Field Reports: Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission to meet this week
From staff reports
The Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission will meet in Olympia this week, beginning on Thursday.
The nine-member panel will hold its regular committee meetings and take up a variety of issues, including land transactions, budget requests and more.
Committee meetings begin on Thursday. The full panel gathers on Friday and Saturday.
Among the items on the commission’s Friday agenda is a land deal that would add about 150 acres to the Wenas Wildlife Area in Yakima County.
The acquisition would consist of shrubsteppe habitat in the foothills of the Cascades that would provide winter range for mule deer and habitat for a variety of bird populations, according to Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife documents.
The panel will also mull WDFW’s policy proposals for the next state Legislature. WDFW has two requests – increasing fees for personalized license plate renewals, which fund some of the agency’s work, and creating a civil fine for criminal fish and wildlife violations.
Later in the day, the commission will have briefings on a trapping rule and a beaver relocation rule. It will also take public comment on the two rules.
Open public comment is scheduled for Saturday morning.
The meeting will be held at the Natural Resources Building in Olympia and streamed online. The full agenda and streaming information is available on the WDFW website.
More closures announced on Idaho Panhandle National Forest
The U.S. Forest Service this week announced another batch of trail and road closures in response to logging and construction projects and wildfire.
A logging project has prompted the closure of the Little Elk Creek Trail (No. 32) on the Coeur d’Alene River Ranger District. The trail is a little more than 3 miles south of the Magee Ranger’s Cabin.
The closure will begin about 1.6 miles down the trail and extend to its terminus at Forest Service Road 260. The closure went into effect Thursday and is expected to last through Oct. 15.
A project to replace three bridges has forced the closure of a 3.7 -mile section of Emerald Creek Road (No. 447) beginning just south of its junction with Forest Service Road 504.
The closure begins Monday and will last through Sept. 16.
That road accesses the popular Emerald Creek Garnet Area. The Forest Service said in a news release that it has provided Garnet -area ticket holders with an alternate route.
Parts of Forest Service trails 275, 251, 280 and 260 in the Grandmother Mountain area northeast of Clarkia, Idaho, are closed because of the Grandmother fire.