An Interview with Bob Overly, Enforcement Officer, North Puget Sound Region, Detachment 10 Bob Overly is a veteran WDFW enforcement officer who has served some 28 years with the Department. He currently is assigned to Detachment 10 (north King County). A native of Gig Harbor, he graduated from Washington State University with a bachelor of science degree in wildlife biology, and a master's degree in range management.

Q:How has your work changed since you started with WDFW? A: I did my master's research with the department in ‘72-‘73 on the effect roads had on big-game distribution. In 1975 I became a wildlife control agent in King County. The first year I had 175 complaints, most of them in Seattle. By 1980 I was up to 600 complaints a year. I split the county with another officer who came on then and trained him in the control work By 1983 we were up to 600 complaints each. The Department no longer handles nuisance animal complaints; instead we authorize private individuals to charge for their services under the Nuisance Wildlife Control Officers (NWCO) program. The Department monitors NWCO participants and makes sure they follow rules and regulations. NWCO is nationwide now. It started back in the northeast; there they have been doing it for over 20 years. With nuisance wildlife going to the NWCOs, the Department of Fish and Wildlife has retained responsibility for handling dangerous wildlife and ungulates-- deer, moose and elk, as the case may be. Dangerous wildlife is something I and a lot of the other WDFW enforcement officers deal with almost on a daily basis. I took a cougar out of Discovery Park in Seattle early in the ‘80s. And then I didn't handle another cougar for 10 years. Since 1990, I think I've been involved with probably 25 cougars; five since last summer. Q:What accounts for the dramatic increase in cougar complaints? A: We changed our policy, our management plan, when we went from open season on cougars. Just prior to when I came on, there was a bounty on them. Then we went to a season with a tag. Once that took place our cat population started to increase. Our cougar population should be crashing because we don't have the deer and elk that we used to have. Here in King County our elk population out of the White River, Green River, Cedar River watersheds is down. Our deer population in game management units 460, 448 and even 466, 472 is down. So if those are primary foods for cougar, our cougar population should be crashing. I don't know how it's staying as high as it is but the surplus is coming out and becoming a nuisance to the public. Unfortunately cougar territory, their habitat, is getting smaller and any surplus cats end up out on the periphery because juvenile cats aren't as strong as the adults. They look for a territory where they aren't going to get whipped, that's the marginal habitat which is near people. And that's when they start eating cats and dogs and goats and sheep. I think we can thank cougars for some of the lack of coyote problems. We're finding that they eat coyotes rather regularly. We picked up one that was killed on Interstate 90 one day that was actually hit by a car while it was chasing a coyote across the highway. Animals are very mobile. We've put radio collars on cougars down by Mt. St. Helens, and the same cats were later killed north of Monroe. We had one cat that came out of the Green River watershed to Kirkland. We put him back in the watershed and then he came out and went to North Bend, then Preston, then he was killed on Woods Creek north of Monroe. Q:What about black bear incidents? A: With bear we don't really get that many honest- to-goodness threats to people, it's more a nuisance thing. At Christmastime this year, we captured one in Issaquah. He was basically spreading garbage all over the place and there was concern that as a juvenile he was learning a bad habit which would get him in trouble later. We ended up taking him up into the woods and trying to build him a little den. We cut boughs off fir trees and made padding out of moss and then we put fir branches like a lean-to with an opening. And we put food in the den. If it snowed this place was protected, the limbs would protect him. The main thing with a bear den is that you make it not too big so their body heat can keep them warm enough. The bear was little, only maybe 65 to 85 pounds. I figured he was a yearling. He was in good shape. You can see it on the website [see Dangerous Wildlife Complaints]; his tummy was nice and round. His chance of surviving if he stayed in the den was o.k.. This is the first time I've been involved in building a den like that. He hadn't done anything and he was little. He just got into garbage, you can't justify killing a bear for something like that. So we went to the effort to build the den to give him an opportunity to survive. We put an ear tag on him, so if he gets in trouble again we'd know. Q:What do you have to consider when you try to relocate a cougar or bear? A: This