 5508.

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Rich Landers The Spokesman-Review

You can contact Rich Landers by voice mail at 459-5577, extension 5508.

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Rich Landers The Spokesman-Review