Boaters will need to get safety course

Completion of a boater education class will be required of almost all Washington power boaters under a bill passed by the Washington Legislature and set to be signed by the governor.

The bill was one of several affecting outdoor recreation, including hunters and anglers.

Among the boating bill provisions, all resident boaters operating vessels powered by motors of 10-horsepower or greater will be required to have a boater safety education certificate. This provision would be phased in over nine years depending on a boater’s age. Boaters 20 and younger would need the certificate by 2008 while the requirement wouldn’t apply to those 70 and younger until 2016.

The course would be a one-time requirement for residents. Approved courses would include the basic safe boating classes already being taught on the Internet and in Spokane by certified volunteers from the U.S. Power Squadrons and Coast Guard Auxiliary. If you have a certificate that proves you’ve already taken one of these courses, you’re requirement is fulfilled.

Non-resident visitors would basically be exempt from the requirement.

The bill was supported by a Washington Parks and Recreation Commission study on recreational boating safety, which showed that Washington boaters may have had as many as 10,000 accidents from 1985 to 2002.

State Fish and Wildlife Department officials are pleased with legislative approval to:

Offer a limited number of big-game hunting tags that would, for an extra fee of $150, entitle the holder to waive the weapon-choice requirement and allow use of the tag until he harvests an animal in any of the deer or elk archery, muzzleloader and modern rifle seasons.

•Suspend hunting privileges for up to 10 years for individuals convicted of serious big-game hunting violations, up from the current two years.

•Double the criminal fines for big-game poaching if the infraction involves spotlighting or if the violator is a repeat offender. That’s substantial, considering the current mandatory criminal fines are $4,000 for moose, mountain sheep, mountain goat; $2,000 for elk, deer, cougar, black bear; $6,000 for trophy deer and elk, and $12,000 for caribou, grizzly bear and trophy mountain sheep.

•Penalize hunters up to $10 for not reporting the result of their big-game hunting to the department’s on-line or telephone hunter survey. Hunters who don’t report would have to pay the fine before they could by another tag for bear, deer, elk and turkey.

Sportsmen are going to be informed by direct mail of the new rule and the potential for a penalty, said Steve Pozzanghera, WDFW deputy director for wildlife.

The Legislature failed to pass several laws that sportsmen’s groups and agency officials supported. Among them:

•A bill to reinstate the separate $12 fee for a turkey tag. This measure was backed by National Wild Turkey Federation chapters for two reasons: It would have raised more money specifically for managing upland birds while providing a deterrent to human turkeys invading the sport simply because they currently get a free turkey tag with their small game license.

•A $5 surcharge on resident hunting license fees ($25 for non-residents) for a fund that would pay private landowners for public hunting access and habitat management. This would have started a Washington program similar to the successful Block Management program in Montana and the fledgling Access Yes! program in Idaho.

Western Washington Indian tribes apparently scuttled the proposal because expanding agreements with private landowners could interrupt the definition of “claimed and unclaimed lands,” which has been interpreted by the courts to give tribal members access to private timber lands.

See fish run: Spring chinook salmon started to boom up and over Bonneville Dam last week the day after Oregon and Washington fisheries managers closed the fishery in the main stem Columbia for fears the run was a bust.

It’s still too soon to tell how the run will develop, but anglers are catching springers in Drano Lake and Columbia tibs, and Idaho fish mangers are cautiously optimistic.

On Monday, more than 4,100 chinook passed Bonneville, bringing the total count to nearly 16,000.

“That’s the kind of daily count we would expect to see this time of year,” said Sharon Kiefer, Idaho’s anadromous fisheries manager. “We hope to see more days like that this week.”