Planning For The Future

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) has just taken the first steps in creating a new management plan for the Columbia National Wildlife Refuge. On June 16, 2009, a "scoping" meeting was held in Othello to gather concerns, ideas, suggestions—whatever the public wanted to tell us—for developing a new management plan, known within the agency as a "Comprehensive Conservation Plan" (CCP). These ideas, and those collected over a 30-day period ending July 16, will be considered by us over the next year or so as we develop a draft CCP. The draft will then be released for public review, after which we'll develop the final CCP with the help of comments received on the draft.

If you'd like to be involved, here are some resources to help.

• Planning Update #1 (1.10MB PDF)
• Issues Possibly To Be Addressed (PDF)
• Scoping Comment Sheet (PDF)

If you would like to provide scoping comments, you have several options. You can:

1. Print out the Scoping Comment Sheet above and mail it to Columbia NWR Comments, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, 64 Maple Street, Burbank, WA 99323
2. Send comments to our email address, mcriver@fws.gov. Please include "Columbia NWR Comments" in the subject line.
3. Submit comments from our Contact page. Again please include "Columbia NWR Comments" in the subject line.
4. Fax your comments to (509) 546-8303.
5. Drop your comments off at our office, 8:30-3:30 Monday-Friday.

Please have your comments submitted or postmarked by July 16, 2009.