Every year I like to send an e-mail to WDFW to voice my concerns about things like trend the game animal population is headed weather it be over issue of special permits, predator control, Native Americans harvest, etc to name a few. This year I decided to include my Representative in the e-mail. The representative forwarded my e-mail to them and asked for a reply. Here is the reply I got.
Dear Sir,
First of all, thank you for contacting your legislator to express concerns about wildlife management at the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife. We were contacted by Representative Eslick’s office and asked to respond to your concerns. My apologies for the slow response—I wanted to try to get the best information possible to help answer your questions, which required a lot of coordination across programs.
I reached out to our Wildlife Program and our Licensing Division to address your concerns as best as I could. One of the documents they provided shows the number of tags sold in Snohomish county. The other shows the number of tags sold statewide and the revenue generated by those sales. You’ll notice that, for the most part, the number of licenses sold has been fairly flat. This trend is consistent across the state. We are attempting to boost recruitment of hunters and fishers and have introduced legislation this session to do so. Hopefully we can get more young sportsmen involved in the outdoors! I would also like to emphasize that all revenue generated by the Department from sales of hunting licenses gets deposited in the Wildlife Account, which is then used only for hunting and fishing-related activities—it does not support programs like habitat restoration or endangered species work.
Furthermore, if you have specific concerns about our hunting regulations and season-setting, we are about to enter the comment period for 2018-20 Hunting Seasons. Starting January 24th we will begin accepting public input on our hunting rules in order to draft the next season’s regulations and tags. This press release provides more information on how to participate:
https://wdfw.wa.gov/news/jan0818c/ This input is very helpful for the Fish and Wildlife Commission and is an important part of season-setting.
Please let me know if you have any other questions or concerns I can help answer.
Thank you for your time and your commitment to fish and wildlife issues,
Nelson Falkenburg
Legislative Coordinator
Government Affairs, Director’s Office
(360)902-2449
Nelson.falkenburg@dfw.wa.gov
