Call to Action - Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife Commission Meeting

[bayoublaster7527]

Very disappointing to hear and watch. I hope Colorado hunters are paying attention because this same problem is headed their way in a hurry. Jeff Davis and Jared Polis are injecting mutualism and animal rights activists into the commission as fast as they can.

 

[SAJ-99]

She note, In the Thurs Wildlife video, at the 11:50ish (time of day, not length) mark, the discussion on hunting bear and cougar impacting the ecosystem came up. Baker seemed to reference a study where hunting actually increased cougar-human conflicts. Only thing I could find was the study below. I have some problems with multicollinearity in the study, but it was interesting to see where she was going.

Hunting as a management tool? Cougar-human conflict is positively related to trophy hunting

Overexploitation and persecution of large carnivores resulting from conflict with humans comprise major causes of declines worldwide. Although little is known about the interplay between these mortality types, hunting of predators remains a common management ...

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

 

[Irrelevant]

How in the fudge does Roland, as a freakin' attorney, not understand that WDFW only gets to manage wildlife because it's a property held in trust? You have a wildlife biologist telling an attorney what the legal basis of why they're sitting in a room discussing wildlife...

Man... I'm not sure how valuable Mr. Organ's responses to the commissioner's questions. His entire presentation seemed to be taken by the anti-hunters as supporting their cause. I get the impression he didn't come to defend hunters; maybe he didn't realize he needed to. Lastly, I feel like there are some issues with the board, that he would say, are professionalism issues, integrity issues, and have nothing to do with the model.

 

[HONEYBADGER]

Sorry, but this statement specific to the situation is ignorant and inaccurate. You clearly don’t understand the nuance of the political climate.

I understand it just fine. One side pushes for it. Keep voting for them, hopefully you are in Washington and can receive the direct benefits of your vote.

 

[Nicoli7153]

Our current culture wants data when it fits their narrative, but will search for more data when it doesn’t. Scientific unbiased objective data is what we need. We have to disconnect goals from the data. We need to collect all the data we can, as accurately as we can, and then draw conclusions from there.

It seems like they’re looking for data to back their opinions. My wife is a whip smart mental health counselor, that is always studying current neurology. Currently, the belief is that the average human‘s choice model goes like this. Identify the question, select an answer based on emotion, and then look for data to justify the answer. This seems to be what is happening here.

Again, if data is collected objectively without any prerogatives it can lead to effective choices. If data is collected with ill conceived intentions, or it is mined with intent the conclusions become flawed.

Bias confirmation at play

 

[JLS]

I understand it just fine. One side pushes for it. Keep voting for them, hopefully you are in Washington and can receive the direct benefits of your vote.

No, you don’t. Otherwise, you would understand the Republican gubernatorial candidate was one notch to the right of Lauren Boebert, and was also under scrutiny for potential misconduct as a police chief of a small town in the second or third most right wing county in the state (the city council fired him).

You would also understand the puget Sound metro area carries the gubernatorial ticket and you simply won’t win unless you can take a majority of that demographic.

You would also understand about 0.5% of the state hunts and that the pathetic republican candidate lost by over a half million votes. More votes than there are hunters in the state.

Any more ignorance you want to put forth, or are we done?

 

[Big Fin]

Man... I'm not sure how valuable Mr. Organ's responses to the commissioner's questions. His entire presentation seemed to be taken by the anti-hunters as supporting their cause. I get the impression he didn't come to defend hunters; maybe he didn't realize he needed to. Lastly, I feel like there are some issues with the board, that he would say, are professionalism issues, integrity issues, and have nothing to do with the model.

I didn't hear Organ's comments, so just providing his background for those following along. John Organ was one of the three authors of the NA Model papers, along with Val Geist and Shane Mahoney.

If we wonder why these groups like the Public Trust Doctrine and the view it as an arrow in their quiver, read their interpretation of it here, however incorrect and loose that interpretation may be.

Link - https://wildlifeforall.us/resources...-a-better-paradigm-for-wildlife-conservation/

If you read that link on one of their organization websites, they are adding a lot of their own interpretation to the PTD. They also make a lot of statements that are incorrect under Trust Principles. They conflate a Beneficiary with being a Stakeholder.

