Whenever I wonder why more people aren’t protesting, I think of debt. We owe, we owe, so off to work we go. The income gap widens with constant reminders of homelessness and sick friends/relatives reminding us of the fragility of our lives and the expenses of medical care. Workplaces warn us that we represent The Corporation, even when we speak out as citizens. It is news and some laugh when a Jan 6^th protester gets fired because of their illegal actions, but the same holds true for lesser, legal protests on the other side of the political spectrum. Most people find they can no longer afford to protest. The wolf is in the house…and no one is saying anything!

Submit, Move

Even if you aren’t protesting, if you are a federal employee, your work is subject to political whims.

I was working with some brilliant grants officers with the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) just before the last president was elected from the Republican side of the aisle. These employees had good experience navigating the complex Washington DC bureaucracy to help disperse and manage federal funding for the most competitive proposals. Republicans ordered that their USDA office move from DC to Kansas City, and all of those grants officers left, retiring early or finding other jobs. They couldn’t leave their communities, their homes, or their histories behind.

Similarly, but with Democrats at the helm, someone, for some reason, ordered our regional Bureau of Land Management office to move from Hollister to Marina. This put the main office many more miles distant from most of the land their staff managed and, if a BLM employee wanted to stay with the agency, now they had to move or commute a long distance to work.

You can speculate about why those administrations moved the agency offices. We are lucky to have a US Government Accountability Office report showing that the rationale for the USDA move was ludicrous, and so was clearly politically motivated. We don’t have any such study about the Central Coast BLM office, but I’m guessing that it was similarly politically motivated…but why?

Shut Up or Move!

Politically motivated office moving isn’t the only way a public employee might be ordered to pack their bags for a new location or leave. State and Federal public employees working for organizations like State and Federal Parks, the Bureau of Land Management, and State and Federal Wildlife agencies are very shy about saying anything substantive at all about their work. Saying the wrong thing to the wrong person can get you transferred to an unpleasant area doing unpleasant work.

You have to understand that in order to disentangle anything one of those employees says on record.

Puzzling Quotes

I want to present a couple of puzzling quotes from the media from some State and Federal employees working on issues crucial to conservation in California. Two things to keep in mind: 1) democracy depends on an informed citizenry, and a free press is key to that; 2) reporters sometimes get quotes wrong or use them out of context.

State Wildlife Agency Speaks

The first quote is verbatim from a recording from KCBS 740 a.m. from 6/2/2023; you can listen to it here. The story was on the remarkable documentation of one of the state’s most endangered wildlife species, a wolverine. The reporter, Holly Quan, asked how the State is monitoring the wolverine population, and this is the reply from California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s (CDFW’s) David Gammons:

“That’s the $10 million question right there. It’s a pretty difficult thing to do. Estimating the number of any wild animal is a difficult thing to do whether it’s a mule deer where there is a lot of them or something like a wolverine that’s a very rare species.”

The wolverine is protected under California’s Endangered Species Act. CDFW’s mission is to “manage California’s diverse fish, wildlife, and plant resources, and the habitats upon which they depend, for their ecological values and their use and enjoyment by the public.” CDFW has a long history of underfunded monitoring programs and too few well-trained wildlife biologists to adequately manage the State’s increasingly dwindling wildlife. Mr. Gammons not only did not answer the reporter’s question, but also failed to help the public to understand how woefully inadequate the funding is for his agency to do its job. Shame on Ms. Quan for not following up to get a better answer from him.

Federal BLM Talking

Here’s another puzzling paraphrase and quote. This is from a Lookout Santa Cruz article published on 5/30/2023 by Christopher Neely. Mr. Neely asked Zachary Ormsby, BLM’s Central Coast Field Manager, about how he plans to move forward with controversial management dilemmas, including poor access planning and, given expected high visitor numbers, a lack of a science-based approach for wildlife conservation at Cotoni Coast Dairies.

Neely paraphrases the beginning of Ormsby’s answer here:

“The federal government will consider public comment and sentiment on the plan and alternatives, but BLM has the power to unilaterally decide the path forward, Ormsby says. Ormsby says a parking lot is not guaranteed or required before BLM opens the land to the broader public.”

And this is a direct quote:

“My perspective is that we’ll come up with a plan and list of options that will allow this community to move forward with confidence and comfort without filing any more appeals,” Ormsby said. “The common element among all the groups is that we love this land. The only thing we’re trying to reconcile is that we all love it collectively.”

Huh? What Did BLM say??

The paraphrased part seems like a quote from BLM’s legal counsel, basically “We can do anything we want.” The second part is more puzzling. It says a lot that he starts with ‘my perspective,’ which gives him an out for potentially not representing BLM. That last bit about ‘love’ is impossible to disentangle- enjoy trying!

Cotoni Coast Dairies is protected as a part of a National Monument as well as being part of the National Conservation Lands network. Both designations come with a regulatory framework that provides strong protections for the primary purpose of these lands: conservation. The land in question lacks the requisite science plan, which should work in tandem with a management plan, allowing management to adapt approaches to protect wildlife from the impacts of public visitation. There are no (ZERO) staff assigned to the property. There is ample evidence that the current, overstretched staff cannot adequately manage the property, even without public use.

As with the prior CDFW example, BLM’s Mr. Ormsby lost an opportunity to stress the importance of more staffing and more funding to adequately protect the property. Instead, he intoned that it would be just fine to allow the public to access the property without those resources. His dodginess isn’t unique: it would seem that there are unwritten dodginess policies coming from at least as high as the BLM California’s state director, Trump-era appointee Karen Mouritsen. All planning documents for Cotoni Coast Dairies have been reviewed at her level and none reference key conservation policies providing National Monument or National Conservation Lands protections or other policy protections for sensitive wildlife and plants. That is considerable politics, amazing with its official subservience to even prior administrations. That’s how far this culture of fear reaches.

The Dilemma of Submission

History reflects poorly on those saying anything like “I was just doing my job.” State and Federal conservation personnel have access to great power, but they walk a tight rope with the political nature of their jobs. If either Mr. Gammons or Mr. Ormsby suggest that their agencies aren’t able to execute their mandates, there might be reprisal. On the other hand, I’m sure that both of these individuals have good intentions and want to be on the side of wildlife conservation. What can they do?

There are outside organizations that can help, but are they doing enough? I’m very impressed with the work of the nonprofit organization Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics. BLM has a similar organization, but one that seems a lot less functional, the Public Lands Foundation for American Heritage. CDFW’s Mr. Gammons unfortunately has nowhere similar to turn, but there are two nonprofits left that are pointed primarily to wildlife conservation in California.

Other Avenues

Defenders of Wildlife and The Wildlife Society are two organizations that might help speak out for the heartfelt concerns of public wildlife conservation employees like Mr. Gammons and Mr. Ormsby. I’m sure that many public employees who support conservation are members of these organizations. You might consider supporting them, too! If you have to choose, I suggest you support Defenders of Wildlife. At least the local chapter of the Wildlife Society has proven much more dysfunctional in my experience, refusing to advocate for what is a mandated, routine update of California BLM’s sensitive wildlife list, whereas Defenders of Wildlife has an excellent track record of tangible wildlife conservation outcomes in California.

-this column originally appeared in Bruce Bratton’s BrattonOnline.com weekly blog