Relationship builder: New WDFW regional director Mike Kuttel Jr. settling in

Mike Kuttel Jr. has been on the road a lot.

Since he became the eastern regional director for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, he’s been out trying to meet everyone he needs to know.

In WDFW’s Region 1 – which spans 10 counties and borders Canada, Idaho and Oregon – that’s a lot of people. County commissioners, tribal leaders, state legislators and more.

“The first three months have been a whirlwind,” Kuttel Jr. said during an interview in his office earlier this month. “I’m really starting to build my network of external partners, and there are a lot of people I still need to introduce myself to and I haven’t yet.”

Building relationships is something he’s had to do throughout his career, from restoring land in southwest Washington to negotiating provisions of federal legislation.

This job is different, though. He’s the face of WDFW in the east, a complex and vast region, and he’s got a big staff – about 220 people. He’ll be helping shape decisions on hunting seasons, land deals, wolf conservation and more.

He’s also carrying on a bit of a legacy. When Kuttel Jr. was selected to replace longtime regional director Steve Pozzanghera, he became the second Mike Kuttel to lead a region. His father spent about four decades with the agency, working alongside many of the same people Kuttel Jr. works with now.

Woody Myers was one of those people. A former WDFW biologist who now serves on the Fish and Wildlife Commission, Myers said he was happy to see Kuttel Jr. take over.

“It’s neat to have that heritage and tradition there,” Myers said.

The legacy isn’t the reason Kuttel Jr. landed where he did, but it certainly nudged him toward a career in conservation.

He grew up hunting and fishing with his dad in southwest Washington. A love for the outdoors stuck, particularly for the region’s anadromous fish.

“I used to love fishing for steelhead on the west side,” Kuttel Jr. said. “That was my passion.”

He studied environmental science at Western Washington University. After college, he spent 10 years working with conservation districts in Lewis and Thurston counties.

There, he worked on a lot of projects to restore riparian areas. Often, that meant getting rid of weeds, planting native vegetation and then maintaining those projects for years to come.

Over time, he got to see the impacts of his work – how fish and wildlife would return to a place he’d worked to restore.

“There’s a lot of satisfaction to that,” he said.

A job with the Washington State Conservation Commission brought him east. Based in Walla Walla, he worked on an analysis of habitat limitations for salmon, steelhead and bull trout in the Snake River drainage.

From there, he went to work on water quality for the Department of Ecology for a few years before joining WDFW in 2015.

His first job with WDFW was focused on the farm bill. He was part of a team working to ensure key conservation funding mechanisms stayed in the bill as Congress deliberated on it.

An important one for Washington is the State Acres for Wildlife Enhancement Program, a part of the Conservation Reserve Program used to conserve shrub-steppe habitat – grass and sagebrush country, home for pygmy rabbits and sage and sharptail grouse.

Kuttel Jr.’s role was to make sure the program kept stable funding. He said it took some “sausage making,” but it got done.

After the bill was passed, he became the agency’s shared stewardship coordinator. In that role, he worked with officials at the U.S. Forest Service and Washington Department of Natural Resources to collaborate on conservation work. He held that job until he became the regional director in May.

The variety in the eastern region is part of what drew Kuttel Jr. to the job. He’s also excited to drill down on one part of the state.

“I get to work on more of the nitty gritty details now,” Kuttel Jr. said. “But it’s a much wider range of issues.”

Just this week, he was involved in the decision to approve killing up to two wolves that had repeatedly killed cattle in Asotin County. The decision was ultimately up to WDFW director Kelly Susewind, but Kuttel Jr. had input.

It was his first time dealing with such a conflict, and surely won’t be the last. And it’s far from the only challenge he’ll have to take on.

There are other human-wildlife conflicts to deal with, like elk and turkeys damaging crops or cougars showing up in more densely populated areas.

There are once robust wildlife populations that are now struggling, such as the elk in the Blue Mountains. Kuttel Jr. said predation by cougars appears to be the main problem. There’s no easy fix – removing a bunch of cougars, for example, would be unpalatable to advocates for conserving the big cats.

There are threats to keep at bay, like chronic wasting disease, an always-fatal condition affecting deer, elk and moose. The disease hasn’t been detected in Washington yet, but it’s present in western Montana and not far across the border in Idaho.

But when Kuttel Jr. thinks of his priorities, his focus often returns to people.

He wants to see more people getting outside and connecting with the outdoors. Eastern Washington couldn’t be a better place for that, he said.

“There’s something for everyone,” he said. “Whether you like watersports, hiking, biking, winter sports, foraging for wild edibles, watchable wildlife, hunting, fishing – you can do it all here.”

He sees getting more people outside as a way to get folks other than hunters and anglers to care about conserving fish and wildlife.

But he’s also concerned about the relationship hunters and anglers have with WDFW. In recent years, controversial Fish and Wildlife Commission decisions have pitted the hook-and-bullet crowd against conservationists who would never pick up a rod or a gun.

“We’ve got a pretty wide divide between the hunting and angling community and those who don’t (hunt or fish) right now,” Kuttel Jr. said. “It’s so polarized right now. We have to figure out a way to work through that.”

He hopes that he can help bridge that gap. He’s still a hunter and an angler, and he’s proud of what hunters and anglers have contributed toward conservation over the years, be it through money spent on licenses or the excise taxes on ammunition and tackle that help fund wildlife agencies.

But he also recognizes that non-consumptive recreators – hikers, birdwatchers, wildlife enthusiasts – have a stake in conservation, too, and he said he’ll listen to them. He thinks there’s more common ground between the two sides than they realize.

“Versus focusing on the issues that divide us, I’d like us to start focusing on what issues we have in common, what outcomes we’d like to see,” he said.