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.

Texas Progressives talk Congress maps, the Lege, more

Off the Kuff provides an update on the litigation over the current Congressional map.

SocraticGadfly offers thoughts on Hearst and the future of the Dallas Morning News (aka the Snooze), and somewhat on Texas major newspapers in general.

Forrest Wilder throws McDade Phelan under the bus, or maybe, helps him do that to himself. 

Can the peyote cactus — and all that goes with it — be saved from extinction?

Chip Roy running for Kenny Boy Paxton's AG seat? He MUST be bored of DC.

Justin Miller longs for "a strong Latino candidate" for statewide office. Ain't happening in 2026, Justin.

Meet the Chinese Erin Brockovich.

Neil at the Houston Democracy Project noted Fox 26's retraction of misleading story about Harris County Judge Cornelio & said how can we allow lawless Republicans define following the law?

Franklin Strong is heartened to see some school boards resisting bad new education laws.

The Barbed Wire finds a path forward for journalism. 

 Your Local Epidemiologist reviews the current state of play for long COVID.

The Austin Chronicle ran a letter from several prominent Austin Dems urging Rep. Lloyd Doggett to pass the torch rather than engage in a nasty primary, a wish they were subsequently granted.

Purging myself of Tony Hillerman

I grew up in Gallup, New Mexico, self-proclaimed "Indian Capital of the World."

Years and years ago, I read many, though not all, of murder mystery author Tony Hillerman's Chee and Leaphorn novels, about two Navajo Tribal Police officers, (I also read two non-Big Rez murder mysteries of his.)

Hillerman has long come off as sympathetic to Navajos in particular, and American Indians of the Southwest in general, as people. Going beyond oater dime novelist Louis L'Amour, who said more than once if he wrote about a place, "it was there," with Hillerman, not only was the place there, but so were the sociology and culture.

Well, recently, for various reasons, I started reading some of Hillerman again. But, after "Sacred Clowns," I may have hit a wall. An edited version of my Goodreads review will explain why.

Sacred Clowns by Tony Hillerman
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

On my "formula" for mid-level fiction reviews?
Characters 4.25-4.5
Plot 4.5
Dialogue 4-4.25

I'll take that to 4.5 or so overall but, round down due to an error.

Nope, it's "dropped" to 3 stars due to other issues listed at bottom. Some are specific to this book; others, the majority, apply to the Hillerman "canon" in general. I'm going to get to that after a condensed version of the first part.

On characters, Jim Chee as acting sergeant shows a first round of character development within the Chee-Leaphorn books, accepting enough of Lt. Joe Leaphorn's experience-developed wisdom to actually follow some rules. He also finds out that he may not be enough of a traditionalist to satisfy old-time hataałii (usually rendered by Hillerman as "shaman" or similar) to become one himself, complexifying his look at Janet Pete as too much of a "city Indian." One book later than Coyote Waits and two earlier than First Eagle, when you look at the series, you can see this "character plot line" developing. In addition to their hot-and-cold at times, the ethical playoff late in this story is good. As with widower Leaphorn's quasi?-romantic relationship with Prof. Bourebonette, this is Hillerman writing a generally internally consistent set of stories.
...

St. Bonaventure in Thoreau? It was there when I was growing up in Gallup eons ago. Not sure if it's the same church building today or not. Back then, it had a wood-plank floor that doubled as a roller skating rink, including being rented out; my church's youth group went out there more than once. I don't know if Gallup didn't have a roller rink then, or it was too big to rent to small groups, or what. (Or so I thought it was there. Teh Google lists skating in Gallup itself and not in Thoreau today, but Google Maps with "roller skating Thoreau NM" pointed to the Thoreau Community Center. Maybe skating moved there, or maybe that was the original church building.)

This all is why Hillerman is not dime-novelist Louis L'Amour, who used to brag that if a place was listed in one of his novels, it's there. With Hillerman, the people and culture are there, too.

But now, the problems start, beginning with smaller ones and working to bigger. 

First, he mentions an Iyanbito and Iyanbito Chapter House south of Gallup [pg 121, hardcover], and the only one I am familiar with is the one to the east. Besides, the Red Rock Chapter House is to Gallup's south. See for yourself. I have driven past Iyanbito many, many times. It has an exit on I-40. This is why I double-taked.

