By Sherry Devlin
The Missoulian
MISSOULA – The U.S. Department of Interior is breaking the law with its plan to surrender management of the National Bison Range to the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, a national association of government resource officers insisted Monday.
In a letter to Interior Secretary Gale Norton, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility said the “wholesale turnover of federal land management to any private group, corporation or sovereign nation is a matter of significant national interest” and therefore requires an environmental impact statement.
There also have been no national hearings on the proposed management transfer and almost no involvement of the Bison Range’s professional staff, said PEER counsel Dan Meyer and refuge keeper Gene Hocutt.
Instead, one federal official in Washington, D.C. – Paul Hoffman, the deputy assistant secretary of Interior – has appointed himself lead negotiator and continues to meet secretly with tribal leaders. Apparently, the most recent of those meetings occurred Monday in Washington.
Hoffman has said he will have a draft tribal management agreement ready for public perusal by June 30; neither he nor tribal chairman Fred Matt could be reached for comment Monday.
A national group of local, state and federal resource professionals, PEER is worried about the precedent that would be set if the Interior Department contracted with the tribes for management of the 18,800-acre Bison Range – which is located on the Flathead Indian Reservation on land once owned by the tribes.
Already, the Interior Department has listed 34 national parks in 15 states, including Glacier National Park, and 16 wildlife refuges in Alaska, including the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, where it is willing to entertain proposals by Indian tribes interested in taking on some or all management duties.
Under 1994 amendments to the Indian Self-Determination Act, the federal government can make compacts with Indian tribes to assume some programs, services and functions on lands “of special geographic, historical or cultural significance to the participating tribe.”
For the past decade, though, there has been no serious attempt to compact with tribes for administrative, biological or visitor services on federal lands because those duties were considered “inherently federal” and were, therefore, not open to compacting, PEER said in its letter to Norton.
“Today, your office has reinterpreted those long-understood principles,” the letter continued. “The tribes have requested that they be allowed to operate the full range of activities provided at the National Bison Range, which is all programs, services, activities and functions provided at the Bison Range and ancillary property.”
That’s not legal, according to PEER’s attorney.
Nor is the approval of a management transfer without the preparation of an environmental impact statement, he added. The National Environmental Policy Act requires an EIS for “all major federal actions that affect the quality of the human environment.”
In addition, NEPA “guarantees that the relevant information will be made available to the larger audience.”
“Mr. Hoffman is skipping several steps in the NEPA process,” said Jennifer Reed, a spokeswoman at PEER’s national headquarters. “He’s not following the law.”
It’s just not right to negotiate such a precedent-setting change behind closed doors, added Hocutt, himself a former refuge manager, now PEER’s refuge keeper. The public needs a chance to review the proposal, he said, and an “explanation of how Interior will ensure the protection of the wildlife and other public resources within its custody.”
“Secretary Norton and her deputy seem far more concerned with removing federal employees from the payroll than they are with actually helping to promote tribal self-sufficiency,” Hocutt said.
“The precedent set at the National Bison Range has deep implications for the entire NWRS,” he said. To parcel out management of one and then another and another national wildlife refuge would eventually “diminish much of what makes the national wildlife refuge system a system.”
“Also left unaddressed are the impacts upon the hundreds of local refuge staff across the United States – families that have been the glue that holds these programs together, year after year, as managers come and go,” Hocutt said. “It now looks as if scarce federal refuge dollars will be given to tribes to hire contractors to fulfill the tasks that are currently being expertly administered by federal employees.”
“PEER recognizes that many tribal governments have skilled natural resources staff and a commitment to resource conservation,” the group said in its letter to Norton. “Our concern is not with tribal governments, but with a proposal that divests the federal government of its interest and oversight of federal lands."