Lane Clezie knows hunting and firearms.
The lifelong sportsman and third generation Pocatelloan has served in numerous executive level positions with Safari Club International. He has been nominated for the Budweiser Sportsman of the Year Award. He applies his expertise to a number of outdoors television shows, such as The Best of the West and Pro Hunts. And his custom firearm stocks have been auctioned off for thousands of dollars.
He gets particularly excited when he talks about a new series of rifle scopes designed and manufactured by Huskemaw Long Range Optics, where he serves in their strategic development department.
Their scopes, he said, provide shooters with the most accurate shot possible.
“If you have a range finder and the animal is 350 yards away, you turn the turret on the scope to the distance and it will calculate the shot to your rifle’s ballistics,” he said.
Now, Clezie will be looking to apply his hunting and outdoors knowledge to the public policy arena.
In July, Gov. C.L. “Butch” Otter appointed Clezie to the seven-member Idaho Fish and Game Commission. Clezie will represent the southeast region and will serve his term until June 2018.
He will be succeeding Pocatello attorney Randy Budge.
“The biggest thing is to represent sportsmen,” he said. “But we also need to manage wildlife as effectively as possible.”
Clezie says there are a number of ongoing wildlife and conservation issues he hopes to address during his tenure. One key issue involves the wolves in the Gem State.
He recently visited Stonebreaker Ranch in the Chamberlain Basin in northern Idaho. At one time, the area was heavily populated with elk. But the locals told him they hadn’t seen much elk since wolves were reintroduced to the landscape.
Clezie says the area historically had a 100 percent elk harvest success rate. He has seen other once-renowned elk hunting regions in Idaho decline over the years.
“Wolves have caused turmoil for sportsmen,” he said. “We’ll never get rid of the wolves, all we can do is manage them. It’s an important issue for hunters and non-hunters, such as ranchers.”
He cites the grizzly bears in the Yellowstone Ecosystem as another important conservation issue in Idaho. Since the grizzlies were placed on the federal threatened species list in the 1970s, their population in the Yellowstone region, including sections of Northeast Idaho, has skyrocketed.
“They were managed very well, but they’ve expanded into other areas, where other domestic animals serve as a tasty morsel,” he said.
Clezie says he is proud of a new study examining antelope populations in Southeast Idaho, which he says have declined in recent years.
“We’re concerned why antelope are not repopulating as much as we think they should,” he said. “You can drive right across the border in Wyoming and see antelope everywhere. Why don’t we have that here?”
Clezie got his start with conservation fundraising in 1985, when he founded the banquet system for the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation. At the time, he worked in commercial construction but he now works as a real estate agent.
Since then, he has helped solicit millions of dollars for a variety of conservation projects.
One project he cites in particular was securing federal funds to purchase a stretch of land for mule deer in Swenson Canyon in the 90 Percent Range near Soda Springs. The land was being threatened with residential development.
“It would have broken the migration route for the deer,” he said. “It was great for Idaho to secure that winter range for the mule deer.”
Clezie has been married to Barbara for 45 years and has three sons: Wade, Todd and Wes.