My 35 years as a CPA was Trust specialty. I am still a Trustee for many Trusts. I understand Trust Law and Trustee duties, principles, and standards very well. As someone who has to deal with many Beneficiaries, I understand the Trustee's role towards Beneficiaries, current and future.

Under the accepted PTD, every state citizen is a beneficiary. Even these groups agree with that. In fact, they promote that as their reason for supporting the PTD.

But, it does not end there for how Trustees must manage Trust Corpus (wildlife) for Beneficiaries. Trustees must also deal with Stakeholders, who may or may not be a Beneficiary. And if they are a both a Beneficiary and a Stakeholder, the Trustee must deal with them differently in each role.

Not every Beneficiary is a Stakeholder, though some beneficiaries are Stakeholders. Stakeholders are such because of how they impact the Trust Corpus (wildlife), how that Trust Corpus impacts them (landowners being a great example). A Trustee must understand which role is being represented when interacting with Beneficiaries/Stakeholders. No preference can be given to any Beneficiary, but a Trustee has the "reasonable and prudent" standard by which they must interact with Stakeholders.

These groups advocating change to State Wildlife Agencies are ignoring the distinction a Trustee must make between a Beneficiary (every citizen) and a Stakeholder (who is often also a beneficiary). They want to equate them as the same thing. They are not. They are distinct.

Yet, there is benefit to these groups conflating them as the same thing, as doing so ignores/removes the Stakeholder interests a Trustee must consider. It's a convenient and easy way to discount every other group and ignore the disproportionate costs/benefits each Stakeholder groups brings to the Trust Corpus and to the ability for the Trustee to manage that Trust Corpus for current and future beneficiaries.

I'll give a couple examples and there are tons more where Trustees must distinguish when they are dealing with a party(ies) as a Beneficiary or as a Stakeholder(s).

1) Funding sources come into play when we talk about Stakeholders. A Trustee cannot ignore the Stakeholders that fund the Trust, whether in a Public Trust or a Private Trust. With no funding, the Trust Corpus erodes and the Trustee is not making "reasonable and prudent" decisions for the benefit of the Trust, or the current and future Beneficiaries.

2) Wildlife (Trust Corpus) has huge impacts on the landscapes where that Corpus exists. A Trustee cannot ignore those impacts and thus cannot ignore the interest of those impacted Stakeholders, in many cases private landowners. To ignore that Stakeholder interest is to the detriment of the Trust Corpus, likely to the detriment of both current and future beneficiaries.

Sometimes the Trustee deals with a Stakeholder who is not a Beneficiary. Maybe the Trustee is working with an NGO, a non-resident, a corporation or LLC, none of which are Beneficiaries, but can have huge impacts on the Trust and the Trust Corpus.

Point I'm trying to illustrate is that we are all Beneficiaries if we live in said state, but we are not a Stakeholder by default. Some people might be both, but at different times and in different context. Some might be both in the context of issue A being addressed by the Trustees, but they might not be a Stakeholder when issue B is being addressed by the Trustees.

This distinction is much more complicated and much more important than these groups would like to acknowledge. Thus they conflate the two to their benefit when posting their interpretation of the PTD on their websites and in material distributed to their members.

 

[HONEYBADGER]

No, you don’t. Otherwise, you would understand the Republican gubernatorial candidate was one notch to the right of Lauren Boebert, and was also under scrutiny for potential misconduct as a police chief of a small town in the second or third most right wing county in the state (the city council fired him).

You would also understand the puget Sound metro area carries the gubernatorial ticket and you simply won’t win unless you can take a majority of that demographic.

You would also understand about 0.5% of the state hunts and that the pathetic republican candidate lost by over a half million votes. More votes than there are hunters in the state.

Any more ignorance you want to put forth, or are we done?

Doesnt matter who the candidates are . A vote for those that want to eliminate hunting anywhere supports their agenda. Sorry about your luck, but sounds like you earned it. You can sit around and wax about the days gone by and how smart you are since you wont be spending your time hunting anymore.

 

[375H&H]

She note, In the Thurs Wildlife video, at the 11:50ish (time of day, not length) mark, the discussion on hunting bear and cougar impacting the ecosystem came up. Baker seemed to reference a study where hunting actually increased cougar-human conflicts. Only thing I could find was the study below. I have some problems with multicollinearity in the study, but it was interesting to see where she was going.

