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Steve Zender of Chewelah, a wildlife biologist with the Washington Fish and Wildlife Department, studies a deer at a hunter check station. Zender is the agency's 2006 Employee of the Year. Photo courtesy of the WDFW (Photo courtesy of the WDFW / The Spokesman-Review)
Rich Landers Outdoors editor
Steve Zender of Chewelah, a wildlife biologist with the Washington Fish and Wildlife Department, studies a deer at a hunter check station. Zender is the agency's 2006 Employee of the Year. Photo courtesy of the WDFW (Photo courtesy of the WDFW / The Spokesman-Review)

Lloran Johnson, 64, stepped down last week as executive director of the Inland Northwest Wildlife Council, the region’s largest and most active sportsman’s group.

“I’m going to retire and go fishing, on my own schedule,” said Johnson, who already retired in 1996 from the U.S. Forest Service where he was a wildlife biologist.

He worked with the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation and the Mule Deer Foundation before taking the reins in of the Spokane-based Wildlife Council in 2004. He said the council’s membership includes about 500 families.

“Working with the (Department of Natural Resources) on their land exchanges with timber companies is perhaps our most important activity for the state of Washington in the past three years,” Johnson said. The DNR effort is backed by many sportsmens groups who can see that without the effort to eliminate “checkerboard” ownership patterns, hundreds of thousands of acres of wildlife habitat could be developed on the east slope of the Cascades.

“When this process started, only 20 percent of the public supported it. By helping to educate the public on the importance of the exchanges, the support us up to 80 percent.

“Hunter education is a priority for the council,” he said. “We run six classes and train about 600 students a year.”

Armed with a special permit from the state, Council volunteers use their hunting and game handling skills to salvage “choice” road-killed big game. The volunteers respond to calls from the Department of Transportation to pick up, skin and deliver the animals to the Union Gospel Mission.

“Our crews salvaged moose, deer and elk totaling more than 5,000 pounds of much appreciated meat for charity last year,” he said.

Kids fishing activities are favorite council projects, but the big effort every years is putting on the annual Big Horn Outdoor Adventure Show, a Spokane tradition for 47 years.

“The show keeps us afloat and enables us to do a lot of good work,” Johnson said.

The council isn’t as politically visible as it was in the 1990s. “We don’t go to Olympia with red coats and sit in the committee chambers trying to intimidate people anymore,” he said. “But we have a keen interest in policies that affect wildlife and sportsmen. We are in touch with Olympia on a daily basis during the Legislature, and we write a lot of letters to legislators, federal administraors, commissioners and Congressmen.

“My hope now is that the Council can find another director who is pastionate for wildlife and keeping sportsmen viable in this changing world.”

“Steve Zender, a wildlife biologist based in Chewelah, has been named the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife employee of the year for 2006.

“Northeast Washington has a complex spectrum of wildlife species and issues, from caribou to grizzly bears,” said Jeff Koenings, department director in Olympia. “Time and again, Steve has demonstrated highly developed biological skills, leadership abilities, and a commitment to public service.”

Zender has been with the agency for 34 years.

Other 2006 awards presented recently recognized volunteers, including a landowner near Olympia who has volunteered for 28 years to raise and feed juvenile salmon in a rearing pond before they are released into the Chehalis River; the Nature Conservancy for promoting biological diversity.

“Peter J. Dart resigned last week after four years as president and CEO of the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation.

Dart oversaw the organization’s move to a new $5 million facility in Missoula and conservation of more than 1 million acres of elk habitat nationwide.

The foundation, celebrating its 23rd anniversary, paid Dart $210,880 last year.

Dart previously held positions with Safari Club International and the SCI Foundation. Before that he was president of Dart International Inc., a for-profit company that invented and produced interactive video target systems for use in the shooting sports industry.