Hunters Get Chance To Be Heard

Idaho deer and elk hunters will have some tough choices.

The state Fish and Game Commission grappled in early October with how to stop a steady erosion of the quality of the state’s big-game hunting. Hunters will get their say next month during meetings planned across the state.

Fish and Game officials want to restore balance to the herds and ket the agency out of the red.

Millions of dollars are at stake, both in the department’s budget and the statewide economy.

A University of Idaho study in 1994 estimated guided hunters pumped $3.2 million into northcentral Idaho communities. Most of the agency’s programs to help wildlife rely on hunting fees.

Fishing licenses pay for hatcheries and fish biologists. Hunting licenses pay for everything else that relies on state licenses - programs that will total $23.6 million this year. Hunting licenses provided nearly 71 percent of all 1995 license sales. Non-resident hunters paid almost half that total ($10.5 million), much of it to hunt elk.

Idaho’s fee for non-resident elk hunters is among the West’s most expensive. Only Nevada, which has limited elk hunting, costs more.

For Fish and Game, the 13,000 hunting licenses and elk tags sold to non-residents for $428 each contributed nearly $6 million, a quarter of total license revenues.

Most agree the main problem facing the elk herd is that hunters are killing too many bulls.

Jim Hagedorn of Viola, a founder and board member of Concerned Sportsmen of Idaho, said: “Basically, there are too many hunters, too long of a hunting season, too much access and too few elk.”

The group formed after last winter’s rounds of public meetings. Hagedorn has helped man a voluntary check station at Elk River this fall that was established by Potlatch Corp. and the University of Idaho to survey elk hunters, their success and where they were hunting.

Some coho get protection

The central California populations of West Coast coastal coho salmon will be the fifth Pacific salmonid species since 1991 to be granted protection under the Endangered Species Act.

The other four protected populations are born in freshwater streams and migrate downstream to the ocean through a series of hydropower dams on the Snake and Columbia rivers.

The coho also migrate to the ocean, but spawn in mountain and valley streams that don’t have large power-generating dams. Their demise is tied more to past fishing practices, ocean conditions such as the El Nino warming effect, and degradation of habitat due to logging, livestock grazing and commercial development.

The National Marine Fisheries Service is waiting until April to decide whether to list coastal coho in northern California and southern Oregon. It also is reviewing coho in Puget Sound.

Northwest salmon already listed, with status, and date of listing are:

Snake River sockeye, endangered, Nov. 20, 1991.

Snake River spring/summer chinook, threatened, April 22, 1992.

Snake River fall chinook, threatened, April 22, 1992.

Umpqua River cutthroat trout, endangered, July 31, 1996. , DataTimes MEMO: Cut in Spokane edition

This sidebar appeared with the story: MEETING PLACES Public meetings to discuss alternatives for managing deer and elk hunting in Idaho are scheduled next week at 7 p.m. as follows: Nov. 8, Sandpoint High School, 410 S. Division Ave. Nov. 12, Coeur d’Alene, Lake City High School, 6106 Ramsey Ave. Nov. 13, St. Maries, Eagles Hall, 707 Main St. Kellogg High School, 2 Jacobs Gulch.