Washington's fish and wildlife agency wants state lawmakers to make permanent a fee that funds key salmon and steelhead monitoring work in the Columbia River basin.
Without it, they warn, anglers could lose some of their favorite fisheries.
The Department of Fish and Wildlife is proposing legislation that would eliminate the 2028 expiration date for the Columbia River Salmon and Steelhead Endorsement, an $8.75 fee charged to anglers who target those species in the Columbia, Snake and their tributaries.
A WDFW report published last month found that the endorsement, which anglers were required to have starting on Jan. 1, had brought in more than $1 million through September.
The money funds creel surveys throughout the Columbia River drainage, including the Snake River and its tributaries. That type of monitoring is required under the Endangered Species Act to ensure anglers aren't over-harvesting federally protected salmon stocks.
Without the monitoring effort, WDFW says it would have to further restrict or eliminate salmon and steelhead fishing opportunities in the Columbia.
"We need to know day in and day out what's getting caught, what's getting released and what's getting harvested," said Chris Donley, WDFW's eastern region fish program manager. "That's what those folks are buying, is the ability in real time to estimate our impacts and our harvest."
The Columbia River endorsement ensures there's a steady stream of funding to keep that work going and keep the fisheries open.
Anglers in western Washington have seen what happens when monitoring money disappears. Budget cuts led to the loss of monitoring funding for a number of Puget Sound tributaries, including the famed winter steelhead fishery on the Skagit River.
The Skagit was closed to winter steelhead fishing this year and is expected to be closed again next year.
"It's not because of a lack of fish," said Alexei Calambokidis, the Washington state policy lead for Trout Unlimited. "It's because the Legislature took away the monitoring money that allows the fishery."
He said the endorsement program's revenue is a major reason why the Columbia drainage isn't seeing the same problem.
"It might be the only thing keeping your fisheries open," he said.
The Columbia River Salmon and Steelhead Endorsement was established by the Legislature in 2009. It was extended once and but then allowed to expire in 2019. Lawmakers gave WDFW money out of the state general fund to make up for the $1.2 million in lost annual revenue.
Six years later, amid massive budget cuts across state agencies, lawmakers nixed the general fund contributions and reinstated the endorsement program with a sunset date of Jan. 1, 2028.
WDFW is proposing removing the sunset date, which would effectively make the program permanent.
Calambokidis said more budget cuts are expected in the 2027 Legislature as the state faces another massive shortfall, which makes keeping the Columbia River endorsement even more important.
"(WDFW) needs to hang onto every source of revenue it has right now," he said.
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