A spirited debate over whether King County should allow hunting in Vashon’s expansive Island Center Forest may be for naught: A county code, it turns out, appears to ban the activity.
Two Island citizens last week contacted David Kimmett, a natural resources program manager in the county’s Department of Natural Resources and Parks, after reading a news story in The Beachcomber about the county’s effort to figure out whether hunting and trail use can co-exist in the popular forest. The Islanders, Amy Carey and Rick Frye, acting separately, pointed Kimmett and other officials to a code in the county’s own books that forbids the use of a shotgun within 250 feet of a building or trail and other firearm swithin 500 feet.
Because a network of trails crisscrosses the county-owned forest and it’s ringed by houses, they said, it’s very likely a hunter could never discharge a gun without being too close to a trail or a home.
“It seems like the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing,” said Frye, who has been printing orange fliers for the last couple of years spelling out the state and county regulations around hunting.
Carey said she was not surprised to discover the law, which is part of the public safety code for the county. “It validates what we’ve all been feeling: How can this be that there’s hunting in this heavily used, county-owned forest?”
The county is now taking a fresh look at the issue in light of the public safety code. Kimmett, who oversees the 363-acre woodland southwest of Vashon town, said he and others are poring over maps to determine the distance between trail segments and whether the swaths of land in between those segments are big enough to accommodate hunting.
“My hunch is it’s not going to leave much,” he said.
Kimmett said he wasn’t aware of the public safety code — a body of law separate from the state’s hunting regulations, the main body of rules governing hunting. “It was an oversight on our part,” he said.
Ironically, he added, it appears that the last few years of trail development could force the county to put an end to hunting in Island Center Forest.
“It’s almost like we’re a victim of our own good deeds,” he said. “By putting in more trails, we’ve limited the hunting area.”
The county took on ownership of Island Center Forest five years ago, receiving it from the state Department of Natural Resources, which owned the land for logging. The county did so with a caveat: Because it wanted to ensure a smooth transfer of ownership, it decided to continue the state’s allowed uses, which included hunting.
Over the last couple of years, however, the county has begun to take a harder look at the issue. And this year, in an effort to better ensure human safety, county officials have hung bring orange courtesy vests at the forest’s main trailheads, along with cherry-red signs noting that hunting season is now under way.
Carey said she has found other codes that suggest hunting can’t take place there, including a law that says people can’t capture, tease or strike an animal with a stick or weapon while they’re in a county park.
“This code is very specific,” she said.
But Doug Williams, a spokesman for the county’s natural resources department, said Island Center Forest is considered “resource lands,” not a park. As for the public safety code, he, like Kimmett, said the county will turn to its lawyers to try to figure it out.
“We need to have time for this information to get digested,” he said.
