SB 5846 Concerning beaver ecosystem management

[Humptulips]

Prefiled  https://app.leg.wa.gov/billsummary?billnumber=5846&year=2024

While this bill doesn't outlaw beaver trapping it looks to me like it will create a bureaucracy in the agency that will make it more difficult to remove problem beavers. It also creates a mandate for the agency to fund through a grant program these relocations. It is an unfunded mandate for the Department and they are always complaining about lack of funding.

[JakeLand]

This state is unbelievable

[Humptulips]

I will just add I have been in talks with the Department and beaver relocators and we have come to understandings on mutually acceptable conditions. This bill makes all those talks irrelevant.

[Platensek-po]

Prefiled  https://app.leg.wa.gov/billsummary?billnumber=5846&year=2024

While this bill doesn't outlaw beaver trapping it looks to me like it will create a bureaucracy in the agency that will make it more difficult to remove problem beavers. It also creates a mandate for the agency to fund through a grant program these relocations. It is an unfunded mandate for the Department and they are always complaining about lack of funding.

I’m sorry but I can’t see anything about the contents of the bill. Could you explain or share more info about it? I want to write my reps but would like some more info. Thanks!

[hughjorgan]

Prefiled  https://app.leg.wa.gov/billsummary?billnumber=5846&year=2024

While this bill doesn't outlaw beaver trapping it looks to me like it will create a bureaucracy in the agency that will make it more difficult to remove problem beavers. It also creates a mandate for the agency to fund through a grant program these relocations. It is an unfunded mandate for the Department and they are always complaining about lack of funding.

I’m sorry but I can’t see anything about the contents of the bill. Could you explain or share more info about it? I want to write my reps but would like some more info. Thanks!

https://lawfilesext.leg.wa.gov/biennium/2023-24/Pdf/Bills/Senate%20Bills/5846.pdf?q=20240104165322

[Humptulips]

Prefiled  https://app.leg.wa.gov/billsummary?billnumber=5846&year=2024

While this bill doesn't outlaw beaver trapping it looks to me like it will create a bureaucracy in the agency that will make it more difficult to remove problem beavers. It also creates a mandate for the agency to fund through a grant program these relocations. It is an unfunded mandate for the Department and they are always complaining about lack of funding.

I’m sorry but I can’t see anything about the contents of the bill. Could you explain or share more info about it? I want to write my reps but would like some more info. Thanks!

On the Legislatures Bill page I linked drop down to available documents and click on Original Bill. It will show you the text of the Bill.

[lewy]

More difficult!? Looks like this will just be another one of those things that will happen and the state wont know about. Sorry but problem beavers arent something that can just be ignored lol

[bugs n bones]

This state is unbelievable

effn retarded

[JakeLand]

The more I think about this the more it pisses me off that after she was at our rendezvous and listened to us and we listened to her they pull this crap ! I’ve had enough of this with them we need to put a firm stance on them and refuse to help them in every way possible

[Humptulips]

The more I think about this the more it pisses me off that after she was at our rendezvous and listened to us and we listened to her they pull this crap ! I’ve had enough of this with them we need to put a firm stance on them and refuse to help them in every way possible

I think you should reconsider who you are mad at. Shawn delt with me in good faith when we were talking about the program. She didn't have to come to the Rendezvous to convince us of anything if the Department was going to go to the Legislature. Nope, this is not coming from the Department. In fact, if this passes, from a fiscal note this will create problems for the department, I think.
This is likely coming from the relocators.

[Platensek-po]

The more I think about this the more it pisses me off that after she was at our rendezvous and listened to us and we listened to her they pull this crap ! I’ve had enough of this with them we need to put a firm stance on them and refuse to help them in every way possible

I think you should reconsider who you are mad at. Shawn delt with me in good faith when we were talking about the program. She didn't have to come to the Rendezvous to convince us of anything if the Department was going to go to the Legislature. Nope, this is not coming from the Department. In fact, if this passes, from a fiscal note this will create problems for the department, I think.
This is likely coming from the relocators.

I read most of the bill. I’m sorry but I think this is very likely to pass. It’s just vague and good sounding enough that I think it will be hard for congresspeople to vote against it. If anyone is willing to write up why this should not be passed I will gladly send and email to my reps. I’m not aware of any details of what’s going on but if I can help in any way I will.

[Humptulips]

The more I think about this the more it pisses me off that after she was at our rendezvous and listened to us and we listened to her they pull this crap ! I’ve had enough of this with them we need to put a firm stance on them and refuse to help them in every way possible

I think you should reconsider who you are mad at. Shawn delt with me in good faith when we were talking about the program. She didn't have to come to the Rendezvous to convince us of anything if the Department was going to go to the Legislature. Nope, this is not coming from the Department. In fact, if this passes, from a fiscal note this will create problems for the department, I think.
This is likely coming from the relocators.

