Federal Lawsuit Escalates Fight Over the Future of Washington Wildlife Management

On April 2, Washington Fish and Wildlife Commissioner Lorna Smith, along with Washington Wildlife First (WW1) and its Executive Director, Claire Loebs Davis, filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) Director Kelly Susewind and Deputy Director Amy Windrope. The sharply-worded, 82-page complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, alleges bullying, retaliation, viewpoint discrimination, and a broader effort by Susewind and Windrope to discredit critics of their management decisions.

“Defendant Susewind has twisted facts, ignored science, and suppressed expert dissenting viewpoints in order to serve his agenda,” wrote attorneys for Smith, Davis, and WW1.

A sitting fish and wildlife commissioner suing their agency’s director in partnership with a wildlife activist organization is highly unusual. But for Washington hunters and anglers, it’s the latest red flag that some members of the commission want to nix hunter influence throughout the agency and policy drafting process.

Accusations go as far as blaming Susewind for the deaths of two WDFW employees due to “willful failure to meet state safety standards.” In 2023, fisheries biologist Erin Peterson drowned while conducting snorkeling surveys. Less than four months later, seasonal scientific technician Mary Valentine drowned while working on a smolt trap. Both women were working alone on remote river stretches and neither were wearing life jackets.

The suit claims that safety training was not provided in either case, resulting in “multiple citations from the state Department of Labor and Industries for ‘willful serious’ violations of workplace safety laws, hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines, and two wrongful death lawsuits.”

The plaintiffs are seeking declaratory and injunctive relief, compensatory damages, punitive damages, and attorney fees. Davis and WW1’s science and advocacy director, Francisco J. Santiago-Ávila, are looking to take it further and strip Susewind of his duties.

“Washington’s wildlife needs leadership grounded in ethics, science, and public values,” said Santiago-Ávila during an August 15 commission meeting. “Instead, the director repeatedly shows contempt for the law, disdain for Washington values, disregard for employee safety, disrespect for the commission that oversees him, and indifference to the plight of wildlife he is sworn to protect. Washington Wildlife First is calling for Director Susewind’s removal and asking the people of Washington to join us.”

WDFW did not respond to MeatEater’s request for comment. But in an April 3 statement, the department said the lawsuit had not yet been served on the named defendants.

The current firestorm ignited in 2021 when the WDFW Commission released the first public draft of the Conservation Policy. The policy was designed as a guiding framework for WDFW and the commission to make decisions affecting fish, wildlife, and habitat.

But parts of the draft echoed animal rights language used by orginizations like Wildlife for All. The draft referred to the “intrinsic values of non-human nature,” said “each living individual” contributes to ecosystem health, and argued that “status quo wildlife management has not kept pace with a rapidly changing world.”

“We had commissioners citing skewed surveys from WW1 as if they were scientific evidence, and public records revealed troubling behind-the-scenes coordination, exclusion of the tribes and other behaviors,” Kelsey Ross, founder of Conservation Coalition of Washington, told MeatEater. “That decision was the clearest early sign that ideology was beginning to outweigh science.”

Along with her role at WW1, Davis is also a current board member of Wildlife for All. The organization’s mission is to reform game commissions nationwide. Former WDFW Commissioner Fred Koontz also sat on the Wildlife for All advisory board during his short commission tenure. Koontz was a key architect of the commission’s early Conservation Policy work, which included the divisive language that raised eyebrows in the hunting community.

Two months after the Conservation Policy surfaced, the commission paused and then outright banned spring black bear hunting, disregarding data collected by WDFW’s own biologists that support the hunt.

Backlash from Washington sportsmen and women was swift and fierce. It drew in record numbers of camo-clad hunters and groups like RMEF, Sportsmen’s Alliance, Backcountry Hunters and Anglers, HOWL for Wildlife, and the Conservation Coalition of Washington, who tore into the accused commissioners during public meetings.

“The decision to take away the spring bear hunt for 2022 has put our struggling ungulate population in specific areas under unnecessary pressure due to the increased predator population,” Washington bear hunter and author Douglas Boze told commissioners at the time.

