Hunting for answers

There are a few things Ed Schriever appreciates as much as a firm handshake, a vertical grained quarter of tamarack and results.

He likes to see things get done.

Schriever, the new head of the department of Idaho Fish and Game, was in Coeur d’Alene Friday to address the Panhandle’s biologists, managers and conservation officers and impart his philosophy for the direction of the department.

When it comes to fish and game resources, Schriever said, he follows a basic tenet: The department’s job is to manage the resources for the public.

“It’s not mine. It’s not ours. It’s theirs,’ he said.

Schriever, who grew up in a military family, let a few things from his early days seep into his adult life. The importance of public service was among them, he said.

“I really appreciated my dad’s dedication to public service,” he said. “I love the fact that I work for the people.”

And he understands that public sentiment shifts, and splits and runs like a spring stream in different furrows. The department’s job is to find the main channel and keep the water — the resources and focus — there.

At a meeting in Lewiston last week, Schriever said more than 100 hunters and anglers all wanted well-managed fish and game populations, but the disagreement in the room lay in how to do it.

“They were all very enthusiastic sports people,” he said. “But I guarantee there were 10 different opinions on how to manage (the resources).”

And that is where the seemingly black and white sometimes becomes black and blue.

As the head of a department that employs 1,250 people who oversee some of Idaho’s most valued natural resources, Schriever, who has been with the department 35 years, is well-versed in the difference between public sentiment and biology. Predation, habitat, the entire ecological picture must be balanced with the desires of the public.

While tasked with balancing the needs of the animals and the desires of people, Schriever said, department game managers must stretch in their capacity to be innovative, employ new technology and be effective communicators.

“We’re trying to provide something to most folks most of the time, but we can’t give everything to everybody all of the time,” Schriever said.

In Idaho, a mostly rural environment where a big portion of the human population still hunt and fish for subsistence, viable populations are considered along with trophy opportunities.

“People here hunt for food, and I’ll never forget how important that is,” he said. “It’s part of the lifestyle.”

Hunting and fishing opportunities must meld with finite resources, and the department must have in place a framework that ensures sustainability, he said.

That’s where the “sweet spot” comes in.

It is the place of diverse hunting opportunities, balanced with enough hunters so they aren’t running into each other in the woods, while they chase game that is plentiful enough to allow for a fair success rate. At the same time the department must make sure the populations are still there next year and a decade from now.

“So, they aren’t all biological objectives,” the 59-year-old Schriver said. “Hunters don’t like to hunt where there are a lot of other hunters. It makes the experience less enjoyable.”

Sportsman accessibility has been pushed to the forefront lately and the department is meeting the challenge with a recent agreement to open endowment lands to the public. A fee increase approved two years ago by the Idaho Legislature, as well as an increase in sales of deer and elk tags has shored up the department’s finances, which has allowed it to enter into easement agreements with private landowners to open more land for hunting, trapping and fishing.

Schriever, whose background is mostly in fisheries, said the department believes in protecting wild fish, but hatchery fish remain critical to Idaho anglers. Without them, he said, there would be no opportunity to fish for salmon and steelhead, weakening the connection people here have long had with salmon and steelhead.

Although the bulk of North Idaho elk herds are in good shape, some backcountry herds in places like the Lolo Zone of the Clearwater basin aren’t faring as well as they once were. He attributes the decline to predators and changing habitat. While Fish and Game has some control over predators, the habitat issue is largely a construct of the U.S. Forest Service, which manages the land.

Managing an alpha predator like a wolf that is highly mobile, has a high reproductive capacity and a large cheerleading base among non-hunters, is a task the department has accepted out of necessity. Keeping predator populations in check in a way that is acceptable to the public, while at the same time ensuring sustainable game herds, Schriever said, is a full-time job that requires constant attention.

“We have to keep their abundance in check so we can achieve other management goals, and have some level of their acceptance on the landscape,” he said.

Schriever, an avid hunter and angler who talks with ease about sneaking into a herd of elk with an old-fashioned piece during the late season muzzleloader hunt, uses woodworking as a way to wind down when he can’t get outside. His furniture pieces — mortise-and-tenon-joined tamarack tables, cherry cabinets and oak bed frames — have become heirlooms.

In a job that often has to make up for the unpredictability of natural phenomenon, Schriever’s woodworking provides another kind of balance.

“I like tangible outcomes,” he said. “I like to say, ‘I accomplished that’.”