The former Southwest Regional Fisheries Coordinator has joined the former head of Threatened, Endangered and Sensitive Species for the Forest Service in the Southwest, in condemning overgrazing, logging, and destruction of river habitats.
The following article by Ian Hoffman appeared in the Albuquerque Journal on March 5, 1998. It was syndicated around the Southwest, appearing in the Arizona Republic under the title "Forest Service draws fire of 2 biologists: Wildlife loses out to logging, grazing, ex-officials say."
Frustrated Biologists Blast Forest Service
Top-ranked biologists Leon Fager and Jim Cooper bowed out of the U.S. Forest Service's Southwest office after years of frustration. But they aren't going quietly.
The former chiefs of the region's endangered species and fisheries programs are openly condemning a senior management culture they say is enslaved to logging and grazing at alarming cost to fish, wildlife and their habitats.
The two biologists said they grew tired of having staff and money pulled away from preserving wildlife to instead defend logging and grazing against citizen lawsuits.
"Livestock grazing on Southwestern National Forests is the major reason that ecosystems are deteriorating, species are near extinction and watersheds have lost much of their ability to yield high quality and quantities of water," Fager, a 31-year service veteran, wrote in a Feb. 23 letter to Forest Service chief Mike Dombeck.
Fager urged Dombeck to fire Southwest line managers who show "unwillingness to manage resources for the public good instead of the financial benefit of the livestock industry."
He also called on Dombeck to send an independent team of scientists and economists to the Southwest to study grazing, its financial costs and its harm to the environment.
"The region is now ęcircling the wagons' and spending millions of taxpayer dollars to defend a livestock grazing program that has outlived its value and needs to be phased out as an inappropriate use of national forests in the 21st century," Fager wrote.
Cooper took early retirement in January as the region's fisheries chief. After 28 years of government work, he felt increasingly isolated inside his own agency and frustrated at its habit of reacting to, rather than preventing,
crises over wildlife and habitat.
"We took all of our people out of the field and put tremendous emphasis on proving the Mexican spotted owl did not need to be listed (as an endangered species.) And the reason we did that was because it was a threat to the timber program," Cooper said. "Congress is shrinking the dollars down, and we are putting all our effort into saving the timber industry and the range (grazing) program We're entrenched in a reactive mode."
Acting Southwest Regional Forester Gilbert Vigil defended the region as a good steward of natural resources.
"Considering our ecosystems -- which includes our communities -- we don't just move in there and make drastic changes overnight," he said. "I think we're making progress."
Cooper was quietly sidelined, he said, when he defended a team of fisheries biologists who last year issued a sharply worded indictment of grazing and its damage to riverside forests and grasses.
Called riparian habitat, these corridors of water and greenery are shrinking in the Southwest. They make up less than 1 percent of the Forest Service's 21 million acres in New Mexico and Arizona. Eighty-four percent
fail to meet the Forest Service grade for ecosystem health.
Roughly 70 percent of the Southwest's rare plants and animals live in riparian areas or rely on them for food, shelter or breeding ground. And plainly they're essential for fish. "There's a lot of rhetoric being tossed around about recreation and riparian areas being so valued. I hear a lot of talk but I don't see the walk," Cooper said. "While we're talking out of one side of our mouths, internally we're slam-dunking any biologist who speaks up and says, ęHey, there's something wrong.' And that's basically why I left. I spoke up a few times too often."
For years, the service's Southwest Region has suffered attack from the outside world -- citizen lawsuits, protests and critical press.
Just last year, insiders joined the pack. Fager and Cooper are the highest ranking dissidents yet, making their comments arguably the most damaging.
They come at a critical time for the Southwest Region. As the nation's new battleground for endangered species, it is fighting more environmental and public-records lawsuits than any other part of the country.
And most of its senior managers just bailed out, including the region's timber and grazing chiefs. Former Regional Forester Charles Cartwright resigned earlier under the cloud of sexual harassment charges. In short, the region's Old Guard is thinning.
"Here's a chance to replace those folks with people who are sensitive to the demands of the public, and that's not for cows," Fager said in a phone interview.
Dombeck has named Forest Service lands director and lawyer Eleanor S. "Ellie" Towns to replace Cartwright. Towns is due in Albuquerque to take over the region in April.
It is Fager's hope that she or Dombeck will replace his and Cooper's former immediate boss, Jim Lloyd, the Southwest Region's Director of Wildlife, Fish and Rare Plants.
"He does not support the sensitive species program, hinders those working for him and seems to always support continued livestock grazing regardless of its faults. He sees himself as a ęteam player' and a defender of the status quo," Fager wrote Dombeck.
The letter stunned Lloyd when a reporter faxed him a copy on Wednesday. He worked with Fager six years and with Cooper 20 years.
"If I'm being criticized as a team player with management because I'm communicating, well, then OK," Lloyd said. "What I've been trying to do is work with management to make change happen, rather than just being on the outside."
Lloyd called Fager and Cooper "valued employees" and agreed that "timber and range have taken a higher seat at the table" than protection of natural resources during his tenure.
"We've been in litigation, we've been trying to change," he said. "But the funding has decreased. We're grossly understaffed. It's been a tremendous workload, and things don't happen overnight.
It's unclear what Dombeck or Towns will make of the latest criticisms.
"I don't know what Mike will do. I think he'll probably want to know more about it and I think he'll come to us," said Vigil, the acting forester.