The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) is a department of the government of the state of Washington, United States of America. The WDFW manages over a million acres of land, the bulk of which is generally open to the public, and more than 500 water access sites. Many of the sites are termed "wildlife areas" and permit hunting during the hunting season, typically in the autumn and early winter for birds, but all year round for coyotes. Due to declining participation, the department has a hunter and angler recruitment, retention and reactivation plan. A Discover Pass is required to park in the wildlife areas.The department's history starts with the appointment of a fisheries commissioner in 1890 by Governor of Washington Elisha P. Ferry. The department is overseen by a director appointed by the Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission; Kelly Susewind was appointed to the position in June 2018. Hunting and fishing license sales and income from the Discover Pass recreational access fee make up about one-quarter of the department’s budget..
Objective Many populations of wild steelhead Oncorhynchus mykiss along the west coast of North America have declined in abundance over the past several decades. This has led to increased interest in improving the monitoring of population parameters, such as abundance and diversity. The objective of this study was to describe demographic trends in age structure and life history diversity over the past three decades for wild winter-run steelhead returning to the Hoh River on the Olympic Peninsula, Washington.Methods We used age information derived from scale analysis (n = 5,420) to describe the trends in life history over run years 1994-2023. We define a life history as a unique combination of freshwater age, marine age, and spawning history. We generated three life history diversity indices for each run year-all returning fish, maiden spawners, and repeat-spawning steelhead-and tested for any temporal change across the study period.Results Over the entire study, we observed 35 unique life histories based on age at return of wild winter steelhead, and over half (63%) of the life histories observed were repeat spawners. We found that life history diversity has decreased over the past 30 years, and the decrease was primarily related to a decline in repeat spawner life histories and the oldest marine age of maiden spawners. Size at age, freshwater age, and marine age of the most common age-classes of maiden spawners have not changed over the study period. Annual survival rates for repeat spawners were positively related to the life history diversity index for repeat-spawning steelhead, highlighting the importance of conserving diversity in this population.Conclusions This study used scale age data to develop life history diversity indices for a population of wild adult steelhead and identified a demographic shift in repeat and maiden spawners. We observed a decline in the life history diversity of repeat spawners, which was related to a decrease in kelt survival. These results highlight that actions taken to minimize the mortality of migrating kelts should help to protect O. mykiss diversity and abundance and provide the greatest chance of meeting management objectives. Many populations of steelhead continue to lack adequate data for evaluating management actions that are intended to maintain population health. We developed life history diversity indices that demonstrated a demographic shift in repeat spawners and the oldest marine age of maiden spawners over the past 30 years.
Climate change is exacerbating the frequency and intensity of severe weather conditions. The ecosystem approach to fisheries management (EAFM) may benefit from considering how severe weather conditions interplay with biotic relationships, including predator-prey relationships and density dependence, to predict spatiotemporal trends of relative abundance of fishery species. Dynamic structural equation modelling (DSEM) is used to assess the impact of severe drought, salinity, and biotic relationships in predicting abundances of select predator and prey species in two Gulf of Mexico estuaries: the Mission-Aransas Estuary and Trinity-San Jacinto Estuary. In the DSEM framework, models include lagged and non-lagged effects, as well as direct and indirect effects in two trophic systems: a sciaenid trophic system of Red Drum (predator), Spotted Seatrout (predator), Atlantic Croaker (prey), and Blue Crab (prey); and a keystone predator system of Bull Shark (predator), Alligator Gar (predator), Gulf Menhaden (prey), and Striped Mullet (prey). The most parsimonious models retained trophic (manifested through bottom-up and top-down effects) and density-dependent relationships in both trophic systems in the Trinity-San Jacinto Estuary, but the sciaenid trophic system in the Mission-Aransas Estuary did not retain trophic relationships. Tight predator-prey relationships (Red Drum-Atlantic Croaker and Bull Shark-Striped Mullet) helped produce high prediction skill for predators (e.g. >0.83 Spearman's rho correlations for these predators). Drought impacts were often negative, but varied between and within estuaries. For example, Spotted Seatrout abundances were up to 55% lower in severely dry years in the most saline bay within the Mission-Aransas Estuary, but were up to 45% higher in severely dry years in fresher bays within the Trinity-San Jacinto Estuary. The DSEM approach allowed us to identify that drought can have lagged and indirect effects on predators through bottom-up and density-dependent effects, and that biotic lagged and indirect effects can offset immediate direct impacts of drought. Overall, the results indicate that accounting for trophodynamics, density dependence, and drought can lead to robust predictions of estuarine predators via DSEM, an EAFM tool that can enhance resource management. Additionally, management approaches should be locale-specific because baseline salinity conditions affect how different estuaries and bays respond to severe weather conditions.
Competition for prey resources influences trophic community structure and carnivore population dynamics. Evaluating the impacts of competitive interactions on carnivore reintroductions is increasingly important, as anthropogenic activities have caused widespread restructuring of animal communities and potentially altered habitat quality for returning species. Here, we used fecal DNA metabarcoding to evaluate the diets of reintroduced fishers (Pekania pennanti) and sympatric coyotes (Canis latrans), bobcats (Lynx rufus), and Pacific marten (Martes caurina) in the North Cascades of Washington, a mountainous, forested region where fishers were reintroduced between 2018 and 2020. Diet samples were collected during October 2020 and July-August 2021. We assessed similarities in diet composition among species using relative read abundance and permutation-based multivariate analyses, niche overlap indices, and null models. Niche overlap values ranged from 0.36 to 0.76 and generally increased as pairwise differences in body mass decreased; overlap was greatest between bobcats and coyotes and lowest between coyotes and martens, with fishers showing greatest similarity to bobcats. Whereas dietary overlap was substantial for common prey items, we found strong compositional differences among carnivore diets. DNA metabarcoding enabled us to detect important prey species that facilitate resource partitioning at fine taxonomic (genus- and species-level) resolution. Consequently, restricted access of fishers to energetically efficient prey may slow recovery efforts in the North Cascades, highlighting the importance of investigating the role of competition in species reintroductions.
For millions of years, predators and their prey have been locked in an evolutionary arms race: adaptive changes in one favor compensatory adaptations in the other. Humans have also been powerful agents of selection, reshaping the distribution of traits in animal populations. These human-induced trait shifts can disrupt predator-prey interactions, with cascading effects on ecological communities and ecosystems. We synthesize emerging evidence demonstrating that anthropogenic pressures alter physical, behavioral, and social traits relevant to predator-prey dynamics. We provide a framework for predicting the outcomes of trait shifts and a roadmap for advancing this emerging field of research. Incorporating human-induced trait changes into interaction models is essential for forecasting and conserving ecological function in a rapidly changing world.