I read most of the bill. I’m sorry but I think this is very likely to pass. It’s just vague and good sounding enough that I think it will be hard for congresspeople to vote against it. If anyone is willing to write up why this should not be passed I will gladly send and email to my reps. I’m not aware of any details of what’s going on but if I can help in any way I will.

IMO it is an open ended blackhole for funding. As written the funding comes out of the department and there seems to be no cap. FYI they burn through a lot of money moving these beaver around. To date though it has come from grants from other sources than the Department.

[UrbanTrapper]

This bill assumes there is a significant amount of beaver habitat that does not have beaver, in WA State.  WDFW knows this is not true.  Therefore there is no science supporting a NEED for this bill. Can we get WDFW to speak out about this fact ? Next, can we write a competing bill (or edit/amend this one so that it would merely allow beaver to be relocated into suitable unoccupied beaver habitat ONCE WDFW has located and designated some? In this way WDFW could control how much relocation activity they might be on the hook to fund. We should be able to collaborate on this with the responsible (i.e. non-emotional and non-ideological) adults in WDFW. 

[Okano-gun]

https://app.leg.wa.gov/pbc/bill/5846 Thanks for bringing this to my attention. I wrote my legislators in opposition.

[Humptulips]

I see they have a fiscal note now attached to the bill. They have an estimated cost in the first year of $150,000 and less than one full time person working on it. That ramps up to $3,896,000 and 3.6 persons working on it in a couple more years. It looks like they are creating a new permanent division within the Department that will just handle beaver complaints. Actual costs to the Department for that many people I'm guessing will be close to a million dollars so I'm guessing they foresee near $3 million going to beaver relocation. You can still comment on this to the Committe until the 16th. It looks like Van De Wege has got this on a fast track with this early of a Committee meeting. Our best bet to kill it though might be in the House when it goes there.

[JakeLand]

How would this work out if said home owner hires me to get rid of the beaver and I put in for a permit to trap them ? Do they issue me a permit or do they try and go in to trap them themselves? If the homeowner doesn’t want them to be part of it and only me how will this work out?

[Special T]

I think this is a Trojan horse of some nature. Van DeWege is a big time anti hunter. They have been relocating beavers to the mountains and nearly all are eaten. Mostly by cougars. I think more beavers in the high country could have benefits for everyone, buy I doubt this program will do more than feed expensive beavers to cats.

[Humptulips]

How would this work out if said home owner hires me to get rid of the beaver and I put in for a permit to trap them ? Do they issue me a permit or do they try and go in to trap them themselves? If the homeowner doesn’t want them to be part of it and only me how will this work out?

It's hard to say. The Department would have to implement it but I would doubt the Department is going to get into trapping. That would likely be left to WCOs. The number of people the fiscal note mentions would not be enough to have Department personnel do the trapping. I would think there will be more oversight of complaint trapping. These people they will be hiring, have to connect with landowners with complaints somehow to do anything mentioned in the bill. There are not enough of them to actually go out in the field much so I bet most are in the office shuffling papers, issuing permits, that sort of thing but they might have some field people kind of like they do with bear. They would probably be just giving advise and guidance on living with beaver and leave any trapping to a WCO.

[UrbanTrapper]

So the relocators are writing their own ticket and vying for a monopoly on the nuisance beaver trapping, eh ?  That other $3 million will already be in the budget (eventually) and their full-time WDFW allies in the WDFW Nuisance Beaver Department THEY created will be grateful and make sure the relocators get their funding from the State every year without really having to apply for it. The grants they subsist on now must be a more uncertain source of funds and/or no fun to apply for. I don't like where this is going.

[Cougartail]

Million dollar beavers so weirdos can feel like they are helping nature. I worked on a job removing beavers so trees could grow along a stream to shade and cool the water. It was to save the salmon.

Braindead dimwits.  Nature rarely gets the balance right. Humans never do.

Cage trapping has allowed beavers to over populate. They don't need more help doing so.

[Humptulips]

After watching the hearing, I feel like this is going to pass. Why? The Department and the tribes testified in favor of the bill. It's being talked up as a way to restore salmon and it seems this State will spend any amount of money on salmon recovery even if there is no assurance it will help. There are a lot of parts to the bill that are wide open for interpretation and the Department will be the ones doing that. I have not had the chance to talk to anyone about all that yet.
It sure looks like a grift on the part of these beaver relocators. They milked the private grant money all they could so now it is the States turn to give handouts.

[JakeLand]

Will this in anyway effect us fur trapping ? And how about us doing nuicance work ?