Hunting as a management tool? Cougar-human conflict is positively related to trophy hunting

Overexploitation and persecution of large carnivores resulting from conflict with humans comprise major causes of declines worldwide. Although little is known about the interplay between these mortality types, hunting of predators remains a common management ...

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

I believe the study you are looking for is from Robert Wielgus “sink populations in carnivore management”.

I discussed his paper in length with him before it was published (we were not supposed to but he sent me a copy early). There were many flaws though and it did not pass peer review IIRC.

 

[Hammsolo]

IMO the lack of support is multipronged.
1. When do you actually need hunters to show up? Commission meetings are 2-3 days long, they occur multiple times a year, and with regard to the loss of our spring bear, they have discussed it for over two years. There's not one rally point, even if we did rally, they'd just punt to the next meeting.
2. A large majority of the hunting population is already resigned to the eventual outcome based on what they've seen of politics at the State level. They've tried to be hear before, on other topics, and their voice is always drowned out by the will of King County. It's not hard to blame them for rolling over without a fight.
3. There is no actual hope in stopping or reversing the current trend that is pushing our State towards reduced hunting opportunities. We will still get to hunt this fall and we will get to hunt next fall and the fall after and so on and so forth, at least for a while, but it is absolutely going to be less and less every year and eventually it'll functionally go away even if there is always some small legacy hunting that is allowed.

For example, I have tried to reach out to my local commissioner, who's happily toted the anti-spring bear narrative. He lives here in Wenatchee. He claims to be a hunter and to represent the hunting culture. I have tried numerous times to contact him to arrange either a 1 on 1 meeting, or to come and present to the local sportsman's assoc or just invite him to our meetings. Crickets. He's on the local land trust board, I've tried to contact him through those channels, nothing. When we can't even get the hunting representatives to interact with his own local hunting club... that's failure on a systematic level that, again IMO, simply can't be over come. I'm sure some of the issue is due to the shear size of WA's population. He probably gets bombarded with messages and requests, but that's still a pretty ridiculous cop out.

I am a bit of a pain in the ass when it comes to this stuff. If it really matters, then we must find a way. Are they drowning in emails and voice mails from everyone? I just keep telling myself, “If I don‘t do it, who will?”

There is hope. We just need to look back at history. Many of us came from lands where the monarchy and/or oligarchy were the only hunters. We came here, and hunted. Early on in US history we know we nearly drove every big game species to extinction. We figured that one out. I can’t imagine how daunting those problems felt. We can do this.

 

[JLS]

Doesnt matter who the candidates are . A vote for those that want to eliminate hunting anywhere supports their agenda. Sorry about your luck, but sounds like you earned it. You can sit around and wax about the days gone by and how smart you are since you wont be spending your time hunting anymore.

You are an idiot. Pure and simple. Hunting won’t go away here and you do t understand politics like you think you do.

You simply fail to understand a Republican candidate that is as poor as the one put forth cannot win here. Pure and simple. A good moderate Republican can win, and has in the past.

I didn’t ask for the dumbass to get nominated, and he had zero chance of winning from the get go. Hell, he couldn’t even retain his job as chief of a three Officer department.

Did you miss the part where I told you even if he carried every hunter in the state, he still wouldn’t have had enough votes to win?

Or, can I make inference that because some hunter somewhere voted for a democrat that may have been the better candidate and supported hunting, that then directly leads to a governor on a quest to be the greenest dem in the US, who won by a landslide because he faced a dog shit candidate who wasn’t even fit to be chief of a small police department, let alone run a largely liberal state.

 

[JLS]

I believe the study you are looking for is from Robert Wielgus “sink populations in carnivore management”.

I discussed his paper in length with him before it was published (we were not supposed to but he sent me a copy early). There were many flaws though and it did not pass peer review IIRC.

Correct

 

[HONEYBADGER]

You are an idiot. Pure and simple. Hunting won’t go away here and you do t understand politics like you think you do.

You simply fail to understand a Republican candidate that is as poor as the one put forth cannot win here. Pure and simple. A good moderate Republican can win, and has in the past.

I didn’t ask for the dumbass to get nominated, and he had zero chance of winning from the get go. Hell, he couldn’t even retain his job as chief of a three Officer department.

