State wildlife officials have compiled a list of priorities for improving fishing and hunting in Washington, linked to the proposed license fee increase.
Among them are:
• Maintaining hatchery production in the lower Columbia River including a renovation of Kalama Falls Hatchery in Cowlitz County.
• Increased law enforcement including efforts to suppress a growing black market for seafood.
• Completing an inventory of high-priority fish passage barriers in Western Washington and development of a systematic plan for correcting them.
• Recovering Puget Sound steelhead populations including efforts to determine the causes of poor juvenile survival.
• Monitoring predation of chinook and sockeye in Lake Washington and steelhead in several other areas.
• Increasing hatchery production in Puget Sound and the coast to provided better fishing for recreational and commercial fleets.
• Increasing monitoring of salmon and steelhead fisheries in the lower Columbia River.
• Developing a hatchery fall chinook fishery in Hood Canal.
• Improving catch accounting and escapement efforts in Willapa Bay and Grays Harbor to allow for more fishing.
• Development of free applications for mobile devices that would allow anglers to determine quickly the current rules for a particular body of water or for hunters easy access to data.
• An incentive program to encourage private timber companies to hold access fees to moderate levels plus expansion of the Feel Free to Hunt and Hunt by Reservation programs.
• Development of a target-shooting range in central Washington, hoping to reduce dispersed target shooting within the boundaries of some state wildlife areas.
• A removal of the cap on payments the department can make to counties in lieu of property taxes on state lands. The agency owns about 1 million acres and annually pays the counties a fee to compensate for the loss of property tax revenue.
However, the 2012 Legislature froze those payments at the 2009 level. This can cause local officials to withhold support for Department of Wildlife land purchases.