[Tbar]

After watching the hearing, I feel like this is going to pass. Why? The Department and the tribes testified in favor of the bill. It's being talked up as a way to restore salmon and it seems this State will spend any amount of money on salmon recovery even if there is no assurance it will help. There are a lot of parts to the bill that are wide open for interpretation and the Department will be the ones doing that. I have not had the chance to talk to anyone about all that yet.
It sure looks like a grift on the part of these beaver relocators. They milked the private grant money all they could so now it is the States turn to give handouts.

Have you worked on spatial definitions and temporal limits?

[Humptulips]

After watching the hearing, I feel like this is going to pass. Why? The Department and the tribes testified in favor of the bill. It's being talked up as a way to restore salmon and it seems this State will spend any amount of money on salmon recovery even if there is no assurance it will help. There are a lot of parts to the bill that are wide open for interpretation and the Department will be the ones doing that. I have not had the chance to talk to anyone about all that yet.
It sure looks like a grift on the part of these beaver relocators. They milked the private grant money all they could so now it is the States turn to give handouts.

Have you worked on spatial definitions and temporal limits?

I was in talks during the summer and fall with the Department about the Beaver relocation pilot project which should be coming up this Spring as a WAC. (Thay may well change with this bill) The Methow Beaver Project was also at those talks and we had an agreement that there would be no closures but that there would be signage at release locations and that we would urge trappers to practice restraint and not trap beaver at these locations. Alexa from MBP was in agreement with this. Now this bill seems to throw all those talks out the window and Alexa seemed to backtrack on everything she had committed to in her testimony.
I shall have to see what the Department thinks about limits now. I had made some proposals in that vein, but we stopped talking about it when it was agreed to rely on trappers voluntary restraint.

[Humptulips]

Will this in anyway effect us fur trapping ? And how about us doing nuicance work ?

If you read the bill, it mentions working with Recreational Beaver trappers so based on that it should not affect fur trapping. Lorna Smith was there to give her wholehearted support for the bill so I can't say the Commission won't do something separately. I do not think there is support within the agency to do anything on beaver that would affect fur trappers. The Commission doesn't always listen to them though as you well know.
Nuisance work? Honestly, I can't see how this works without affecting WCOs. More paperwork, more delays and you are going to lose a few jobs. It will be interesting to see how they split up the grant money. They could spend a lot of it on cost sharing mitigation programs and a WCO could get in on some of that plus that takes money away from relocations.
Another thing the bill directs the Department to identify suitable locations to release beaver. I have a bunch of questions about that.

[DishBogget]

Will this in anyway effect us fur trapping ? And how about us doing nuicance work ?

Lorna Smith is behind it so I think you can imagine where it’ll end up


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[HUNTIN4SIX]

Didn't want to comment on this until I read it.  Holy @#$%  this bill is bad.  Nothing to do with beavers in my opinion.  Read between the lines folks...this has every scary buzz word our agency likes to use indicating something in the bill is way big than beavers.  They are using beavers as a means to get to the place they want to.  Kinda like the wolf situation.  This is nefariously deceptive.    

[JakeLand]

Didn't want to comment on this until I read it.  Holy @#$%  this bill is bad.  Nothing to do with beavers in my opinion.  Read between the lines folks...this has every scary buzz word our agency likes to use indicating something in the bill is way big than beavers.  They are using beavers as a means to get to the place they want to.  Kinda like the wolf situation.  This is nefariously deceptive.    

their agenda is very apparent

[Humptulips]

I spoke to some people in the Department and nobody knows how this works if it passes. Probably they would at first hire some seasonal employees to walk streams and identify sites for beaver relocation. Beyond that, everything is on the table as the bill is so open to interpretation. The first year of it would probably be taken up just defining things.
A lot of this would probably be taken into the habitat part of DFW. I don't know anyone there, yet.

I did ask about the relocator guy that bragged about releasing 6 beaver this January. That is not supposed to happen, no beaver are supposed to be relocated in the winter. I was told that was a Tulalip release and they don't have to get permission from the State. From my conversations I think Alexa Whipple from MBP may not have burned some bridges within the agency but she undermined them.

[DishBogget]

I’m sure the commission will be more than happy to tell the department how to implement it.


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[Humptulips]

I’m sure the commission will be more than happy to tell the department how to implement it.


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I'm not so sure about that. Their meetings are very dysfunctional if they don't have a clear proposal to give an up or down vote on. They have to hand off writing the details or they will just get mired.

[duckmen1]

I’m sure the commission will be more than happy to tell the department how to implement it.


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I'm not so sure about that. Their meetings are very dysfunctional if they don't have a clear proposal to give an up or down vote on. They have to hand off writing the details or they will just get mired.

Last meeting I payed attention too Lorna was more concerned with getting to lunch then talking about topics at hand. Don’t know how many times I heard her say well lunch is soon.

[Humptulips]

I believe this Bill has died. It should have had a second reading by Rules on Monday the 5th to stay alive and I haven't seen any action on it.

[JakeLand]

🤞let’s hope it stays dead