2007 in Review: Living large in the wild

The Inland Northwest was thinking big in the outdoors this year, with people catching record fish, presenting the region’s richest bass tournament, and spending more per gallon of gas than they ever imagined.

But nobody was thinking bigger than land and wildlife managers. For example:

“Elk, hunters and anyone who cherishes access to public land were among the winners from the largest state land exchange movement in Washington history. After several years of negotiations, public meetings and appraisals, the Washington Board of Natural Resources traded 20,970 acres of state lands scattered in 15 counties in return for 82,548 acres — worth $56.6 million — of former Boise-Cascade timberland now owned by Western Pacific Timber.

The deal lets DNR block up lands along the east slope of the Cascades that currently are in “checkerboard” ownership with the timber company lands.

With timber companies finding real estate development more profitable than timber management, the deal helps assure the public and wildlife won’t be fenced out of prime habitat.

Several veteran DNR, state Fish and Wildlife managers and Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation staffers said the exchange was the highlight of their careers.

“Anglers and Lincoln County’s rural economy will benefit from Sprague Lake’s extreme makeover in the biggest and most costly fisheries rehabilitation project to be undertaken in Washington.

Rotenone was applied in October to erase the fishery dominated by carp, tench, walleye and stunted crappie. Starting this spring, the 1,840-acre lake will be stocked with trout, crappie, bluegill, largemouth bass, channel catfish and a few tiger muskies to begin re-creating one of the region’s top sport fisheries.

“After years of studies and meetings, Montana began a 10-year program to remove hybrid and non-native trout from 21 lakes in the Jewel Basin and Bob Marshall Wilderness to make way for restoring native westslope cutthroat trout to this former stronghold of their native range.

“After Spokane County’s Conservation Futures received strong support in the November elections, with 62 percent of voters calling for county commissioners to continue the program, John Batelli of Spokane County Parks began pressing ahead with the program’s largest project to protect critical natural areas among the rapidly developing rural landscape.

“Our main focus is on the remaining phases of securing Antoine Peak near Mount Spokane,” he said. The first phase secured 390 acres for $2.89 million. The total acquisition will include 1,100 acres for a total of $10.27 million.

“A huge increase of 1,700 special-draw permits for antlerless elk was allotted for the Mount St. Helens area units this fall, as Washington’s largest herd needed a drastic reduction to prevent mass starvation in limited habitat, biologists said.

“Idaho appropriated $10 million to combat noxious weeds over the next two years and began enforcing a new law authorizing fines up to $10,000 for landowners ignoring noxious plants on their property.

The U.S. Forest Service was an exception to the trend of thinking big in 2007.

A federal budget crunch left recreation budgets leaner than an underfed, overworked and unwormed pack mule. The Colville National Forest was a prime example.

The Colville’s budget for road maintenance was nearly $1 million in 2002. This year, it was down to $455,000.

The trail engineering and maintenance budget was $247,000 in 2002 after several years of significant declines. This year it sunk to $130,000, which is pretty much the minimum for getting anything done, forest officials said.

Worst hit was the budget for developed recreation facilities, such as campgrounds, down from $216,000 last year to a rock-bottom $47,000 this year.

Meantime, most of the forests in this region pressed ahead with revising forest management plans and working on travel plans to comply with a national order to designate motorized travel routes and rein in off-road-vehicle activity that’s damaging resources and threatening wildlife.

A group of people near Republic rallied to see that a 29-mile abandoned railroad along the Kettle River be “rail banked” and preserved for use as a public rail-trail from Republic to the Canada border.

The rail trail group had in mind a non-motorized route such as the popular Trail of the Coeur d’Alenes. However, Ferry County commissioners responded by legalizing ATVs on numerous county roads that branch off the rail corridor.

Stevens County also legalized ATVs on many county roads, potentially compounding problems with illegal off-road riding on adjacent national forest land.

The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife drew up rules of conduct for public lands to curb the damaging behavior cropping up as more people look to wildlife areas for outdoor recreation.

Incidentally, Washington’s population continues to swell, growing by more than 100,000 people in the past fiscal year to roughly 6.5 million residents.

The pressure of population is evident in a disgusting way at Lake Roosevelt National Recreation Area, where 129 miles of prime water recreation land is becoming a giant outdoor toilet.

The poor potty habits of 1.5 million boaters, anglers and campers a year in an area with few restrooms are “the greatest threat to the health and vitality of the recreation area,” said Debbie Bird, recreation area superintendent. The National Park Service is considering permits or registrations to help control the problem.

Poor fishing for trout at Lake Roosevelt owed to reductions the past two years in the number of trout reared in net pens along the reservoir. The outlook is brighter for 2008, as more rainbows than ever are being raised for release.

After one of the best winter blackmouth fisheries in memory in Puget Sound, the spring chinook season sputtered up the Columbia. Salmon seasons up and down the coast were hit and miss. The bright spot was in northern Puget Sound in mid-July and early August for exceptional catch rates during the first hatchery fin-clipped chinook season allowed since 1994.

Steelhead didn’t live up to expectations in the Snake River, with 11,000 fewer B-run fish headed to the Clearwater and low-water conditions that didn’t get relief until November in tributaries such as the Grande Ronde.

To compound angler woes, the Nez Perce Tribe last week announced it was moving ahead with a commercial gillnetting program on portions of the Snake and Clearwater River. Tribal officials said their treaty rights would allow them to take up to half of the hatchery-reared steelhead that come over Lower Granite Dam.

Weather went to extremes in 2007. A winter cold stretch lasted long enough for the rare event of freezing Lake Roosevelt all the way across near Inchelium. It was a banner year for ice fishing in the lowland and powder skiing on the slopes.

Then, after a wet late-spring that put a damper on the region’s pheasant hatch, the weather turned hot and dry. Wild fires gained energy in July, especially in Idaho and Montana where they scorched hikers out of the Bob Marshall Wilderness, forced rafting closures on the Middle Fork and main stem Salmon rivers and charred hundreds of thousands of acres of sage lands in southern Idaho and the Hanford Reach National Monument.

Hiking dangers resulting from November 2006 storm damage to trails and bridges thwarted backcountry travel from Glacier Park and the Pack River Road north of Sandpoint to even more wide-spread damage in the Cascades and Olympics. The Wonderland Trail around Mount Rainier was impassible in some areas.

While a lawsuit brought an end to decades of livestock grazing on the Little Pend Oreille Wildlife Refuge, the Washington Fish and Wildlife Department expanded a controversial grazing pilot program on several state wildlife areas, including the Chief Joseph Wildlife Area near Asotin.

While wild turkeys prospered in Washington and Idaho, evidence was mounting that West Nile virus was taking a huge toll on bird populations since it was discovered in North America eight years ago.

Backyard feeding spread other diseases among songbirds, prompting a Washington Fish and Wildlife Department request that people temporarily stop bird feeding or take extra steps to keep their feeders clean.

Laboratory analysis of bird carcasses confirmed salmonellosis, a common and usually fatal bird disease caused by the salmonella bacteria.

The disease afflicts species such as finches, grosbeaks and pine siskins that flock together in large numbers at feeders and transmit the disease through droppings.

Feeding wildlife also caused the demise of grizzly bears in the region, most notably a bear that was habituated to human food sources near Priest Lake. The problem apparently started when a photographer put out corn that lured the bear near Nordman.

Once addicted to human handouts, the bear became a dangerous pest, returning quickly after being trapped and relocated. Idaho Fish and Game officials shot the bear for safety reasons in October.