Short-staffed FWS comes with costs

It always seems like federal bureaucracy moves slow, but in the kaleidoscopic world of the Endangered Species Act, things have slowed to a crawl here in Montana. And no wonder.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials in Helena say their staff has been reduced by nearly half due to budget cuts over the last year, while their workload has gradually increased year after year.

These are the people who are charged with overseeing ESA compliance, whenever the Forest Service and other agencies want to develop a policy or carry out a project. There are currently only three people in Helena working on those types of reviews, compared to seven at this time last year.

As a result, "consultation" reviews for things like the Rock Creek Mine in Sanders County or the Flathead National Forest's snowmobile access policy are held up longer than they should be.

The public can rightfully expect more fiscal accountability from the federal government. But in this case, there should be a clear understanding that when natural agencies try to get something done in Montana, they often need to consult with the Fish and Wildlife Service. As it stands, fast service from the service cannot be realistically expected.

There's already frustration with the ESA, and throwing a monkey wrench iinto the machinery that oversees ESA compliance does nothing to soothe frustrations.

There are efforts to reform the Endangered Species Act, but even if that's carried out there will still be a need to provide basic operational support from agencies that enforce it. There certainly are provisions in the ESA that can and should be improved and streamlined, thereby reducing the consultation workload.

The increase in that workload, by the way, is not necessarily the result of more projects requiring consultation. Rather, consultation reviews have become far more complex as a direct result of pervasive litigation.

The Fish and Wildlife Service has poured more and more effort into making its biological opinions bombproof in the face of nearly guaranteed lawsuits from environmental groups. Granted, those groups can argue that there's nothing wrong with the government doing a better job in justifying and defending its decisions. But that argument glosses over the nature of environmental litigation, where attorneys constantly pursue new angles, contradictions and weak spots in the increasing volumes of documents and data that are used to justify management actions.

Expecting shriveled staffing to provide ever more detailed and defensible decisions is a recipe for slower, less responsive public land and wildlife management.