INTERIOR ISSUES NEW MARCHING ORDERS FOR BISON RANGE DEAL

[nosmokes]

I dunno what to think,but I'm pretty sure that there's nothing good that's meant to come outtta this, unless you define good as opening up public lands for drilling and mining and such. I most definitely don't.
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original-peer

For Immediate Release: December 7, 2007
Contact: Carol Goldberg [phone]

INTERIOR ISSUES NEW MARCHING ORDERS FOR BISON RANGE DEAL

— Funding Agreement with Tribe by Next March but Big Questions Remain

Washington, DC — The Interior Department has ordered the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service to conclude a new funding agreement transferring positions and operations for the National Bison Range to a local tribe by the end of March 2008, according to a memo posted today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). Under this directive, the maximum number of refuge jobs and functions would be ceded to the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes (CSKT).

In a November 26, 2007 memo, Lye Laverty, the newly confirmed Assistant Interior Secretary for Fish, Wildlife & Parks, lays out an “action plan” for resolving the contentious status of the refuge where last year the U.S. Fish & Wildlife (FWS) cancelled a previous funding agreement with the CSKT citing harassment of staff and extensive performance problems.

Under Laverty’s approach –

* National Bison Range would remain “a unit of the National Wildlife Refuge System” subject to “policy and management direction of the FWS”;
* The bison herd at the refuge will stay at “90% of the average” size of the herd for the past three fiscal years; and
* The overall budget for the Bison Range – $1.5 million per year and 13 full time slots – will not change without approval from both Laverty and the FWS Director.

Laverty directs FWS to start negotiating off of a draft agreement prepared this year by the CSKT. The questions that remain unresolved include –

* Whether every position on the refuge will be transferred to the CSKT? Laverty suggests that only an “inherently federal function” will be withheld from the tribe but concedes that “there is no clear, unambiguous definition of the term”;
* What mechanism will assure adequate performance of refuge functions? In its evaluation of the previous agreement, FWS cited a long list of functions which it charged were not done or improperly performed. CSKT disputed this assessment, however; and
* How to resolve disagreements and “restore…trust and mutual respect”?

“Given that more than 75 national parks and wildlife refuges are eligible for similar tribal transfers, Interior needs to end its ad hoc approach and adopt a national policy on these funding agreements,” stated PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch, noting that a proposed national policy has been pending at Interior for more than two years. “A function is either ‘inherently federal’ or it is not – what is inherently federal does not vary from place to place or mutate through negotiation.”


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complete release including links to related sources here

[sandnsea]

1. Has the tribe said that?

Is there some documentation that indicates this tribe is going to do that?

[nosmokes]

2. No, but as I have said on this topic previouslyI'm seriously

skeptical of the timing to do this right now when the Tribe does have a fairly corporate friendly leadership, and they're counting on money from the trust fund that's suppoed to be coming in but that's money has been held up in court for one reason or another for a hundred years. And When was the lat time Bushco did anything for anybody that ultimately wasn't to benefit the haves and the havemores? I just think that ultimately this is a way of turning over a refuge and get it opened up for the extractive industries by choking it off from any funding when it's not under the FWS any longer. I don't know that this is a move that's in the best interests of the Tribe as a whole or just the power brokers or maybe none of 'em? But I know I don't trust the motives of Bush/Cheney, and whatever they're doing it ain't for altruistic reasons. There's a $1.20 to be made somewhere that's gonna cost us $4.75 and you can bet they've sniffed it out.

[greendog]

3. With the exception of timber, there isn't a lot of obvious extraction...

...elsewhere on the Reservation. The Bison Range is mostly hilly grasslands.




Aerial photo of the National Bison Range.

Here's an article about the controversy:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/13/us/13bison.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

[nosmokes]

4. Natural gas and possibly coal. I don't know if other minerals are there in

quantity to make mining economically feasible. Elsewhere I read that managing the Range costs about $1.5million -$2million a year I believe. That's a fair chunk of change for one of the poorest tribes to come up with every year. Like I said,I'm all in favor of having the Tribes take over the Range. I just think that either they're being set up to fail or to be forced into a corner where they'll no choice but to open up wildlife refuge land to exploitation. And should that happen then it will be subject to laws and regs that very possibly are not as strict as what the land is subject to now.

[greendog]

5. I wasn't aware of substantial deposits of natural gas and coal...

...in this part of Montana. I hear there's a lot of it on the east side of the divide but I've never heard it mentioned about the Mission/Flathead area.

Where are you getting this information?

I have heard some concern about the possibility of the Tribes commercializing the Range to some degree to pull in a few tourist dollars. I know the Tribes have been pushing for this deal for a long time. It's not like the government is dumping it on them.