On wildlife, Ferguson is no Inslee

||| FROM COLUMBIA INSIGHT |||

When longtime wildlife advocate and Spokane resident Ronald Reed learned Wash. Gov. Bob Ferguson was sending two of former Gov. Inslee’s nominations to the Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission back to the drawing board, he thought maybe there had been a mistake.

“I wondered what in the world he was doing,” says Reed, a former board member of Washington Wildlife First.

Reed had met with Ferguson during the latter’s 2024 bid for the governor’s office, and was impressed with him as a candidate. Reed and his wife later donated $3,500 to the Ferguson campaign.

“That may not seem like a huge amount, but it was to us,” says Reed.

Soon, though, he wondered if the new governor was the person he had believed Ferguson to be.

At issue were two seats on the Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission, a body with authority over everything from hunting regulations to state fish hatcheries. The Commission is composed of nine members appointed by the governor to six-year terms, during which they oversee the Department of Fish and Wildlife.

In early January, the outgoing Inslee asked the State Senate to approve two appointees well liked by environmental groups: rancher and former park ranger Lynn O’Connor, and marine mammal scientist Dr. Tim Ragen.

It came as a shock to Reed when Ferguson not only asked the Senate to return Ragen and O’Connor’s nominations, but to put forward two appointees to the commission seen as much more friendly to hunting and fishing interests.

“Wildlife advocates feel betrayed by what happened,” says Claire Loebs Davis, Washington Wildlife First’s board president.

Not everyone is dissatisfied with Ferguson’s choices.

“We would say, overall, this is a good outcome given the cards we were dealt prior to this,” says Ed Johnstone, chair of the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission, which prefers Ferguson’s appointees.

Still, reactions from within the environmental community point to tensions between prominent green groups and Ferguson’s actions in office, at least as regards wildlife management. Reed, for one, decided his support for the governor had been misplaced.

After the new appointments were announced, Reed called the Ferguson campaign and asked for his donation back. The campaign complied.

“What Ferguson’s doing as governor is not what I was contributing toward,” says Reed. “If I’d known during the campaign he would govern like this, I would have been looking real hard for someone to run against him.”

Juggling appointments

Over the last 12 years, Washington wildlife groups got used to having an ally in the governor’s office.

Former Governor Inslee put the environment at the center of his agenda, helping shepherd a long list of green bills through the legislature. Most had to do with climate and energy, but Inslee’s actions around wildlife also earned high marks from green groups.

Inslee’s appointments to the Fish and Wildlife Commission included biologists Lorna Smith and John Lehmkuhl, environmental attorney Melanie Rowland, and Tim Ragen, who previously served as director of the U.S. Marine Mammal Commission.

Ragen’s appointment was especially significant for the crisis facing the Salish Sea’s southern resident orcas.

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