The public wants species protection but lawmakers are struggling with dwindling funds, higher fees and a biodiversity crisis
Article Below from Columbia Insight by K.C. Mehaffey
By K.C. Mehaffey. July 24, 2025. If a government’s budget is a statement of its values, consider this: this year, legislatures in Oregon and Washington dedicated roughly 2.4% of their total 2025-2027 biennium budgets to all of their natural resource agencies combined. In Idaho, about 4.6% of the state’s total fiscal year 2026 budget will go to natural resources.
The state departments of fish and wildlife—or fish and game in Idaho—make up only a fraction of those slices of the budget pie.
Natural resource funds also cover the costs of agencies that manage state parks, outdoor recreation, water resources, agriculture, environmental quality, forestry and many smaller state entities—such as the Puget Sound Partnership in Washington or the Wolf Depredation Control Board in Idaho.
State officials and nonprofit organizations say they think the public in the Pacific Northwest would be surprised at how little their states spend on natural resources.
Facing inflation and lower revenues from taxes, legislatures in Oregon and Washington this year raised user fees and made significant cuts to their state fish and wildlife agency budgets. The Idaho Department of Fish and Game—which relies solely on the sale of hunting and fishing licenses and federal funds—got a small bump in funding.
But with federal cuts looming and stagnant or decreasing participation in hunting and fishing, officials from all three state agencies say they’re deeply concerned about their budgets in the coming years and decades.
“We know with climate change and with all the federal impacts coming down the pike that we have a hard future ahead of us,” Brandon Bean, Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife’s budget officer, told Columbia Insight. keep reading….