In 2023, the Sportsmen’s Alliance filed suit against Commissioner Smith for simultaneously holding a position with the Jefferson County Planning Commission (JCPC) and Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission. As a direct violation of RCW 77.04.040, the Washington State Supreme Court sided with Sportsmen’s Alliance resulting in Smith resigning from the JCPC.

Two years later, WW1 turned the tables and sued over Commissioner Molly Linville’s reappointment to the WDFW citizen panel while she was also serving on a local school board. She has since resigned from that position.

Sportsmen’s Alliance then sued WDFW under the state Public Records Act, arguing the department had failed to produce documents it first requested in September 2023. Once in hand, those records fueled two tracks: an internal WDFW review and a Sportsmen’s Alliance petition asking Gov. Ferguson to remove four commissioners.

On May 6, 2025 WDFW criminal justice legal liaison Thomas R. Knoll Jr. received two partial boxes of records containing commissioner communications with outside groups. Two days later, Susewind asked him to review the materials and provide an independent assessment of whether they showed inappropriate conduct.

In what is now known as the “Knoll Memo,” Knoll concluded that Smith and Rowland posed “serious risks” to WDFW, especially with regards to conflicts of interest and public-records compliance. He also raised concerns about their relationship with Davis, saying they appeared to “have each other on speed dial.”

“This is a damning condemnation of commissioners Lorna Smith and Melanie Rowland,” said Rob Sexton, Senior Vice President of the Sportsmen’s Alliance, in a statement on their website. “While Smith and Rowland, and as this internal investigation shows, their animal-rights co-conspirator Claire Davis, try to brush the findings aside, there’s no hiding from the truth we’ve exposed: collusion, corruption, and violations of law have undoubtedly taken place.”

That same day, the Sportsmen’s Alliance petitioned Gov. Bob Ferguson to remove Smith, Baker, Rowland, and Lehmkuhl from the commission. The petition alleged the commissioners had violated public-meeting and public-records laws and accused them of “incompetence, misconduct, and malfeasance in office.”

Sportsman’s Alliance argued that commission decisions were already “preordained” before hunters, anglers, and other members of the public ever had a meaningful chance to weigh in.

Less than a week later, Susewind forwarded the Knoll Memo to Ferguson’s office. Susewind formally asked Ferguson to investigate commission conduct in an Aug. 5 letter. The director wrote that records produced through public-disclosure requests “call the conduct of several commissioners into question.” He said an independent investigation would give the governor the information needed to decide whether removal was warranted.

The Smith-Davis-WW1 lawsuit landed April 2, 2026, just days before the outside investigation was expected to be completed.

As heated as Washington’s wildlife fight has become, the state isn’t operating in a vacuum. Across the U.S., game commissions are becoming front lines in a larger battle over wildlife activists gaining too much influence on state wildlife policy.

Two years ago, Colorado voters rejected Proposition 127, a ballot initiative that would have banned hunting and trapping mountain lions and bobcats. Lynx were also named, which are already federally protected. The measure failed, with about 55% voting no.

It didn’t end there. In an April 2026 letter opposing two Polis appointees, the Colorado Wildlife Conservation Project argued the administration had shifted CPW’s “culture and values” by appointing commissioners with “extreme animal-rights and anti-hunting agendas.”

New Mexico rewrote its wildlife-governance structure in 2025. Under Senate Bill 5, wildlife is to be managed as a public trust resource with ecological, economic, and intrinsic value, as well as for use, food supply, and nonconsumptive enjoyment.

In Oregon, sportsmen are fighting a proposed radical ballot measure that would criminalize hunting, fishing, trapping, farming, breeding, and more. Vermont has been battling over trapping, coyote hounding, and nonhunting influence on wildlife policy. Alaska remains locked in court battles over predator control for caribou recovery.

WW1 and Wildlife for All describe their mission as making state wildlife management more “democratic, just, compassionate, and focused on protecting wild species and ecosystems.” To many hunters, however, that movement looks like a coordinated effort to supplant the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation.

“Whether someone hunts or not, this issue should concern anyone who values transparent government, ethical conduct, and decisions rooted in science rather than ideology,” Ross said.

“At its core, this is about preserving a wildlife management system that serves all Washingtonians and protects the hunting, fishing, and trapping heritage that has been the greatest funder and mechanism of conservation for the wildlife in our state for generations.”