From the snovalley news. Not sure if it was posted on here or not.
Muckleshoot Tribe hunts black bears in Valley
October 28, 2009
By Laura Geggel
Between 25,000 and 30,000 black bears live in Washington, according to estimates by the state’s Department of Fish and Wildlife. Photos.com
The Cedar River Watershed is normally closed to hunters, but for three weekends in October, the Muckleshoot Indian Tribe was allowed to hunt up to nine black bears.While hunting is allowed in areas across the state, the Cedar River Watershed has been closed to trespassers, including hunters, since 1911. That changed in October, when the Muckleshoot Indian Tribe killed at least one black bear from Oct. 9-12 and an undisclosed amount from Oct. 16-19 and Oct. 23-26.
“At some point they will be sharing that information with us,” Seattle Public Utilities spokesman Andy Ryan said.
The Cedar River Watershed hunting trips may be a recent development, but they were more than 150 years in the making.
The tribe was exercising its rights outlined in the Medicine Creek and Point Elliott treaties, of 1854 and 1855, which, in exchange for their lands in the Puget Sound Region, allowed the Muckleshoot to “hunt and gather” in “open and unclaimed lands.”
For more than 100 years, the Muckleshoot Indian Tribe was not permitted to access the Cedar River Municipal Watershed to exercise its treaty rights, Seattle Public Utilities spokeswoman Mary Kelley wrote in an e-mail to the Star.
That changed in 2006, when the Muckleshoot Indian Tribe and the city of Seattle signed the Cedar River Settlement Agreement, which settled a pending lawsuit over water flows for fish in addition to other grievances the tribe had with the city of Seattle, including its treaty rights to hunt for subsistence, ceremonial and management purposes.
“Exercising their treaty right to hunt in that area is a means by which tribal members are able to continue the connection to the land used by their ancestors,” Muckleshoot spokesman Rollin Fatland wrote in an e-mail. “Hunting also serves as an important management tool by allowing the collection of important wildlife data used as the basis for various management programs.”
Now able to hunt in the Cedar River Watershed, the tribe is responsible for enforcing hunting regulations and monitoring its hunts, Kelley wrote.
The Tribe determines which animals are hunted and chose black bear this year. The tribe has been actively involved in wildlife management and data collecting of various bear populations, which led to its decision to hunt black bear, Fatland wrote.
The bears taken at the Cedar River Watershed do not belong to the tribe, but to the individual hunters, Fatland wrote, adding all bears were used for subsistence.
The tribe was permitted to take nine black bears this year. They may hunt the animals in any manner they deem appropriate, Kelley wrote.
Because many groups use the Cedar River Watershed, Seattle Public Utilities developed a safety plan for city employees and anyone else in the watershed during a hunt.
About black bears
The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife estimates there are between 25,000 and 30,000 black bears in Washington. The omnivores mostly eat plants, but do eat small mammals they can catch or steal, said Julie Hopkins, Snoqualmie resident and marine and wildlife biologist with the Grizzly Bear Outreach Project.
Black bears typically hibernate from mid-October to April, when food is scare and the weather is cold. Besides humans, they have few predators, including cougars, bobcats and coyotes.
Most bears avoid people when they can, although some become more habituated, especially when people living near bear country leave trash exposed. In the past 100 years, there is only one recorded death in Washington from a black bear, Hopkins said.
Black bear hunting season typically lasts from August to mid-November in the Cascade region.
Black bears are commonly hunted — in 2008, hunters killed 277 black bears in the East Cascades and 2,115 across Washington, according to the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife.
Anyone who has passed a hunter education class or was born before 1972 can buy a permit to hunt black bears, said Cody Arocho, a Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife customer service representative.
