PRIEST: Fish for thought
Since the 1990s, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has been killing the lake trout in upper Priest Lake. Tons of fish are wasted each year by the fish and wildlife at a cost of millions of dollars. Why! For the ethnic cleansing to save another non-native fish, the kokanee, and two native species, the bull trout and the cutthroat. Funding for this comes from the taxpayers (Endangered Species Act), people’s electric bills (Bonneville Power Administration) and the Kalispell Tribe.
Now options include sportsmen to help pay to kill and waste the lake trout in lower Priest Lake. Maybe this is why your hunting and fishing license is going up 20 percent in 2018. The Endangered Species Act has spent $2.2 billion on the ethnic cleansing of lake trout in Colorado, Wyoming, Nevada, Montana and Idaho to save one or two species of fish. How the fish and wildlife can play god like this is absurd, and is a horrendous act.
If you don’t like your taxes to keep funding this killing, or if you don’t like it when your power bills keep going up and up to help fund the killing, I’m asking all sportsmen and taxpayers to stand and voice your opinion. If you consider conservation is a right for ALL SPECIES TO LIVE, then tell the fish and wildlife to leave Priest Lake alone. The fishing is good now. Who knows what it will be like in 20 to 30 years? Lake trout should have at least one lake in North Idaho they can live and thrive in. Priest Lake can be that lake only if fish and wildlife will LEAVE IT ALONE and stop the killing. The strong can only survive with the help of the sportsman and the conservationists.
The next meeting and an opportunity to fill out your survey is at 6:30 p.m. July 24 in the Priest River Event Center. The last meeting is July 27 at the Fish and Game office on Kathleen Avenue, 6:30 p.m. in Coeur d’Alene. Or if you can’t go to the meetings, go to the Fish and Game website, read the three options that are available and fill out your survey.
PAUL DOUGLAS
Rathdrum
30+ years of fishing Priest Lake