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CLOUDY Temp: 58 °F Wind: WNW at 7 mph Saturday, June 1, 2002 SECTIONS Home Page Local News Sports Business Obituaries Life Opinion - Politics AP News Weather Classified Archives Site Map EXTRA Cyberchef E The People Golf Job Network Headbone Zone Wellness Connection Movie Times Newspaper in Education Oregon CarZone Outdoor Journal Personals Prime Times Real Estate Tempo A & E TV Times W3 Magazine CLASSIFIEDS Find a Car Find a Home Find a Job Find Everything E SOUTHERN OREGON Destinations Automotive Communities Employment Entertainment Publications Real Estate Recreation Shopping Calendar ABOUT US FAQ What's New Advertise Home Delivery Classified Ad Contact Us Media Kit Jobs @ Mail Tribune Email Story to a Friend May 30, 2002 What’s good for the goose is good forits hunters TULELAKE, Calif. — Reclaiming a vast watery wasteland back into a vibrant marsh is paying great dividends to waterfowl migrating through the Tule Lake National Wildlife Refuge. And what’s good for the birds just might become good for the waterfowl hunter as well. Efforts to improve useable wetland habitat at this southernmost corner of the Klamath Basin Wildlife Refuge Complex has proven so successful that refuge managers hope to expand hunting opportunities here as early as this fall. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposes adding more than 1,500 new acres to the Tule Lake refuge’s huntable area and limiting the numbers of hunters who can shoot there daily. If done, the proposal could generate what refuge leaders believe will become a top-drawer duck hunting experience not now available in any lower Klamath Basin public marshland. The Fish and Wildlife Service plans to add 1,290 acres of new wetland in what is known as the Tule Lake refuge’s Sump 1(B) area to duck hunting and a 233-acre section around Frey’s Island for a combination of duck and goose hunting. Both areas are within 5,000 acres of previously open water that went largely unused by waterfowl stopping along the Pacific Flyway in Northern California and Southern Oregon. It included 3,324 acres of Sump 1(B) agricultural run-off water virtually devoid of vegetation and migrating ducks. Then refuge managers broke from more than 40 years of management tradition at Tule Lake by seasonally draining the dead water so foliage could sprout before the lands are re-flooded in the fall. The result is a huge tract of new marsh alive with smartweed and goosefoot that draws in migrating waterfowl as if it were a new hotel-restaurant complex for weary Interstate 5 motorists. "We saw more birds stop here last fall and spring than ever before," says Dave Menke, outdoor recreation planner for the five Klamath Basin refuges. "I think that’s largely because of the development of that new 3,324-acre wetland." Now Menke and others are proposing to set about 38 percent of the new, waterfowl-rich wetlands aside for no more than 16 hunting parties each day. If implemented, the two areas would become the only controlled marsh hunting opportunities available within the national refuge complex. All other marshy hunting units have caps on the number of hunters only during the opening weekend of the annual waterfowl season. This would create what refuge managers are calling an outstanding marsh-duck hunt — the duck hunters’ equivalent to a trophy elk hunt or a lake with rules designed for anglers to catch really big bass. "It would be a quality hunt, in terms of limiting the numbers of hunters and spreading them out among good wetland (habitat)," Menke says. "And I’d look for it to get better over the next three or four years." The refuge’s plans are outlined in an new environmental assessment, which is up for public comment through June 22. The proposal to add 1,290 acres of new marshland for hunting is Alternative 1 in the assessment and represents the refuge’s preferred approach. The assessment also includes a no-action alternative and a third alternative calling for less newly opened acreage that would include closing some other areas now open for hunting. Not everyone is as pleased with the proposal as Menke. Wendell Wood, from the Oregon Natural Resources Council, says it is a "misdirection of priority" to quickly increase hunting opportunities there when a need to increase useable wetlands for wildlife is so great. "It is not our first priority to see that the harvestable surplus (of waterfowl) is always harvested," Wood says. Wood says his group is not against hunting, nor is it specifically opposed to the projects as outlined in the environmental assessment. But Wood wants to see the entire federal refuge complex under an overall management plan instead of projects like this one piecemealed together. That would mean dropping the assessment and conducting a full-scale environmental impact statement, he says. Menke says the proposal to increase hunting opportunities still keeps almost two-thirds of the Tule Lake refuge off-limits to hunting, and that 200-yard buffers will exist between hunters and bird-watchers traveling the refuge’s popular auto tour route. With a $5 daily hunting fee, the program is expected to attract enough hunters to pay for itself. It would mark the first significant increase in waterfowl hunting at the Tule Lake refuge since the 1970s. And not since the early 1980s has Tule Lake been considered a hot spot to hunt migrating waterfowl. Tule Lake hunters as recently as the 1988-1989 season logged almost 7,500 hunting days and shot close to 11,200 birds. But poor habitat with fewer migrating birds that now stay about half as long has taken its toll. The lake last year hosted fewer than 3,000 hunter days generating fewer than 3,900 shot waterfowl during a season that was long and productive elsewhere on the flyway. "You can see how poor the hunting has become, compared to what it was 20 or more years ago," Menke says. "It’s no secret to the hunters, believe me." Menke hopes that generating a quality marsh hunt with plenty of birds on excellent habitat covered by only a handful of hunters will help reverse that trend. "I look at it more as keeping the hunters who enjoy Tule Lake still here, and possibly bringing some hunters back who have given up because refuge hunting isn’t what it used to be," Menke says. Reach reporter Mark Freeman at 776-4470, or e-mail [email protected] Printer Friendly Version Email Story to a Friend Subscribe Archive: Click to Search M Mail Tribune Home Local News | Sports | Business | Obituaries | Life Opinion - Politics | AP News | Archives | Site Map E Southern Oregon | Classified Copyright 1997-2002 Mail Tribune. All rights reserved. Privacy Policy web master feedback A D V E R T I S E R S