July IDFG Commission Recap
By: Kyle Maki, IWF Sporting Partnerships and Policy Manager
The IDFG Commission met in Jerome on Thursday, July 16th for their quarterly meeting. Agenda items included rulemaking changes, Commission Community Challenge Grants, nonresident deer and elk tags, and more.
There were two rulemaking changes that were voted on and approved by the commission. First was a proposed rule that would allow for the option of using electronic tags for certain gamebirds like turkeys, WMA pheasants, sandhill cranes, ect. This would not require the use of E-tags, but give the hunter the option of using E-tags or paper tags. The second proposed rule would change rules around moving carcasses in CWD management zones. Currently you can move a carcass within a CWD management zone, but this new rule would make it illegal to move a carcass out of a CWD positive game management unit, even if the unit they are moving the carcass to is within the CWD management zone. The hope is this reduces the risk of someone moving a carcass that is CWD positive to an area without CWD and introducing it to the new location.
These rules are not final and are simply the proposed rules that the public will get the opportunity to comment on. After the final comment period, the Commission will decide what to do with them and if they decide to move forward, they will go before the Legislature for final approval before they become rule.
Each year the Commission distributes $100,000 in Community Challenge Grants for different projects throughout the state. Each region has a $10,000 grant while there is a statewide grant for $30,000 and these grants are frequently split up between multiple projects. This year us at IWF are happy to say we received $5000 to support our new program called Idaho Women Outdoors which is a community oriented educational platform to help women in Idaho learnt to hunt in an ethical and responsible manner.
In addition to IWF’s grant, 2 of our affiliate organizations also received funding. The Idaho Conservation Officers Association received a total of $11,000 to help reduce the registration fees for the Mark Hill Memorial Youth Conservation Camp, and the Idaho Chapter of the National Wild Turkey Foundation received $4000 for habitat improvement projects in region 5.
There was a wolf status update which showed that despite the injunction reducing the time available for trapping of wolves across much of the state, we once again saw a reduction in the estimated wolf population. The way IDFG is now estimating populations we need to wait until the previous year’s harvest is complete and then the estimate is made for that year. The results from this past year showed an estimated wolf population for 2025 at 1129 animals, a reduction from the 2024 estimate of 1235.
There was a presentation with an update on how the Big Willow Elk Translocation project has been going. Back in May IDFG successfully transported 34 elk that have been causing chronic depredation in the Big Willow drainage in GMU 32 to GMU 7 in the St. Joe drainage in north Idaho, all of which are now collared. Since the release 8 have died from capture related causes and one has a non-working collar leaving 25 elk with working collars on the landscape. One thing of surprise to some, including myself, is there have been no predator related mortalities from this translocation so far. This has been a very expensive project and hopefully the intense monitoring from it will result in great data where we can use in the future to weight the costs and benefits of translocating elk in the future.
Other highlights from the meeting are listed below.
Sage Grouse season setting was completed with tags going on sale August 3rd beginning at 10am MST first com first served.
The fall chinook salmon anglers can keep was changed because of a low forecast of wild chinook expected to reach Idaho. The limit for this fall still remains 3 adult salmon, but now only one can be an adipose fin intact fish.
If anyone would like to watch the whole meeting, it’s now posted on the IDFG youtube page and please reach out to us if you have any questions!