Sorry, Tony, but you don't explain why you "moved" Iyanbito if deliberate. And, a basic error otherwise? On the border on ratings, that gets you bumped down on the Navajo authenticity issue. That said, in this Smithsonian piece he admits to "shuffling around" places to meet his needs, but? There was no need for this. Nor for calling the Zuni Drive-In the Gallup Drive-In. Was it going to sue? It closed in 1982, anyway, so it couldn't. (I saw "Star Wars" there as a kid.)

There's an issue or two in other Hillerman novels that generally hold him at four stars, not five. For instance, he talks about "the Tuba City type of Navajo," a description both sociological, in terms of demeanor, and physiologically, in terms of build, as if genes work that deterministically and there's no outbreeding into that small area. And, of course, none of that is true.

Now, to a bigger issue, expressed in this novel, and I think one or two others.

That is his take on the American Indian Movement . Yes, many people within Navajo leadership didn't like it. That's because it challenged their authority, just as on the Sioux reservations. Calling its leadership, like Dennis Banks and Russell Means, "city Indians," comes off as a bit, or more, condescending. And, it's a lie. Banks was born on a reservation in Minnesota. Means was born on a reservation in South Dakota. Both Bellencourts were born on reservations. Banks was forcefully removed to a BIA boarding school at age 5. Means' parents moved to San Francisco at age 3 to escape poverty; the Bellencourt family moved to Minneapolis when older brother Vernon was 16.

This comes off sounding like my dad. (I remember when AIM came to Gallup.) I've outgrown that, Tony. This review goes down to three stars, and I read you more skeptically on "flavor of the Southwest" in the future.

(At least Hillerman doesn't try to view Navajo religion through an Opus Dei version of the Catholicism in which he had been raised, unlike my conservative Lutheran pastor father with that, even doing a Ph.D. on how particular Navajo and other Indian beliefs of course all reflected a literalist, fundagelical, interpretation of the Christian bible.)

For a truly nuanced and insightful book on AIM, especially in the Siouxan heartland of its operations, read "The Unquiet Grave."

And, I realized I have now been "triggered," or if I accept that something like free will exists (I do, if you emphasize the "something like" and that it is not necessarily totally conscious), I have self-triggered.

First, the quasi-sneer about "city Indian" (also Blizzard, the "city Indian" Cheyenne from Chicago BIA agent in this novel) surely affects Hillerman's authorial stance toward Janet Pete throughout the entire series of his novels. He doesn't totally throw her under the bus when he has the final break-up between her and Chee, but he does entirely write her out of future books. Did his attitude toward "city Indians" in general harden as he grew older?

Related? As I think more skeptically, while Hillerman may not totally paint a romantic Rousselian noble savage view of reservation Navajo life, the toes of one of his two feet, at minimum, are in that swamp. And I use that word deliberately. In reality, not only is the poverty worse than he portrays, but bits of it are to some degree self-inflicted. Navajos overgrazed the land badly enough a century ago that, for this reason as well as price controls, Navajo sheep, like Iowa hogs, were "culled" as part of the Agricultural Adjustment Act in the 1930s. There's some degree of overgrazing again. Beyond that, as disagreements between chapters over Bears Ears have shown, there's not a "unified Navajo stance" on many things. In either case, on the land, as he has Chee drive by the pivot irrigation lands of what is today Navajo Agricultural Products Inc, and contrast them with a bit of ruefulness to the buttes and mesas, he overlooks the sheepherding.

In other words, to mash up Colbert and a cliche? "Truth is truthier than fiction."

Another issue? I think Hillerman has a generally bilagaana take on frybread, which is a flash point among many modern American Indians of many tribes. That's also not specific to this book, but, I never recall Chee, as an "authentic" Navajo, in any of my past Hillerman reading, saying it's not authentic Navajo food.

One other issue. One of Hillerman's novels is entirely on the Zuni reservation. Others have Hopi connections. But? Even though the Ute Mountain Ute reservation is directly north of the New Mexico portion of the Big Rez, I'm unaware of any Ute characters in any of his novels. Also not mentioned, IIRC? The Paiutes who actually live on the Utah strip portion of the Big Rez. (Indeed, some of these Paiutes have Navajo surnames like Begay or Yazzie.)

One OTHER other issue. Why, given Leaphorn's strident antipathy to alcohol, after his wife's death, does Hillerman name his new female interest Bourebonette? Yes, the initial "e" hides it, but really? Something like "bourbon"? Am I the first to notice this?

Update: "The Wailing Wind" is even worse, especially given that Hillerman undermines his own schtick about painting a genuine Sitz im Leben about Navajos, Navajoland and things related.

