Waterfowl hunters meet tonight to hear about Shillapoo area
The local chapter of the Washington Waterfowl Association will meet at 7 p.m. today at the Vancouver Trap and Gun Club, 11100 N.E. 76th St.
The guest speaker will be Daren Hauswald , assistant manager of the Shillapoo Wildlife Area in the Vancouver Lake lowlands. He will discuss plans for the area in 2012.
Club members also will shoot trap beginning at 5:30 p.m.
On Saturday, the chapter members will meet at 8 a.m. at the River S Unit hunter check station at Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge for a work party to clean and ready the blinds for the off-season.
A barbecue is scheduled at noon following the work.
Salmon season planning starts Tuesday in Olympia
OLYMPIA — State salmon managers and fishing interests will meet at 9 a.m. Tuesday to begin planning the summer and fall seasons.
Biologists will present forecasts for coastal, Puget Sound and Columbia River summer and fall salmon runs and discuss potential conservation issues and fisheries in room No. 172 of the Natural Resources Building, 1111 Washington St. S.E.
The session will continue until about 3 p.m. It begins what is known as the “North of Falcon” process to shape fishing off Washington and Oregon north of Cape Falcon near Manzanita.
Final adoption of the 2012 fishing rules will be set on April 6 at a Pacific Fishery Management Council meeting in Seattle.
Steelheaders to take wounded veterans fishing
Approximately 20 boats will take wounded and recovering veterans fishing for spring chinook salmon on March 24 in an event organized by the Columbia River chapter of the Association of Northwest Steelheaders.
Based in Clark County, the 60-member chapter is the only Steelheaders group in Washington.
The fishermen will leave from Marine Park boat ramp in Vancouver, said Keith Hyde, chapter president.
The anglers will be from the national wounded warrior program from Joint Base Lewis/McChord near Tacoma.
Comments sought on thinning project near Trout Lake
TROUT LAKE — Comments are encouraged by March 5 on a proposal by the Gifford Pinchot National Forest to thin 120 stands of timber totaling about 5,000 acres in the Mount Adams District.
Called the Coyote Thin, the project intends to use commercial thinning from stands of 40- to 80-year-old trees in the Cave Creek, Bear Creek and Trout Lake Creek watersheds.
Most of the timber stands under consideration were clearcut in the 1960s and early 1970s, then replanted at high densities.
According to the Forest Service, thinning can result in optimal tree growth, improve the understory for huckleberries or secondary tree layers and reduce the intensity of wildfires.
For comments, contact silvaculturist Jon Nakae at 509-395-3480 or by email at jnakae@fs.fed.us.
Written comments may be mailed to Erin Black, Mount Adams Ranger District, 2455 Highway 141, Trout Lake, 98650 or emailed to comments-pacificnorthwest-giffordpinchot-mtadams.
Southwest Washington NRA banquet tickets are sold out
Tickets no longer are available for the March 10 annual banquet and auction of the Southwest Washington Friends of NRA.
The banquet will be at the Clark County Event Center at the fairgrounds.
Richard Vrooman of Vancouver, committee chair, said for a listing of other National Rifle Association banquets in Washington this year go online to www.nrafoundation.org/events.
The Southwest Washington group has raised $1.5 million in the past 20 years. In 2011, the foundation distributed $42,000 locally to ROTC programs, hunter education, shooting range improvements, junior shooting programs and women’s-only pistol courses.
