Director's Message

According to an internal memorandum penned by a senior official at the Wyoming Game and Fish Department (WGFD), Governor Geringer’s "open for business" policy now includes censoring official comments drafted by the state’s wildlife professionals.

The governor has admonished the WGFD that all written comments directed to federal land management agencies, such as the BLM and Forest Service, must conform to the state’s official position — as defined by the governor — or they won’t be forwarded to the federal agencies. The governor has assigned enforcement of the new "one-voice" policy to his Office of Federal Lands Policy (OFLP), which ironically is headed by Art Reese, a former WGFD employee.

The internal department memo paints a grim picture of exactly how far this administration is willing to go to muzzle state wildlife officials when necessary to facilitate development activities on our public lands, even if doing so jeopardizes the state’s wildlife resources. The memo reads, in part: "Over the last several months, there has beencontinued pressure on state agencies to word our letters so that they were less at odds with the governor’s officialposition.…We are now being told that if our department letter is in any way contrary to the governor’s or thestate’s position, OFLP will not pass along our letter to the federal agencies, unless we revise it to better fit the state’sposition....Wording or content that would constitute ‘contrary’ has been broadened (e.g., we can no longer use theword ‘recommend’, even in a technical sense)....We have had several letters returned for revisions: Shoshone Forestgrazing permits, Fiddleback timber thinning on the Shoshone Forest, the Pinedale Anticline oil and gas letter, theSnake River RMP letter, and the proposed TMDL regulations….There were attempts by OFLP at deleting entire sectionsof some of these letters."

Federal land and wildlife management agencies like the Bureau of Land Management, Fish and Wildlife Service and Forest Service depend heavily on the expertise of state resource agencies to ensure interdisciplinary, scientifically sound analyses of environmental impacts from activities proposed on public lands, as required by the National Environmental Policy Act. The governor’s policy forbids the WGFD and other state agencies from sharing objective and meaningful analyses of the potential environmental consequences of proposed actions, and prohibits the WGFD from making recommendations that could lessen the impacts on habitat and wildlife resources.

At the same time he has been clamping down on the flow of objective environmental information from state agencies, the governor has been more aggressive in demanding "cooperating agency" status from the federal government in public land management decisions. State agencies granted cooperating agency status participate on a co-equal basis with federal agencies in the preparation of environmental assessments and impact statements, and thus are in a unique position to influence final decisions. The effect of increasing cooperating agency status for state agencies, coupled with restrictions on the content of official letters, will serve only to amplify the governor’s business-at-any-cost policies while drowning out natural resource and wildlife concerns, which apparently is the governor’s real motive.

The governor is insisting on the impossible: that all state agencies — even those with diametrically opposed statutory responsibilities and duties — speak with a single voice on natural resource and environmental policy. The problem is, they cannot and they should not. Besides being fundamentally anti-democratic, Governor Geringer’s "one-voice" policy usurps authority from the legislative branch of government by interfering with the ability of agencies to faithfully carry out the resource protection duties prescribed by law and demanded by the citizens of this state.

The governor’s edict demoralizes an agency that was not long ago widely regarded as one of the nation’s foremost wildlife management institutions, while at the same time making a mockery of an important public process. The governor should immediately rescind the "one-voice" policy and let the WGFD’s wildlife professionals do their jobs: managing — and when necessary, advocating on behalf of — our state’s rich wildlife resource. If the governor disagrees with the scientific conclusions of our state’s wildlife experts, he is always free to transmit to federal agencies the state’s official position without stifling the exchange of scientific information and ideas between land managers and wildlife professionals.

 Dan Heilig, WOC Executive Director