Think tank’s deep dive into ‘dysfunctional’ Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission might be used by legislature to dissolve the citizen oversight panel instead of correct recent years’ issues.
If you haven’t already heard about the recently completed Ruckelshaus report, you are going to get very familiar with it in the coming months. It will play a major role in the continued battle over Washington wildlife management, and the decisions made based on this report will have far-reaching consequences for the future of hunting, angling and trapping as we know it.
But first, a little bit of backstory …
THE RUCKELSHAUS REPORT has its origins in the $23 million bipartisan biodiversity funding package that Washington legislators granted the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife in April 2023. Seemingly at the last minute, a rider was attached to that biodiversity bill – like a legislative lamprey on a salmon – to provide a $300,000 grant to review WDFW’s governance structure, funding model, mandate and, most importantly, the Fish and Wildlife Commission. This rider, designated 32(b) on page 430 of the passed 2023-25 operating budget, wasn’t in the initial proposals from the House and Senate, and came as a shock to many of the organizations that had previously supported the biodiversity package…