Wildlife Panel Reviews Timber Sale Fish, Game Chief Also Criticized For Stance On Bombing Range

Stung by criticism from the Idaho Department of Fish and Game’s best friends, Director Steve Mealey is seeking to prove the agency has not become ineffective.

Friday, Mealey announced he would conduct further studies before selling timber from sensitive land along the South Fork of the Salmon River. And he appointed an independent panel to review the department’s analysis of the Air Force’s proposed training range expansion in Owyhee County.

“The way we handle these two projects is making a statement about professionalism,” he said. “The professional standards were high when I came, and I want to make them even higher.”

His actions come as anglers, hunters and conservationists, Fish and Game’s core constituency, are questioning the commitment to fish and wildlife protection of Mealey and his bosses, the Idaho Fish and Game Commission, now dominated by appointees of Gov. Phil Batt.

“We’re concerned they may have lost sight of what they’re suppose to be, advocates for fish and wildlife,” said Don Clower of Meridian, chairman of the Idaho Wildlife Council.

At meetings around the state, hunters and anglers have criticized the Idaho Fish and Game Commission and the department on those two issues, and its new elk hunting plan, which limits hunters to one area of the state.

“I think what the hunting community is saying to the department is divorce yourself from politics and do your job, which is protecting wildlife,” said Bob DiGrazia, of Boise, past president of the Foundation for North American Wild Sheep.

Neither Batt nor lawmakers have put any pressure on the department or the commission for “a desired outcome,” Mealey said, except in the opposition to grizzly bear reintroduction, a position already taken by the commission.

“The assertion that the department is influenced by politics is absolutely nonsense,” Mealey said. If anything, Batt has distanced himself from the commission, Chairman John Burns said. But the commission is attempting to build its credibility with former adversaries, such as the Legislature, ranchers and farmers. “It’s pretty clear with a new administration and the changeover of the Fish and Game director we set about on a new path,” said John Burns, Fish and Game Commission director.

Some recent decisions made by the department may make charting a new path difficult.

The South Fork timber sale is controversial because it has been challenged by federal biologists as a potential threat to endangered salmon and bull trout. Fish and Game has proposed selling 1 million board feet of fire-damaged timber solely for the estimated $100,000 it hopes to get for the wood.

Little timber harvest has been allowed in the drainage of the South Fork of the Salmon River since extensive logging and road-building triggered massive landslides in the erosive, unstable soils of the area in 1965. The sediment destroyed the river’s salmon fishery and became a national symbol of poor logging practices.