bear was just a garbage guy. When they try to rip off a screen door and screens off windows that type of stuff that's a different story. Some are just ornery. And you end up with those. Where do I put a bear like that? If I turn him loose and you run into him out hiking you could get hurt. As an officer, I take it upon myself to protect the public and resource. I take very seriously what I do out there. It's not a game. It's life or death, whether for humans or the bear, you have to take a look at the whole picture. You're limited on where you can put that animal. In the wintertime you're limited by snow where you can release him. In wintertime I can't pull a trailer up in the mountains with my vehicle; you'd need to switch to a snowmobile. Don't have that. And you're dumping the bear in five foot of snow, where's he going to go? You could build a den up there but when the snow melts he's essentially five feet off the ground or whatever. You have to work with what's available. Q:What can people do to minimize problems with wildlife? A: It would help if people learned to live with wildlife. I was born and raised in this state; we had cougar and bears around us and we knew it. In ‘71, '72, ‘73 I probably walked at least 500 miles a summer in the woods. But I never saw a cougar. This year was the first time I've ever seen a cougar in the wild that I wasn't called in to locate with dogs or something. I've spent a lot of time hunting and fishing, working in the woods and this was the first time I'd ever seen one. It was a big cat and I got to watch him for 10 minutes. He was within about 80 yards of me and he didn't pay any attention to me. But I thought it was neat. But the thing we're seeing that people are moving out to the edge of wildlife habitat and then get surprised by what they see. They're not comfortable when they see wild animals. We've had a situation here recently where a gal moved out here from back east to work for Microsoft. She didn't buy a condo in Redmond, Kirkland or Bellevue; she moved out to the back side of Duvall. She reported she's got a "herd" of bears in her backyard. Bears don't come in herds. There was another couple who bought property near Carnation, and saw two bobcats in their back yard. They were convinced the bobcats were going to kill their kids. We've never had a problem with bobcats. Then they reported they saw a bear another time. I said, you know what, your solution is a condo in downtown Seattle. People create some problems. Up on the pass, the restaurants up there had a grease barrel, where they dumped cooking grease. They couldn't understand why they didn't have to go to the dump with it. The other place was a restaurant/hotel up there. They had a big dumpster with no fence or anything. At one time we had five bears feeding there. The dumpster was full of goodies, leftover pancakes and syrup. Q:You've worked many years with the Department-- what were some of the most memorable incidents from your career? A: The Discovery Park cougar was one I particularly remember. I got called on a Saturday night and when I got down it was an area adjacent to Discovery Park in Seattle. I went around the house, I didn't see it. I missed him by minutes. The following day I got called out again to Discovery Park. A jogger had seen the cougar. So I went down there with hounds, and we were unable to locate it. And then Wednesday night we finally located the cat at 1 a.m. or 1:30 in the morning. We got him up a tree and I darted him with immobilization drugs and down over the hill we went with him. The news media was right behind. We used their lights to get the cat out of the hole he ran into. Another time I was called out to cover a fellow officer's area when he was on vacation and I was given very little background other than that some people had reported a beaver dam that was plugging an outlet to a lake, flooding waterfront property. People told me it was a private club, here's the combination to the gate and come on in. Someone will meet you at the club house and they did. When I showed up at the club house a lady walked up to the screen door with nothing on because it was a nudist camp. She told me I needed to talk to her husband who was down grading the road since he was the one in charge that day. So I went down to talk to him and he was sitting on the grader, grading the road. Naked! All he had on was a pair of work boots. That's more than his wife had on. I don't usually stutter but I did that day. One of my best days was when I happened to be out with another officer and we were towing a Department boat. At the Snoqualmie Mill Pond we spotted a family that had just tipped over in a canoe. It was a man with a 2 year old and an 8 year old. The 2 year old was on the way to hypothermia. We were able to rescue them and get them back to shore. We don't usually drive by there with a boat; we only use the boat about 15 days a year. We just happened to get there right after he tipped over. It was an act of God.