This is a letter to the Commission written by Hunters Heritage Council.
Dear Members of the Washington Fish & Wildlife Commission:
The Hunters Heritage Council is a Washington State based organization dedicated to political action on behalf of the hunting and related communities of Washington. The Council opposes regulation of wildlife through the initiative process and political rhetoric - It supports wildlife regulation based on science. The Hunters Heritage Council is the largest hunting-rights organization in the state of Washington with ten voting organization, and representing over 30 hunting and trapping organizations statewide, with a membership of 65,000. We are writing you in opposition to CR102 to increase the cougar tags to two per hunter in only the Blue Mountain area.
“Lord, what fools these mortals be!”
Robin Goodfellow, or Puck
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Act III, Scene 2, line 117
William Shakespeare
Puck was commenting on the foolishness of the young Athenian lovers in Shakespeare’s beloved comedy, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” but the situation I’m writing on is not a comedy, nor is it a play, but the Department’s biologists must think we’re fools, because they’re trying to run a shell game on us. This increase of two tags per hunter is nothing but a con game, and we see right through it. You could give us a hundred tags per hunter, but until you increase the harvest quotas percentages per PMU, you haven’t given us a thing.
Those of us on the ground and spending time in the woods around wildlife, around cougars and engaged on cougar management know there is a strong bias with the WDFW cougar biologists and staff. They seem to pick and choose what data is important for them to use, and what minimal impactful decisions they make only when forced to do so. We notice when they calculated and still do, the populationbased on land using a static population number “2300” cougars to set guidelines, No matter the over harvest or under harvest, magically, the next year’s population is once again “2300” cougars.
We notice when they use tactics to under harvest cougars by making quota’s using adults populations, but then when closing a unit, they count and close the quota by all kills those adolescents that were not in the calculations for the quota guidelines, effectively under harvesting by their own estimates 40% with a simple math trick. Most they don’t see these tricks.
The study in the collared elf calf study in the Blue Mountains shows how bad the Rich Beausoleil cougar science is. Cougars are the cause for the Blue Mountain Elk Herd decline. It mirrors the gold standard of elk studies, the Muckleshoot Study done by Dave Vales and Dave Middleton on the Green River and White River Watersheds on cougars and elk. The elk herds recovered after the Muckleshoots did a huge cull on the cougar populations in both watersheds. Their find on predation levels on elk calves were almost identical to the Blue Mountains and they were due to cougars, and that predation was additive and not compensatory. The recent Colville study does the same thing to Beausoleil predator science, just torpedoes it.
We don’t want a shell game; we want a solution. This two-tag increase is sham, and as the very popular lyrics from the Who song, “Won’t get fooled again!”
Respectfully,
Mark Pidgeon
President
