The recent WDFW so called Grays Harbor Policy was a joke when it was adopted. No citizen traveling working with staff but more or less here ya go. Some insight for those interested.


Kim Thorburn, who served on the commission from 2015 to 2023, says she enjoyed the experience— until the last couple of years, which she described as “miserable.”

From her perspective, the change in the commission was the result of an intentional effort by “animal rights preservationists to try and take over commissions.”

“I’m a birder, not a hunter or angler,” she told Columbia Insight.

Thorburn said that while she’s interested in honoring the diversity of values across the state, during her last couple of years on the commission that fellow commissioners increasingly began injecting their own values into debates.

“That’s never how I saw my role. I’m supposed to be valuing the fact that there’s diversity out there, and I’m trying to be fair and equitable about distributing it,” she said.

One of Thorburn’s biggest concerns is the appointment process, which she said lacks transparency.

“I think the frustration of almost all the stakeholders— whether they’re landowners, rural communities, hunters, recreational anglers or commercial fisheries— is that their values are just not being included” in the appointment process, she said.

Thorburn acknowledged that commissioners listen to hours of public testimony.

“But they don’t hear,” she said.

As an example of how things have changed, she said that until a few years ago, the method for writing policies was transparent and inclusive. The commission directed staff to work on a new policy, which often included putting together advisory groups with various stakeholders. After numerous meetings the staff would come back to the commission with a draft.

“That’s gone by the wayside,” said Thorburn. “Their idea [now] is, all we have to do is come up with a 5-4 vote. It doesn’t matter what stakeholders are telling us. Sadly, they have an agenda.”