http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,...634582,00.html

Article Published: Tuesday, September 16, 2003
Wildlife experts blast Owens
Ex-DOW officials: Business interests trump protection




By Theo Stein
Denver Post Environment Writer
Former top officials in the Colorado Division of Wildlife are blasting
Gov. Bill Owens' administration for what they say is a pattern of
favoring businesses and groups that want to use the forests over
protection of wildlife.
Critics, including a former Division of Wildlife director and a top
researcher, charge that Owens' Department of Natural Resources has
limited wildlife managers' ability to comment to the federal
government on new national forest plans, off-road use of motorized
vehicles and other development.

Perry Olson, director of the Division of Wildlife from 1988 to 1995,
is one of 58 former employees who wrote Owens last week complaining
that the administration has systematically degraded the DOW's ability
to protect wildlife and its habitat.


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"It just seems to me that the amount of political control that is
exerted at the decision-making level is just being blown way out of
proportion by this administration," Olson said. "And I'm a Republican,
damn it."

The letter-writers said they are worried that an ongoing study of
reorganization at the Department of Natural Resources will "further
place the (wildlife) division under political control."

DNR director Greg Walcher dismissed the criticism. "These are the same
old complaints we keep getting from the same small group of
employees," he said.

Owens said he wasn't surprised by the criticism: "There are a number
of things we are doing differently compared to how DNR was managed
under different administrations," Owens said Monday. "Bureaucracy does
not like to change. This is as natural as the sun coming up in the
morning.

"They can cloak it in terms of concern over the science and
micromanagement, but in a democracy, one of the reasons we have a
change in government is to have a change in management."

More than a dozen current and former wildlife division employees
interviewed by The Denver Post cited what they said were examples of
DNR interference:

Former wildlife research leader Bruce Gill studied mule deer decline
in 1999. After the study was done, Gill said, he received a call from
Tim Pollard, the DNR's assistant director of wildlife and parks. Gill
said Pollard tried to persuade him to rewrite his conclusions to
implicate coyotes in the mule deer deaths. At the time, groups
representing hunters, outfitters and guides were pushing the state to
resume killing coyotes to increase deer herds.

Pollard said the study "was going to upset the stakeholders and could
I change this report and make predation a bigger part of it?" Gill
said. "I told him I wouldn't because that's not the truth." Poor
habitat and other factors were at least as important as coyotes, he
said.

Pollard declined to comment.

Walcher has acknowledged that in 2000, he edited DOW comments on the
federal government's White River National Forest Plan to omit concerns
from district wildlife managers about the impact of illegal roads,
logging and proposals for new ski lifts on wildlife. Walcher said that
most of the division's concerns stayed in the document but that he
balanced the interests of all the department's agencies.

In 2002, the DNR failed to include 20 pages of comments from wildlife
biologists on a new plan to manage off-road vehicles in the White
River National Forest.

The biologists urged closure of unpermitted roads. Walcher's official
comments said the Forest Service should not close roads unless it
could prove they were detrimental to wildlife and urged officials to
allow existing unpermitted roads without further studies.

When the flap came to light last March, former Wildlife Director John
Mumma said it was inappropriate for the state to so strongly favor the
off-road industry.

Walcher said he never saw the biologists' comments. But his deputy
director, Pollard, did, according to an environmental group that got a
copy of the document from him two weeks before the comment deadline.

A DOW official ultimately took the blame for the incident, saying the
document got lost on his desk.

This spring, several biologists said they cringed as Walcher lobbied
the U.S. Department of the Interior to grant Colorado counties
rights-of-way through large areas of undeveloped federal land for
ranching and public use.

Numerous studies show off-road vehicle use harms wildlife. But agency
biologists weren't consulted about the issue.

"I don't think anyone at the DOW expects to prevail every time," said
former wildlife manager Gene Byrne. The biologists "just want to have
their input heard," he said. "If policymakers want to disregard it or
temper it, that's their prerogative. But to cut us off at the knees is
inexcusable."

The wildlife employees said the DNR's track record makes them wary of
the reorganization study.

Recommendations, which could include consolidating all nine natural
resources divisions under one roof, are due this month.

Walcher says he hopes to save between $15 million and $20 million of
the $168 million natural resources budget.

But former employees predict any savings will come from drastic
personnel cuts or by diverting hunting and fishing fees collected by
the DOW to other divisions. The DOW receives no state money.

Eddie Kochman, the DOW's former aquatic section leader, is lobbying
legislators to review the proposed reorganization.

Kochman said Walcher rebuffed his offer to have former employees
contribute to the study.

The 58 people who signed the letter accumulated 1,500years of service
at the agency, he said.

Walcher said it's up to current employees to recommend efficiencies.
"I don't know why former employees think they should be consulted," he
said. "They don't work there anymore."

Walcher's defenders note that he recently agreed with the wildlife
division about proposed natural gas drilling on the Roan plateau near
Rifle.

In comments submitted to the Bureau of Land Management, Walcher
adopted wildlife's recommendations against drilling on part of the
plateau and for directional drilling to limit development of roads and
well pads nearby.