Anyway, beyond being self-triggered, I realized my nostalgia leading me to re-read Hillerman wasn't as much nostalgia as escapism — not the escapism of reading fiction, but real escapism, the desire to move out of Tex-ass, with the New Mexico of my childhood years a reasonable option financially — should I get a pre-retirement job there — among today's US Southwest and Western states. I will further expound on this elsewhere.

(I don't know where, if at all, daughter Anne stands on these issues. I only read the first book in her continuation of the series, which I found overstuffed with characters and having other problems. One of those problems is not exactly the same as Christopher Tolkien turning piles of notes, or maybe even rambling marginalia, by dad JRR, into books, but it broadly parallels that.)

Update 2: I forgot that I did a full paean obit of Hillerman when he died in 2008. I'll update that.

View all my reviews

Muleshoe NWR expansion: Murdered by Arrington and USFWS

Shock me on the latter.

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:

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.

And part of this ties to the lesser prairie chicken, discussed here last week:

[Recently a] federal judge in Texas ruled there had been “serious error” in the agency’s classification of the lesser prairie chicken’s endangered status, temporarily removing Endangered Species Act protections for the bird in the state—a culmination of a Republican-backed effort that began in 2023 when Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a suit to overturn the listing.

Shock me that Kenny Boy was involved.

The key pusher on the ground was Lubbock Congresscritter Jodey Arrington. He had gotten a bill to shut down the expansion out of expansion just before USFWS caved.

As for this?

“Rep. Arrington’s opposition to Muleshoe was mostly, if not entirely, based in misinformation. The issue about the idea that landowners are somehow going to be forced or pressured to sell their land is simply not true,” says Nathan Marcy, a senior policy analyst at the conservation nonprofit Defenders of Wildlife.

It misreads Arrington. Information and misinformation isn't his concern. Nor is apparent hypocrisy of supporting state parks expansion. Instead, GOP wingnuts fellate the oil and gas industry, and will never, at the state level, allow a state park to even think about infringing on it. Beyond that, they hate the feds in general, until they start sucking off the federal teat.

It misreads USFWS as well.

That said, California Congresscritter Jared Huffman, known on these pages before, is a rank hypocrite for calling out Arrington on that bill as long as he continues to fight to keep cows INSIDE Point Reyes.

No, Nicole Collier was not held captive

So says Chris Hooks at the Monthly. Nicole Collier was not held captive. First, the historical background:

House Speaker Dustin Burrows’s decision to involve the police should not have come as a total surprise. Legislative leaders have, and have always had, a broad remit to try to compel attendance, from locking the doors of the chamber to deploying state troopers. (The “Killer Bees” of 1979 evaded a statewide police manhunt by hiding; Speaker Dade Phelan locked the doors of the chamber in 2021 to prevent another quorum break.) That’s why quorum breakers leave the state—they can be arrested if they stay here. The quorum break is a form of civil disobedience, and participants know they’re inviting a law enforcement response.

In other words, even before new legislation passed after the 2021 quorum break, people like Collier should have known this was possible, even if Burrows got heavy-handed.

Fast forward to the start of the current session, and now:

The rules package enabling the rounding up of absent House members was enthusiastically approved by Democrats, including Collier, at the start of the last session, and Burrows was the overwhelming choice of Democrats at the last Speaker election. What’s more, Burrows’s attempt to enforce attendance could be seen as conciliatory, not punitive—GOP elected officials to his right have been advocating much harsher and stricter measures.

Give the rest of it a read, even if you're a totally tribalist BlueAnon.

I'll admit, it looked like compelling theater. 

But, I knew about this, at least in a general way, being part of the rules package. Presumably, Collier was one of the Dems enthusiastically approving it.

Hooks does talk about Dems losing power in the House and find out Burrows' vice-chairmanships meant nothing. (Same is true of "ranking member" on committees in DC.) But, Burrows doesn't have a supermajority, unlike Dannie Goeb, Hooks notes, so he can't do too much. It should make Dems wonder, once again, if making the deal with Burrows, rather than lumping it, was the right call in the first place.

Final word from Hooks:

The ordeal has become a faint echo of the 2013 Wendy Davis filibuster, which created another media sensation around a Democratic lawmaker who chose to lose well and lose with style.

Chris forgot to mention that:

A. Davis lost hypocritically, as well, and

B. She faded from the scene quickly enough.

Back to the original story.

This isn't teh stupidz like Texas Senate Dems walking out, but not enough to block business. It's more than a nothingburger, too. But, it's like a White Castle slider instead of a Double Whopper.