Love of outdoors lures volunteers to Fish and Game Department

Lew Billingslea loves the outdoors, so soon after he moved to North Idaho from Connecticut, he started volunteering for the Idaho Fish and Game Department.

“I kept track of the catches at fish derbies, worked game check stations, helped clean up property acquired by the department, even picked up wounded and dead animals,” he recounts.

But congestive heart failure and emphysema have slowed him up appreciably during the past two years. So now, the 74-year-old retired advertising salesman confines his volunteer work to the fish and game office on Kathleen Way in Coeur d’Alene.

“I answer phones, issue licenses, help out any way I can,” he says. “It’s a way to keep my hand in and to spend some time with the kind of people I like.”

Billingslea says that what he’s especially enjoyed about volunteering for the department the past seven years is the chance to see parts of the country he wouldn’t otherwise visit.

“And besides,” he says, “it feels good to be of service.”

Pete Gardner, who runs the agency’s volunteer program in North Idaho, says it offers people of all ages chances to work on projects that benefit wildlife and habitat.

In this region, he says, there are about 40 regular volunteers. Those are men and women who have been subject to background checks and received training.

Called “reservists,” they’re issued uniforms, are permitted to drive vehicles, and donate at least 40 hours of labor per year to the department. They work virtually every job in the department but law enforcement.

In addition to that regular cadre of 40, there are about 200 other volunteers in North Idaho, Gardner says, working directly for the department or through other entities such as the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation.

The volunteers’ combined labors save Idaho taxpayers an average of $200,000 every year, according to Gardner.

Tom and Lois Free are a husband-and-wife reservist team. He’s 68, a retired logging equipment operator, but she still works, putting in a 40-hour week at Wal-Mart, while managing to volunteer from 20 to 60 hours each month with Fish and Game.

“It’s a blast,” she says. “They’re a group of good people who love the outdoors like we do. We really enjoy the Fish and Game environment.”

The Frees have done a variety of jobs for the agency, including teaching hunter education classes, building bird houses, cooking for officers while they’re qualifying on their firearms, manning hunter check stations, doing creel surveys at fishing derbies, planting trees on wildlife management areas, even building a barbecue on wheels for use by departmental personnel.

“We wouldn’t have been doing it the past dozen or so years if it wasn’t fun,” says Tom.

Derek Antonelli, 52, is a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who’s been a volunteer for the past four years. A North Idaho native and graduate of Lakeland High, North Idaho College, the University of Idaho, and with a masters in biological sciences from the Florida Institute of Technology, Antonelli uses his education in his volunteer assignments.

The Fish and Game Department provides him a snowmobile so he can work the North Idaho backcountry, checking on the bear and pine marten populations to determine genetic diversity.

He’s also planted trout in Snow and Standard lakes in the Selkirk Mountains. That entailed hiking 5 miles with a 1.5 gallon water tank on his back containing 2,300 to 3,700 fingerlings.

In addition, Antonelli has performed more mundane tasks like banding ducks, maintaining equipment and manning big game and duck check stations.

“It’s all been interesting,” he says.

Seventy-four-year-old Jerry Umphres, who grew up on a West Texas ranch, recalls living off game during the Great Depression. “I’ve been an outdoorsman all my life,” he says.

He’s been a Fish and Game volunteer for the past 10 years, since moving here from Los Alamos, N.M., where he retired as a senior technologist from a branch of the University of California.

“I’ve done just about everything,” Umphres says. “That includes working at check stations, bear tagging and monitoring, capturing wild turkeys, fisheries improvement, even delivering vehicles to Boise.”

He volunteers, he says, because, “I like working in the field and with a great bunch of people. Besides, it’s a chance to contribute to the future.”