But even some of the DOW's most prominent critics are taking the
division's side.

State Sen. Jack Taylor, R-Steamboat Springs, authored an unsuccessful
1995 bill to enhance the DNR's authority over wildlife, and later
backed a similar successful bill.

Now Taylor is dismayed that Walcher failed to consult the legislature
about the reorganization.

"That's what really bothers me - is that this appears to be going on
in a vacuum," said Taylor, a member of the Senate committee that
oversees the DNR.

A sportsmen's group that regularly has criticized the wildlife agency
has now turned its guns on the DNR.

"We may have disagreed with the division on many specific issues, but
if you don't maintain autonomous and professional management of
wildlife, if that function is to be directed by political whim, that
does not bode well for the state of Colorado," said Jerry Hart,former
president of the United Sportsmen's Council. The council supported the
DNR on the mule deer issue.

Hart said the fact that so many former employees and wildlife
commissioners signed the letter should signal that the DOW is in
peril. "I think this is a major, major decision point," he said.

Environmentalists are worried, too.

The Colorado Environmental Coalition is taking a much stronger stand
than the administration on the Roan Plateau, seeking to have 38,000
acres of the 73,000-acre study area declared wilderness to block any
development at all.

And the wildlife agency's future is troublesome, too, said coalition
spokeswoman Elise Jones.

"I think the greatest concern is this increasing trend of
micromanagement and the stifling of independent scientific analysis,
like on the White River National Forest Plan," Jones said. "We can't
get the (wildlife) division to speak frankly about the impact of these
plans on wildlife."

http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,...634416,00.html

Article Published: Tuesday, September 16, 2003
Owens seeks Species Act changes
Governor to stress recovery, keeping animals, plants off endangered
list




By Theo Stein
Denver Post Environment Reporter
BIG SKY, Mont. - Gov. Bill Owens is pushing for major changes to the
Endangered Species Act.
Owens said he plans to seek reform of the landmark 1973 legislation
based on principles adopted by the Western Governors' Association
Monday and on programs developed in Colorado.

Those principles include trying to prevent species from making the
endangered list, and working as soon as they are designated to develop
plans for their recovery.

Owens will seek the changes as chairman of the natural-resources
committee of the National Governors Association, a post he assumed
earlier this summer.

More than 1,300 animals, fish and plants have been designated as
threatened or endangered, but fewer than 30 have recovered
sufficiently to be taken off the list, Owens told the Western
governors Monday.


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"So much of the attention and energy is on listing when it should be
on recovery," Owens said later in an interview. "There's no reason in
the world we can't start adding to the other side of the equation and
de-list species, or helping them so they are never listed in the first
place."

But environmentalists were skeptical of Owens' commitment to
endangered species.

Owens' support for water and energy development will harm the habitat
that endangered species need to survive, said Jacob Smith, director of
the Paonia-based Center for Native Ecosystems.

"The governor wants to talk about endangered-species programs because
he knows the public supports them," Smith said. "We can plant as many
pure-bred, hatchery-raised greenback cutthroat trout as we want into
state rivers and streams, but until we protect and recover the
habitat, we will not have recovered the species."

Environmentalists credit the Endangered Species Act with preventing
extinction of the bald eagle, grizzly bear and gray wolf in the lower
48 states, and halting the decline of hundreds of other species.

But critics - including Owens - say the restrictions are costly and
never ending, interfere with resource development and private-property
rights, and are largely unsuccessful.

On Monday, the Western Governors' Association adopted two resolutions
on endangered-species management, both co-authored by Owens and
Republican Gov. Dirk Kempthorne of Idaho.

One would encourage the federal government to give states increased
responsibility for conservation and recovery plans. It would also
allow states or groups to sue to contest endangered-species listings.
Under current law, only denials of species listings may be appealed.

It would also authorize protection of multiple species in an imperiled
ecosystem, increase incentives for landowners to protect habitat and
encourage government help for declining species before they are
listed.

The second resolution would require the federal government to
cooperate with states to adopt goals for species recovery and removal
from the list as soon as designation occurs.

Many of Owens' proposals are based on Colorado's reintroduction of the
Canada lynx and other endangered-species programs.

Colorado officials say their recent decision to move the river otter
from endangered to threatened status on their own species list is a
model for the federal government. The otter, which never needed
federal protection, was trapped out of the state by 1906. A
reintroduction program has allowed the animals to recolonize more than
200 miles of waterways.

State officials also point to programs that breed endangered fish for
release as models.

Environmentalists, however, say the Colorado programs are promising
but unfinished. Recovering populations of the Canada lynx and several
species of endangered fish still need help, they say.

"In some cases it seems like we are on the road to success," Smith
said. "But by no means are we in a position to say they are successful
yet."

Smith also disputed Owens' complaint that the large number of listed
species and the few recoveries mean the Endangered Species Act is
broken.

"The data is clear - species listed under the act do not go extinct,"
Smith said. "It's true that the government has not had a lot of
success recovering species, but that seems to be an issue of
inadequate funding."