Flathead Wildlife Inc. will hold its annual general membership meeting Thursday in Kalispell, with the main focus on a controversial proposal from the Confederated Salish-Kootenai Tribes to gill-net lake trout on Flathead Lake over the next few years.

The meeting will start at 7 p.m. at the Hampton Inn and is expected to draw up to 200 people, said Chuck Hunt, the club’s president.

Also attending will be Art Noonan, deputy director of Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks; Tom McDonald, the tribes’ fish, wildlife, recreation and conservation division manager; and, tentatively, Hal Harper, Gov. Brian Schweitzer’s chief policy adviser.

In communications with the state in December, the tribes outlined plans to create an advisory committee and implement a pilot project that would involve gill netting and angling to remove 60,000 lake trout in 2010, 80,000 in 2011 and 100,000 in 2012.

The lake and its fisheries currently are managed under a 10-year joint plan developed by the tribes and Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks.

But the state was not involved in developing the pilot project proposal. And the state’s mission for managing for conservation as well as fishing opportunities has conflicted with the tribes’ conservation mission, which in this case is aimed at removing non-native lake trout to potentially benefit bull trout populations in the Flathead basin.

State officials believe there has been success at suppressing lake trout populations through increased angling, including increased catch limits and extended “Mack Days” fishing tournaments. Tribal officials, however, believe the angler-based approaches have been insufficient.

So far, Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks leadership has been murky in its response to the tribal proposal.

In a recent letter to the tribes, department Director Joe Maurier wrote, “I am committed to putting a gill netting pilot program together.”

But in the same letter, he said the state cannot agree to the advisory committee process proposed by the tribes. And he said, “It is our legal counsel’s opinion that our plan implementation decisions will trigger an environmental review process.”

In responding, the new tribal chairman, E.T. “Bud” Moran, made repeated references to the tribes pursuing a review under the National Environmental Policy Act to launch the netting project this year.

But Hunt and Flathead Wildlife Inc. contend that this type of project warrants the most rigorous type of review, an environmental impact statement, and those usually take more than a year to complete.

An environmental impact study that was done for a multi-year project to suppress non-native fish populations in small alpine lakes in and around the Jewel Basin took several years to complete.

That study was necessary partly because the project was funded by the Bonneville Power Administration, a federal agency. Because the netting project also would be partly funded by the BPA, Hunt said, it requires a complete environmental impact study.

Flathead Wildlife and others critical of the project are concerned that it could result in unintended environmental consequences and destroy the lake’s most popular fishery with widespread economic impacts.

They question whether the suppression efforts actually would improve the recovery of bull trout and other native species.

“We believe this project will have a profound influence on the human environment, [with] biological, social, economic and environmental consequences,” the club’s leadership wrote in an open letter to Noonan, the deputy director.

“Our club is concerned that FWP is ignoring existing laws by silently allowing the Tribe to rush headlong into an ‘experimental’ gill netting program on Flathead Lake,” the letter states.

Reporter Jim Mann may be reached at 758-4407 or by e-mail at jmann@dailyinterlake.com