You voted to eliminate hunting, it is that simple. Who is the idiot? You deserve what you get, but your fellow hunters don't.

 

[JLS]

You voted to eliminate hunting, it is that simple. Who is the idiot? You deserve what you get, but your fellow hunters don't.

How the #*^@#* did I vote to eliminate hunting? I didn’t vote for the current governor you $*)Q!#@$ moron.

 

[Hammsolo]

Doesnt matter who the candidates are . A vote for those that want to eliminate hunting anywhere supports their agenda. Sorry about your luck, but sounds like you earned it. You can sit around and wax about the days gone by and how smart you are since you wont be spending your time hunting anymore.

Shots fired!!! Woo, we need to stick together. I guess your username is Honeybadger.

Just a fact check. Four percent of Washington residents hunt according to the Department of Fish and Wildlife, and that number has risen through and since Covid. This is a fact that doesn’t tell the whole story though. How many families include a hunter in Washington? I live with my wife and two of my kids. I am the only hunter, but we all primarily eat wild game.

There’s hope. A few stats that should make us feel that way are that about 13% of WA residents fish, and 77% of Americans support legal hunting.

The only way we will stop the degradation of hunting and our access to it is by staying united. We can jab, argue, and even uncut, but in the end we need to unite.

 

[Hammsolo]

She note, In the Thurs Wildlife video, at the 11:50ish (time of day, not length) mark, the discussion on hunting bear and cougar impacting the ecosystem came up. Baker seemed to reference a study where hunting actually increased cougar-human conflicts. Only thing I could find was the study below. I have some problems with multicollinearity in the study, but it was interesting to see where she was going.

Hunting as a management tool? Cougar-human conflict is positively related to trophy hunting

Overexploitation and persecution of large carnivores resulting from conflict with humans comprise major causes of declines worldwide. Although little is known about the interplay between these mortality types, hunting of predators remains a common management ...

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

That was a seriously weird statement. I wanted to state that being in the woods increases the odds of conflict with cougars, bear, elk, deer, and even huckleberry pickers!

 

[SAJ-99]

That was a seriously weird statement. I wanted to state that being in the woods increases the odds of conflict with cougars, bear, elk, deer, and even huckleberry pickers!

Yeah, I thought she was going down one path and then 180’d into her true desires. First thing I thought of was your post about seeking data to confirm beliefs.

Through the whole video, I got the sense that the WFWD rep was trying to say they needed time to build a case (collect data and studies) for the bear and cougar recommendations, and some of the Commissioners wanted to go forward regardless. Seemed contradictory to the “do nothing until you know for sure” theme previously espoused.

Apparently there was a committee set up a couple of years ago review other states’ research on predators as well as the Predator-prey Project. I am having trouble finding any broad conclusions from either.

 

[Irrelevant]

I didn't hear Organ's comments, so just providing his background for those following along. John Organ was one of the three authors of the NA Model papers, along with Val Geist and Shane Mahoney.

If we wonder why these groups like the Public Trust Doctrine and the view it as an arrow in their quiver, read their interpretation of it here, however incorrect and loose that interpretation may be.

Link - https://wildlifeforall.us/resources...-a-better-paradigm-for-wildlife-conservation/

If you read that link on one of their organization websites, they are adding a lot of their own interpretation to the PTD. They also make a lot of statements that are incorrect under Trust Principles. They conflate a Beneficiary with being a Stakeholder.

My 35 years as a CPA was Trust specialty. I am still a Trustee for many Trusts. I understand Trust Law and Trustee duties, principles, and standards very well. As someone who has to deal with many Beneficiaries, I understand the Trustee's role towards Beneficiaries, current and future.

Under the accepted PTD, every state citizen is a beneficiary. Even these groups agree with that. In fact, they promote that as their reason for supporting the PTD.

But, it does not end there for how Trustees must manage Trust Corpus (wildlife) for Beneficiaries. Trustees must also deal with Stakeholders, who may or may not be a Beneficiary. And if they are a both a Beneficiary and a Stakeholder, the Trustee must deal with them differently in each role.

