Make sure you’re hunting and fishing responsibly—Eastern Washington has a new captain leading the “cops in the woods.”
Captain Alan Myers now heads the Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Region 1 law enforcement.
SPR and Spokesman Review outdoors editor Michael Wright interviewed Myers about his position soon after he took the office. Listen in on their conversation here.
ELIZA BILLINGHAM: Captain Alan Myers’ work has taken him all over the place. He worked with the Navy near the Great Lakes, and then he went to the University of Washington and was selected for the Police Corps program. He was then recruited by the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife to protect shellfish, teach taser skills, and recover killer whales.
But he started his fish and wildlife career in Newport, and he's always wanted to get back to eastern Washington.
ALAN MYERS: I'm an Idaho boy. I came from Idaho, grew up in Idaho, so I wanted to get back to Region 1.
All my extended family is in Idaho. I wanted to get back closer to them. I also wanted to finish out my career kind of where I cut my teeth as an officer, as a game warden.
EB: Maybe the most obvious part of Meyer's job is investigations into predator attacks. In Eastern Washington, that means dealing with one of the country's most controversial predators.
AM: Our top predator issue is wolves right now. That's one in which it, you know, has the longest reach in policy implications and social implications, along with the politics that are involved in that.
But it also includes cougars and bears and the urban interfaces that occur as our human population extends into wild areas. Those interactions are happening more and more frequently, and we're having a lot more calls and interactions to help manage and mitigate those conflicts. But we also have other major challenges.
Natural disaster mitigation or response is one of our key mission goals and objectives. So, of course, you know, the fire season is always one in which we're heavily engaged in working with firefighter partners and other law enforcement agencies in order to help protect people from wildfire. And when those disaster incidents occur, oftentimes, Fish and Wildlife officers are the first on scene to help with evacuations and closures, road closures, and those kind of things.
Along with those, the search and rescue aspect of our job cannot be understated. And that's one in which we're seeing an uptick in requirements for work in—because of, again, increasing human populations and people that are going out and enjoying our wild spaces.
We have a whole bevy of officers with specialized skills that include, you know, technologies—we have a drone program, which we've helped find lost or injured hikers and climbers that are out there in the woods.
We also have a swift water rescue program. One of the premier swift water rescue programs in which our officers go out and help rescue people that are caught in whitewater or hazardous water conditions in lakes and rivers. That's a major component that I'm seeing a large increase in activity around.
EB: But what people don't realize, Meyer says, is how critical Fish and Wildlife officers can be for rural law enforcement in general.
AM: Fish and Wildlife officers are the ones that are oftentimes out there all alone in places very, very remote with individuals who are armed in some form or fashion, either with guns or knives.
There's no one better than a Fish and Wildlife officer or game warden when it comes to being able to use verbal judo skills and make sure to use their minds, as well as the tools that they have at their disposal to make sure that they come home safe every day and night.
No one's better than a Fish and Wildlife officer in that respect.
EB: One of Meyer's most memorable calls is a very special example of law enforcement partnership.
AM: When I was in Clarkston, early morning I get a call that there's a bear walking through downtown Clarksto—a large black bear.
At the time, I thought, ‘Nah, you know, come on.’ So I nonchalantly go down and get in my car and drive down, and I start suddenly hearing large amount of sirens wailing and just screaming and heading downtown in the vicinity of where I was told there was this bear. And I'm like, ‘Well, that's not good.’
I book on down, and sure enough, walking right down a residential street, there's a very large black bear, just moseying down the road like he owned the place. The local PD had already set up roadblocks and they had cordoned off like this was a hostage situation. And there were people running around, and it was chaotic and crazy.
And the first thing that happened was one of the supervisors on scene that was there ran up to me and goes, ‘Good, you're here. What are you going to do?’ I said, ‘Well, why don't we let it go? Why don't we let it keep walking? I think it’ll be OK.’
So what happened in all the to-do around it, the bear starts to get a little scared, and it goes and runs into somebody's backyard and hides. So we kind of have it cordoned off and in there, and I'm trying to decide, ‘Well, what do I want to do now? Do I want to just let it sleep? And it's probably berry drunk or something like that and just needs to sleep it off and it'll be gone by morning.’
Well, there was so much around it and so much police presence at that location around it that I knew it wasn't going to get any rest.
Well, next door—this was prior to marijuana being legal—the next door neighbor to this place where this bear was, had unbeknownst to us, an illicit marijuana grow. And they thought they were being raided because of all the police presence and this bear that's in the backyard.
So while I'm sitting here with this bear, I'm standing with another officer and a wildlife biologist, and we see somebody from the neighboring yard throwing marijuana plants that they just uprooted into the yard we're standing in.
So we're watching it rain down dope around us and we're going, ‘Wow, that's unexpected.’
So we had two issues to mitigate this point in time. The drug-sniffing bear was what we called it at that point.
EB: One of Meyer's first goals is to fill an agency vacancy in Ferry County. There are currently only 17 fish and wildlife officers to cover the entire eastern third of Washington.
