Fuck the US Fish and Wildlife Service

I've long grown to have more and more animus against USFWS, both on the details of how what is supposed to be the lead agency on Endangered Species Act designation and enforcement is not that leader at all, but also, the artificial nature of many national wildlife refuges.

(I gave a lead-in to this piece last week; here it is.) 

And, an issue on summer vacation has been new fuel to the fire, leading to the desire to give Fish and Wildlife a big new ass-kicking wherever and however I can. 

Already 20 years ago, I learned not only the basic truths about FWS' deliberate refusal to grant the dunes sagebrush lizard an Endangered Species Act listing, but how one "resister" in its regional office covering New Mexico and Texas got the Japanese broom closet treatment for his resistance.

Finally, after it got sued enough, FWS gave the lizard an ESA listing. But, it refused (that's the only word, refused) to designate specific sites of critical habitat for protection. You know, if a species is endangered, and it's based on certain habitat, you know, like "dunes" where "sagebrush" grows, which is the normal habitat for an animal called the "dunes sagebrush lizard," if you really cared, you'd designate such habitat as being off-limits.

But, FWS refused to do this. Period. Even though it's known the lizard has been in trouble for more than 40 years.

A couple of years ago, I met online Chris Nagano, one of FWS' "dissidents," who though not directly involved with the dunes sagebrush lizard, knew the score. (He's first mentioned in the link above.) Via him, I met "Race to Extinction" author Lyle Lewis, another "dissident."

Lewis didn't realize everything about FWS in my part of the world, namely, the oiliness at Hagerman NWR. 

Hagerman is on the Texas side of Lake Texoma. The feds, when building Denison Dam, bought up surrounding land that might flood out. They were too cheap to buy the mineral rights, though; only the surface estate. Result? A few dozen pumpjacks — active ones — inside the refuge.

And so, that oiliness goes beyond the Permian Basin.

Sadly, or more disgustingly, that oilness includes the volunteer "Friends of Hagerman" support group. (Many larger NWRs have such support groups, similar to national monuments and parks.) I am not sure how much of Friends of Hagerman's suck-up to oil companies is ignorance, and how much is willful blindness. I suspect it's more the latter, and I am more and more in a mood not to be charitable to such local support groups as well as the agency in general.

As for FWS and endangered species? Finally, late last year, it proposed giving the monarch butterfly a listing, but, once again, that listing had no critical habitat protection, except for a West Coast subpopulation. "Conveniently," that subpopulation is found mainly on lands owned by private conservation organizations and therefore already protected.  And, per the italics, it wasn't an actual listing, just proposed, and probably designed to stall out the clock until after Jan. 20 of this year.

Or let's talk about the Gunnison's sage grouse. After lawsuit threats, FWS agreed to list it as threatened, but not endangered, and work on a habitat recovery plan. However, for its failure to follow through on this, it got sued again two years later. Its cousin, the lesser prairie chicken, has also been ill-treated by FWS. (It got two years of "threatened" listing, then that was removed due to court ruling of being improperly instituted. It's been talked about for an "endangered" listing for 25 years; the oil people hate it like they hate the dunes sagebrush lizard.)

Worse? The Texas Monthly provides more information about how US Fish and Wildlife Service is a quisling pseudoenvironmental organization, with a detailed blow-by-blow of its total cave-in on what had been a planned massive expansion of Muleshoe NWR out in the Panhandle. And part of that is about the lesser prairie chicken:

Outdoor enthusiasts are drawn to its remote beauty, where rugged swaths of wildflowers and mesquite trees shelter the elusive pronghorn antelope and the lesser prairie chicken.

Oy. (There's more from this article added to that piece.)

And, per Center for Biological Diversity, that's just another of many species where FWS has used a "threatened" status to try to head off an "endangered" listing.  Other animals include the well-known Florida manatee and the northern long-eared bat.

Also, per the manatee information, FWS gets itself more politicized (as the dunes sagebrush lizard saga shows) than any other agency in the Department of the Interior.

And, a bird like the LeConte thrasher shows that the dunes sagebrush lizard isn't the only animal over which FWS will drag its feet for a decade or more. The Rio Grande shiner, a fish, was "tagged" for an ESA listing by actually caring FWS staff at the same time as the lizard, 40-plus years ago, but as of recently, still hadn't gotten it as of earlier this decade. (Per that link, the FWS also has an ESA responsibility for plants as well as animals, and often fails it, too.)

Most recently? Last week, the lesser prairie chicken's endangered listing got nixed by a judge. More here.

Fast forward to my vacation.

The Klamath Basin Visitor Center serves both Tule Lake NWR and Lower Klamath NWR. (Wikipedia links; even with a "do not follow," I'm not linking directly to an NWR.)

At the back of the visitor center is a half-mile long or so set of three channels. They're touted (yes) as a way to explore a small part of the refuge by canoe or kayak for free.

Well, if you've been to Aridzona or California, you'll understand what I'm getting at when I say they're basically just like irrigation ditches off the Central Water Project, Imperial Irrigation District or Salt River Project. No wider than one of those ditches — or one of the ditches in the two refuges, since they have a "partnership" with private farmers. 

I'm going to jog sideways for a minute here.

This is another dirty secret of the FWS, in two parts.

First, many refuges are near damned lakes created by damned dams for agriculture and/or flood control. That's the case here. It's diverted irrigation water, just as at Sonny Bono/Salton Sea, Bosque del Apache and other sites.