Not every Beneficiary is a Stakeholder, though some beneficiaries are Stakeholders. Stakeholders are such because of how they impact the Trust Corpus (wildlife), how that Trust Corpus impacts them (landowners being a great example). A Trustee must understand which role is being represented when interacting with Beneficiaries/Stakeholders. No preference can be given to any Beneficiary, but a Trustee has the "reasonable and prudent" standard by which they must interact with Stakeholders.

These groups advocating change to State Wildlife Agencies are ignoring the distinction a Trustee must make between a Beneficiary (every citizen) and a Stakeholder (who is often also a beneficiary). They want to equate them as the same thing. They are not. They are distinct.

Yet, there is benefit to these groups conflating them as the same thing, as doing so ignores/removes the Stakeholder interests a Trustee must consider. It's a convenient and easy way to discount every other group and ignore the disproportionate costs/benefits each Stakeholder groups brings to the Trust Corpus and to the ability for the Trustee to manage that Trust Corpus for current and future beneficiaries.

I'll give a couple examples and there are tons more where Trustees must distinguish when they are dealing with a party(ies) as a Beneficiary or as a Stakeholder(s).

1) Funding sources come into play when we talk about Stakeholders. A Trustee cannot ignore the Stakeholders that fund the Trust, whether in a Public Trust or a Private Trust. With no funding, the Trust Corpus erodes and the Trustee is not making "reasonable and prudent" decisions for the benefit of the Trust, or the current and future Beneficiaries.

2) Wildlife (Trust Corpus) has huge impacts on the landscapes where that Corpus exists. A Trustee cannot ignore those impacts and thus cannot ignore the interest of those impacted Stakeholders, in many cases private landowners. To ignore that Stakeholder interest is to the detriment of the Trust Corpus, likely to the detriment of both current and future beneficiaries.

Sometimes the Trustee deals with a Stakeholder who is not a Beneficiary. Maybe the Trustee is working with an NGO, a non-resident, a corporation or LLC, none of which are Beneficiaries, but can have huge impacts on the Trust and the Trust Corpus.

Point I'm trying to illustrate is that we are all Beneficiaries if we live in said state, but we are not a Stakeholder by default. Some people might be both, but at different times and in different context. Some might be both in the context of issue A being addressed by the Trustees, but they might not be a Stakeholder when issue B is being addressed by the Trustees.

This distinction is much more complicated and much more important than these groups would like to acknowledge. Thus they conflate the two to their benefit when posting their interpretation of the PTD on their websites and in material distributed to their members.

Maybe i need to re listen to your series with Mahoney but what would keep the trustees from simply ending hunting? It would ensure complete elimination of markets for dead wildlife. It would ensure the most corpus for the most beneficiaries with the most even allocation of those resources.

By the end of his responses to the commissioner's questions I felt like the NAM doesn't actually support hunting. It merely allows certain hunting if desired, under certain conditions.

 

[SAJ-99]

Doesnt matter who the candidates are . A vote for those that want to eliminate hunting anywhere supports their agenda. Sorry about your luck, but sounds like you earned it. You can sit around and wax about the days gone by and how smart you are since you wont be spending your time hunting anymore.

I'm not a single-issue voter, so I have to decide what fight I want to fight. I either have to send comments and attend meetings to defend hunting or defend some books in schools or debate the various economic ideas that are often comical at best. There is never a shortage of BS ideas that a group thinks is the latest great path to some idealistic society.

 

[Hammsolo]

I didn't hear Organ's comments, so just providing his background for those following along. John Organ was one of the three authors of the NA Model papers, along with Val Geist and Shane Mahoney.

If we wonder why these groups like the Public Trust Doctrine and the view it as an arrow in their quiver, read their interpretation of it here, however incorrect and loose that interpretation may be.

Link - https://wildlifeforall.us/resources...-a-better-paradigm-for-wildlife-conservation/

If you read that link on one of their organization websites, they are adding a lot of their own interpretation to the PTD. They also make a lot of statements that are incorrect under Trust Principles. They conflate a Beneficiary with being a Stakeholder.

My 35 years as a CPA was Trust specialty. I am still a Trustee for many Trusts. I understand Trust Law and Trustee duties, principles, and standards very well. As someone who has to deal with many Beneficiaries, I understand the Trustee's role towards Beneficiaries, current and future.

