Sun., Jan. 10, 2021
ByEli Francovichelif@spokesman.com(509) 459-5508
Hunting is under attack in Washington.
At least that’s the assessment of Kim Thorburn, a Washington Department of Fish and Game commissioner from Spokane.
“I’m pretty upset about what’s going on,” she said. “We’re looking at hunters as an enemy.”
Although she believes the assault has been brewing for a long time, Thorburn points to a recently filed lawsuit looking to outlawspring bear huntingand last year’s ban oncoyote killing contests.
“They just come one item at a time,” she said.
Meanwhile, the appointment of two new WDFW commissioners by Gov. Jay Inslee has drawn criticismand concern from hunters and hunting groups. Some environmental organizations praised the appointments. The commissioners both have backgrounds in wildlife…
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Exposing the Big Game 
Dr. Kim Thorburn’s application for the commission years back stated that she would be a bridge between the hunting community and the environmental community. Indeed, she has been a bridge, albeit a bombed-out bridge with only the hunting-side bridge-pylons and anchors remaining. She is a consistent anti-science anti-ethics supporter. She stated in a public meeting that hunting-ethics are a culture war. Statements such as these in various peer-reviewed articles are subject to interpretation according to Thorburn who claims her MD makes her a science expert, yet she consistently disagrees with studies, even those by WDFW biologists.
“Widespread indiscriminate hunting does not appear to be an effective preventative and remedial method for reducing predator complaints and livestock depredations”
“[W]ith increased harvest, the unintended consequences may have resulted in increased cougar interactions with livestock, prey, and people.”
“[W]e caution against the universal use of hunting as a tool for managing conflict with large predators.”
Both Dr. Koontz and Ms. Smith will be more forceful in asking the WDFW managers to show the science they used, instead of accepting the “we used science” lie that has dominated WDFW’s presentations for the past five or six years. And that scares the hunting community because it knows its call to “use science instead of emotion” to manage wildlife is not going to support its positions on most carnivore-killing activities, any more than analysis of “who pays to support F&G agencies” will find that hunters are the prime supporters. Truth Hurts. COVID Kills.
A blog reader sent this to the paper:
Dear Esteemed Editor:
Unlike Spokane’s Dept. of Fish and Wildlife Commissioner Kim Thorburn who laments the dwindling number of hunters and a “traditional” lens on wildlife in the state of Washington, I celebrate the increasing compassionate and “mutualist” trend. And so should all of us. The taker mindset has brought us too many ills to count including mass extinctions, habitat loss, climate change and devastating drought and wildfires, endemic disease (including Covid, which many believe came straight from a wildlife wet market), and a mounting collective despair for all.
Humans are finally beginning to understand that we cannot disconnect ourselves, the trajectory of our personal lives and individual desires, or the manner in which we insatiably consume (things, other beings, etc.) from the planet’s acceleratingly fragile and precarious ecosystem. As Chief Sealth put it perfectly: “Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.”
Thorburn and others need to accept that the seachanges underway are not only right-minded for wildlife and the planet, but that humanity’s very survival may in fact depend upon them.