This event was more of an open house. I'm not really sure they were accepting comments of any series nature as the WWA NW chapter President (Rick Billieu )had 3 pages of suggestions that he couldnt hand to anyone. They did have a survey asking about usage of the different sites. Their one omission was usage of the Private lands program headed up by Rob Wingaurd big guy red hair and beard... They did have surveys at each location for his program... I didnt hear anything specific about the salmon restoration program for the farmed island unit. They did have a boilerplate one page document about the departments responsibility for estuary restoration that acknowledged change and or loss to waterfowlers. I over heard some discussion From Loren Brokaw the Project manager that finished up the Leque Island project, and his next project is improving accessibility to all the property on Ebey Island. Some kind of an increased parking lot and some kind of small boat launch to access the center portion of the property across the slew. Apparently a Pheasant release volunteer had talked to the Army Corp of Engineers, one of the crew or something about having the bridge core "practice" deployment of a floating bridge during the hunting season... kind of a cool idea. I forgot the name but they also had the guy in charge of all the water access sites in the greater skagit area there talking about better distribution on the maps of the properties, but most importantly the Access easements the WDFW has that do not show up on the maps. Mostly this related to fishing access but there are some along rivers. The area he talked about was N fork of the Stillaguamish North into portions of Whatcom county. Im certain there are some cast and blast opportunities that are overlooked.
the WWA had a pretty good showing and there were folks from the Whatcom, NW, and Seattle chapters that Ive met. lots of WWA hats and plenty on the sign in sheet.
