Sportsmen Help Head Off WDFW-DNR Merger

A Friday-night budget amendment keeps WDFW as a separate agency, but would still force several million dollars in cuts.

The Senate Ways & Means Committee had proposed folding WDFW as well as State Parks into the Department of Natural Resources through SB 6813.

However, according to department Director Phil Anderson, outcry from hunters, anglers, commercial interests and environmental groups last week convinced the committee to restore WDFW.

“They did not want these three agencies merged,” Anderson told Northwest Wild Country Saturday morning, “and I think the Senate heard that message loud and clear, and it was evident in their actions last night to amend the Senate’s budget to restore these three agencies as they exist today.”

He terms it “good news from my perspective,” but he may still have follow up on last year’s painful cuts, which included letting 160 in the department go.

“We’re running on a pretty skeletal crew,” he told the radio show, which is hosted by Joel Shangle and cohosted by Bill Herzog and Mike Perusse.

It appears that laying off enforcement officers is now out of the picture, but the department may still have to lay off others as the Senate reconciles its budget with the House Ways & Means Committee’s as well as Gov. Gregoire’s in the final two weeks of the off-year session.

“If we’re absorbing something between $2 million to $6 million, that equates to  something on the order of 10 employees for every million dollars, so if we have to cut 20 to 60 additional employees, we’re going to have service reductions,” he tells Northwest Wild Country.

He says the agency would be forced to look to hatchery production, fish and hunting management and other places for possible trimming.

Stay tuned …