Managers’ duties as expansive as wildlife areas

ELLENSBURG — Although Shana Winegeart has actually been the manager of the L.T. Murray Wildlife Area for more than eight months, she’s still new enough here to be part of what, at least in wildlife circles in this part of the state, represents a changing of the guard.

Shana Winegeart, left, talks with habitat biologist William Meyer on a ridge in the Whisky Dick Wildlife Area in Kittitas County. Winegeart is the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife manager of the L.T. Murray Wildlife Area in South Central Washington. (ANDY SAWYER/Yakima Herald-Republic)

Winegeart came to the WDFW’s Ellensburg office last July to take over management of the L.T. Murray, which also meant overseeing the Whisky Dick and Quilomene wildlife areas, a total of 106,400 acres.

Prior to July, management of all of those — plus management of the Wenas Wildlife Area, a 105,460-acre expanse from Manastash Ridge and Cleman Mountain — all fell upon Cindi Confer, who might well have been the most overworked person in the WDFW’s ranks. Now those responsibilities have been split; Confer has the Wenas, which she has managed since 2001, and Winegeart oversees the L.T. Murray complex.

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Winegeart’s recent history includes management of the Whatcom Wildlife Area northwest of Bellingham and serving as assistant manager in the Blue Mountains complex. But her background is diverse. She was a biologist on the Yucca Mountain radioactive-waste disposal project and has done surveys, wildlife rehabili-tation and habitat restoration for public, private and tribal entities.

“Right now, I get a little bit of everything,” Winegeart said of her duties with the L.T. Murray. “You get the public interaction, you get to talk to little kids and introduce them to wildlife issues … plus you have on the ground the restoration work, which I really like to do. The conflicts between people and wildlife really need to be addressed, and those get to be the larger issues we deal with.

“I don’t enjoy the politics so much, but I do enjoy conflict resolution and I do enjoy problem-solving.”

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Huffman, too, has a wide-ranging professional history: Fisheries research on the Columbia River and at Lower Monumental Dam on the Snake. Habitat restoration in Wyoming. Field work with Idaho Fish and Game. And, most recently, wildlife biologist for the National Wild Turkey Federation in the Texas panhandle.

“I’ve always been interested in habitat and the habitat management side of things, and this seemed kind of a perfect fit for that,” said Huffman, 32, who grew up in southwest Washington and saw the Oak Creek job as an opportunity “to get back home to the Northwest.”

Huffman’s predecessor, John McGowan, had managed Oak Creek for 20 years, long enough not only to become the face of the wildlife area but to know the face of every regular hunter and visitor to its nearly 50,000 acres.

Huffman, who did a lot of quail hunting in Klickitat County as a boy but did his elk hunting not here but in the Blue Mountains, isn’t too worried about how long it might take Oak Creek denizens to get used to the new guy.

His work with the wild turkey federation, he said, taught him a lot about “learning to work with people, balancing the relationships with getting work done on the ground. And I grew up hunting, grew up doing that stuff, so being in that environment, I think I can pick up where John left off as far as interacting with users.”

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At a glance, Mike Keller’s job may look easier than his counterparts at other wildlife areas, since the Sunnyside-Snake River Wildlife Area — that’s the official title — entails management of fewer than 21,000 acres, making it by far Region 3’s smallest wildlife area.

But that acreage is split into 18 units that are spread over four counties, from the Interstate 82 Ponds just south of Yakima to the Walla Walla River, and northwest of Basin City in Franklin County to the headquarters near Mabton.

“As far as acreage goes, we’re smaller (than other wildlife areas), but the complexity of it is quite a bit more,” Keller said. “We deal a lot with (agriculture) leases, and because we have a lot of irrigated land on the wildlife area, we deal with Yakima River issues. The wetlands we deal with, a lot of them result from irrigation, and that throws complexity in it.”

And the water that produces that waterfowl habitat in those wetlands must be manipulated, raised and lowered from season to season, enhanced with the planting and nourishment of some plants beneficial to waterfowl and also the removal of some that overflourish, like cattails.

Keller officially took over in December after several months as acting manager following the retirement of Rocky Ross. But Ross has stayed on, working part-time to help Keller’s transition. “That’s been a huge help for me,” Keller said. “Rocky’s amazing.”

So, too, is the job, as far as Keller is concerned.

“I love it,” he said. “The administrative work is not always fun, and it seems like it gets more complex every year. It takes more time and we’ve got less people to work with within the agency nowadays, and that complicates things.
“But you can do things and you know you’re actually making a difference on this job. That’s the part I really enjoy.”