The Bonneville Power Administration will not pay for gill netting lake trout on Flathead Lake unless there is management consensus between the state of Montana and the Confederated Salish-Kootenai Tribes, and talks have been underway on developing a new co-management plan for the lake.

Over the last couple of years, the tribes have developed a draft environmental impact statement with alternatives that call for varying degrees of netting on the lake along with other measures for suppressing non-native lake trout for the benefit of native bull trout.

Flathead Wildlife Inc., a Northwest Montana rod and gun club that staunchly opposes gill netting, recently wrote to BPA objecting to the agency funding any netting work on the lake.

The director of BPA’s fish and wildlife division, William Maslen, responded by saying that the tribes have proposed netting as part of an overall strategy to the Northwest Power and Conservation Council.

Maslen said netting and other major management actions are “dependent on consensus of the co-managers (state and tribe) who have shared fishery management authority. If the co-managers agree and either party requests funds from BPA, then as part of our decision on whether or not to fund the proposal, BPA would undertake its own environmental analysis of the proposal to comply with the National Environmental Policy Act and other federal laws.”

According to Flathead Wildlife President Bill Matthews, “We took that as good news. It sounds like they’re not going to fund it until there’s a co-management plan in place, and they would do a full environmental assessment on it before they fund it.”

But Tom McDonald, director of the tribal fish and wildlife division, said it wasn’t news to him.

He said BPA already helps pay for the Mack Days spring and fall fishing events, which have been and will continue to be the main lake trout suppression tool on the lake, and tribal officials propose to pay for netting “with our own hydropower mitigation fund from Kerr Dam.”

The proposal to net on Flathead Lake has been highly controversial, partly because Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks declined to be involved with the project.

Department officials regarded the tribal environmental review process to be inadequate in terms of public involvement, and they believe the benefits of netting are overestimated while the potential impacts of netting are underestimated in the tribal environmental study.

The state and the tribes have also been on different pages regarding a co-management plan that expired in 2010.

While both parties continue to manage the lake acknowledging that plan, state officials want to develop a new plan and tribal officials want to fully implement the expired plan, a goal that includes gill netting to suppress lake trout.

The Flathead Reservation Fish and Wildlife Board, an advisory panel of state and tribal appointees, also wants to achieve goals in the expired plan. In August, the board endorsed the action alternatives in the tribal draft environmental impact statement, all of which include different degrees of netting.

That recommendation reinforced previous direction from the board, which has “requested full implement of the 2000 co-management plan prior to engaging any new planning cycle.”

The board also recommended “a re-engagement of formal discussions between the tribes and Fish, Wildlife and Parks, with the purpose of re-convening a joint technical committee, establishing effective yearly co-management plans and reports, and cooperatively implementing lake trout suppression efforts on Flathead Lake, as mandated by the existing co-management plan.”

In a letter to tribal Chairman Joe Durglo, Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks Director Jeff Hagener outlined the state’s position.

“Specifically, FWP wishes to pursue with the tribes a new 10-year co-management plan as was done in 1999/2000,” he wrote. “As that plan development may take some time, in the interim, FWP proposes to jointly cooperate in a research netting project that will help us better assess management possibilities for a revised plan. The completed co-management plan would then guide future management direction.”

Developing a new co-management plan came up during a Flathead Reservation Fish and Wildlife Board teleconference earlier this week.

The tribes were proposing elimination of a slot limit restriction preventing the removal of 30- to 36-inch lake trout, as well as a restriction that anglers could keep only one lake trout over 36 inches per day. The regulations are intended to promote a lake trout trophy fishery.

Eliminating the regulations requires the approval of the tribal council and the Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks Commission.

Jim Satterfield, the state’s Region One supervisor, raised the concern that if the board recommended eliminating the regulations, the commission may be in a put in a position of voting to keep the regulations in place. He said eliminating the slot limit is something that should be addressed under a new co-management plan.

The board decided to delay a recommendation on the regulations until Dec. 4, partly to allow the state commission to comply with public notification rules before making a regulation change.

“The tribes and the department are negotiating right now for co-management, so I didn’t want to put the cart before the horse,” he said.

McDonald expressed frustration that the state has not previously weighed in on the slot limit. The state submitted more than 20 pages of comments regarding the draft environmental impact statement, but he said there is “not one word” pertaining to elimination of the slot limit, a proposal that is included in all three of the action alternatives that call for netting on the lake.

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