Second, either the farmers' grain, or at southern refuges like my Hagerman (damned lake, but not irrigation water), overseeding of winter rye or wheat, is a magnet to attract ducks and geese. All the other migratory birds touted by FWS are along for the ride, as it still views the "hook and bullet crowd" as its primary customer.

Yes, all federal land management agencies that have official wilderness areas "manage" those wildernesses as though Rousellian noble savages were real and just around the corner. That said, the angle, at least, is wilderness. In NWRs that do like the above, the "angle" is kettling wildlife into a compound. USFWS says it has "more than 570" units, overall. It allows hunting at 436, plus 20 fish hatcheries. (Really? Hunting at a fish hatchery?) That's a full three-quarters.

And, per what I said in my previous, introductory piece, in states like mine where public lands outside of city parks are at a premium, wildlife refuges may seem to many to be like state or national parks. So, hunting, even when announced well in advance, and for necessary control in the case of wild hogs, can still seem inclusive. (Hagerman also allows bow-hunting deer, and one weekend of bows or shotguns for turkey.) 

In the case of Lower Klamath and Tule Lake, I'm also wondering how the just-completed removal of four Klamath River dams in its vicinity, along with the likelihood we're going to have long-term drought in the Southwest, broadly speaking, for the rest of this century, will affect their future.

Lyle Lewis has said that he expects the Klamath dam removal will have a fair amount of effect. He expects that, combined with another 75 years of likely drought, that those two NWRs, are semi-toast. Others in the region, that are on actual lakes of Klamath tributaries, not former lakes backfilled with irrigation water, may not be so bad off, but probably won't be in peachy shape.

OK, that's the digression.

So, this visitor center pushes canoeing or kayaking with its free boats on a glorified irrigation ditch overgrown with reeds, algae, etc. (I've been in the Imperial Valley many times, as well as around acequias in northern New Mexico; these are somewhat bigger than individual field irrigation ditches, but they're not huge.)

And now, we're getting to the pissed-off moment.

I thought, "OK." Maybe I even thought "cool."

I didn't think to take my cellphone out of my pocket. I deliberately did think to take along my non-waterproof, new, basic-level mirrorless camera.

Someone just coming out talked about how "overgrown" the central channel was.

So, I took the left-hand channel. And, no more than 30 feet or so in (it was my first time in a kayak, and I chose it instead of a canoe) I had drifted to the right-hand bank, and gotten entangled in the reeds on the bank, and the algae and whatever else was growing on the channel floor.

So, I pushed myself out.

I'm 6-5, or 1.95 meters, tall. Tall upper body. High center of gravity for a kayak.

Did you know you can tip a kayak in totally slack water no more than 4 feet or so deep and no more than 14 feet or so wide? You do now.

Camera and cellphone got toasted. Camera memory card did, too, which means I lost EVERY PHOTO from my first six days of vacation. I lost pelicans and osprey catching fish on the redwoods coast. Harbor seals at Shelter Cove on the lost coast. Lots and lots of butterflies. Songbirds. Waterfalls on the west side of the Sisters in Oregon.

I had posted originally to the refuge's Facebook page after I got home but before I realized the memory card was toast. I got nominal condolences — along with the admission other people have tipped, and along with no pledge to dredge the channels and no pledge to shut them down until they do that. I posted a follow-up comment after realizing the card was toast and didn't hear back.

And, I am not even going to post there about later learning that the repair bill estimate for my camera was 90 percent or more of its original cost, which is stupid to pay on an already refurbished camera. 

My most charitable take is that they think there's people too poor to own their own kayaks and might want a way to do starter kayaking for free. Those people generally are also too poor to travel to national wildlife refuges in the boonies and that still doesn't excuse the lack of dredging if you are going to do this.

So, this is my takedown.

Folks, stop going to national wildlife refuges. They're artificial. If you can't break yourself of that, do NOT NOT NOT buy one single damned thing at a visitor center. Even if every penny goes to a "friends" group, since they're complicit in this bullshit. 

For me personally?

When it's late October, Hagerman will have a siren song to come watch the Ross and snow geese, or catch long-billed dowitchers in migration, it may require mental exertion to resist. I'll do my best. I'll try to remember Lucy, the long-term resident bald eagle, electrocuted because she let a fish she had caught, that was still in her claws, contact a non-insulated portion of an power line — a power line that services a pumpjack.

Yep, FWS won't even require these people to install solar panels for any electricity needs. 

Meanwhile? 

This has ripple effects. Even if it's nothing other than a drink and a few bucks of gas, that's that much less I'm contributing to the economy, especially at an out-of-the-way NWR. Or, locally, it means I don't shop in Sherman or Denison, Texas, going on there after a visit to Hagerman.

The next closest free federal public land? Either some semi-degraded U.S. Forest Service national grassland checkerboard, or a National Park Service National Recreation Area behind a damned dam, which violates the Park Service's Organic Act. 

Beyond that, I was already reaching a point of "Overfamiliarity breeds frustration" in re Hagerman, which I was already hitting, off and on, a year ago, well before the spring oiliness there. Friends of Hagerman's Photo Group on Hucksterman was feeling competitive plus me having camera envy. It was also, when Hagerman was flooded out this spring for six weeks due to climate change (see "oiliness") seeing so many people from the Metromess being like 6-year-olds and asking "are we unflooded yet"? Neither the Friends on their photo group page, or the main page, or the refuge itself, for that matter, on its Facebook page, were proactive enough on dealing with these laments, either, as in "pinning" a post at top and updating it as needed.