Under the accepted PTD, every state citizen is a beneficiary. Even these groups agree with that. In fact, they promote that as their reason for supporting the PTD.

But, it does not end there for how Trustees must manage Trust Corpus (wildlife) for Beneficiaries. Trustees must also deal with Stakeholders, who may or may not be a Beneficiary. And if they are a both a Beneficiary and a Stakeholder, the Trustee must deal with them differently in each role.

Not every Beneficiary is a Stakeholder, though some beneficiaries are Stakeholders. Stakeholders are such because of how they impact the Trust Corpus (wildlife), how that Trust Corpus impacts them (landowners being a great example). A Trustee must understand which role is being represented when interacting with Beneficiaries/Stakeholders. No preference can be given to any Beneficiary, but a Trustee has the "reasonable and prudent" standard by which they must interact with Stakeholders.

These groups advocating change to State Wildlife Agencies are ignoring the distinction a Trustee must make between a Beneficiary (every citizen) and a Stakeholder (who is often also a beneficiary). They want to equate them as the same thing. They are not. They are distinct.

Yet, there is benefit to these groups conflating them as the same thing, as doing so ignores/removes the Stakeholder interests a Trustee must consider. It's a convenient and easy way to discount every other group and ignore the disproportionate costs/benefits each Stakeholder groups brings to the Trust Corpus and to the ability for the Trustee to manage that Trust Corpus for current and future beneficiaries.

I'll give a couple examples and there are tons more where Trustees must distinguish when they are dealing with a party(ies) as a Beneficiary or as a Stakeholder(s).

1) Funding sources come into play when we talk about Stakeholders. A Trustee cannot ignore the Stakeholders that fund the Trust, whether in a Public Trust or a Private Trust. With no funding, the Trust Corpus erodes and the Trustee is not making "reasonable and prudent" decisions for the benefit of the Trust, or the current and future Beneficiaries.

2) Wildlife (Trust Corpus) has huge impacts on the landscapes where that Corpus exists. A Trustee cannot ignore those impacts and thus cannot ignore the interest of those impacted Stakeholders, in many cases private landowners. To ignore that Stakeholder interest is to the detriment of the Trust Corpus, likely to the detriment of both current and future beneficiaries.

Sometimes the Trustee deals with a Stakeholder who is not a Beneficiary. Maybe the Trustee is working with an NGO, a non-resident, a corporation or LLC, none of which are Beneficiaries, but can have huge impacts on the Trust and the Trust Corpus.

Point I'm trying to illustrate is that we are all Beneficiaries if we live in said state, but we are not a Stakeholder by default. Some people might be both, but at different times and in different context. Some might be both in the context of issue A being addressed by the Trustees, but they might not be a Stakeholder when issue B is being addressed by the Trustees.

This distinction is much more complicated and much more important than these groups would like to acknowledge. Thus they conflate the two to their benefit when posting their interpretation of the PTD on their websites and in material distributed to their members.

This, again, reminds me of why TRUE EXPERTS are needed in situations like this. We need people with expertise like yourself being involved in the necessary areas. I am a complete knot head when it comes to Public Trust Doctrine. It frustrates me that we can’t look at game management like effective truck maintenance.

When our truck runs well we putter along. We maintain it, and may even hire some with basic expertise to do maintenance. When we pay Larry the Lube guy to change our oil we are trusting him with our truck. We don’t expect him to be Terry the Transmission Technician. When a warning light clicks on we don’t ignore it, we go to an expert. Maybe we go to Oscar at O’reilly’s Autoparts for a diagnosis. He may not know that much, but he knows how to run the diagnostic tool. He plugs it in and we learn what is going on. He helps us determine next steps.

What if we get a terrifying transmission code!?! Do we start making emotional decisions. Do we deny what is happening? WE don’t, because we know we need to find a trusted expert. We don’t ask some rando for their opinion or feelings around transmission management. We head to Terry the Transmission Tech. We‘ve researched him, and he is highly trained. We look at reviews, and ask around. His reputation is glowing. There are examples of his successful work. We go in. He shares the facts. He tells us what needs to be done to keep the tranny running smoothly. We trust him, and he does his job.

We need to push for experts to speak up on their expertise. We need to assess who we are listening to and whom is making decisions. Who was missing from the last meeting? Who do we need to hear from?