Former Idaho Fish and Game official pens book on wildlife management, history in Idaho

“Idaho Wildlife: History, Exploitation, Politics and Management,” was written by Jerry Thiessen, of Lewiston. Many will recognize Thiessen as the former supervisor of the Idaho Department of Fish and Game’s Clearwater Region. He retired in that post in 1995 following a 31-year career with the agency.

During an interview, Thiessen said experiences early in his career in which he was exposed to the human forces that weigh on management of big game herds sparked an interest in the origins of the agency he worked for, and the Idaho Fish and Game Commission.

The commission, created by a 1938 citizens initiative, was designed to insulate fish and wildlife management from rank political influence. It was willed into being by hunters and anglers and against the desires of the state’s politicians.

Thiessen started collecting documents and kept it up for three decades. After he retired, he started to put it all together.

The book covers the state’s fish and wildlife literally from the beginning and “the formation of the earth.” It includes chapters on Idaho’s iconic native and some nonnative species like mule deer, whitetail deer, elk, pronghorn, moose, bighorn sheep, bison, pheasants and wolves.

Thiessen also covers the evolution of wildlife management in the state, including conflicts between livestock and wildlife, formation of early game preserves, the state game warden system that predated the existing department and formation of the commission.

“I started writing not with a book in mind necessarily — chapter by chapter — but ended up with a sizable manuscript,” he said.

He spends a fair amount of time on the early management of fish and game, the creation of the Fish and Game Commission and the enduring, and he says critical, relationship between hunters, anglers, the commission and the agency.

“It was strictly a sportsmen’s effort and as a result, the commission has a virtual contract with sportsmen that they will do what is scientifically correct based on the best information available, and they will communicate with the sportsmen,” he said. “It’s incumbent on the commission to remember they have this contract with the sportsmen. It’s really, I think, (impossible) to have a functioning fish and game department without the sportsmen.”

The 500-page book is self-published and available through www.alibris.com for $29.95.