Marshall Kuykendall’s property rights agenda has caused ripple effects
throughout state government. Perhaps no agency has been affected more than the
Texas Parks and Wildlife Department (TPWD). Formerly active in endangered
species protection, the agency now appears more interested in squelching
employees who support endangered species research than in providing protection
to rare non-game species. Three of the department’s most knowledgeable
endangered species biologists have resigned from the agency over the past six
weeks.
David Diamond, former head of the Texas Natural Heritage Program and one of
the state’s most renowned biologists, quit TPWD last month to take a job
in Missouri. Dean Keddy-Hector and Bill Carr, biologists who formerly worked in
the Heritage Program, will be leaving the agency over the next few weeks. “I
had to get out of there,” said Diamond, an expert on prairie ecosystems who
also authored a study on the Golden-Cheeked Warbler. The former head of the
Texas Natural Heritage program, which was dissolved by TPWD management last
year, Diamond talked with me by phone last week. “Every time you opened your
mouth you had to say that private property is great,” he said. “It was really
hard to get anything done.”
Diamond’s departure comes after months of friction between TPWD managers and
the agency’s endangered species’ biologists. Last summer, the agency
reprimanded Andy Price, its lead aquatic biologist and an expert on the
salamanders of Central Texas, for working on a report which listed threats to
the region’s salamander population. The suppression of biologists’ findings led
Keddy-Hector to complain to Mollie Beattie, director of the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service. On August 20, Keddy-Hector sent a letter to Beattie, saying,
“there has been an internal conspiracy to cover up the impacts of potentially
destructive activities which threaten the continued existence of species such
as the San Marcos Wildrice, Fountain Darter, Black-Capped Vireo, and
Golden-Cheeked Warbler and other endangered and threatened species. This
conspiracy has involved direct suppression and distortion of supportive data,
outright fabrication of statements… and threats to terminate any employee not
willing to look the other way.” Keddy-Hector also said there was “active
harassment” of employees in the Natural Heritage Program.
Before it was terminated, the Heritage Program was targeted by private
property advocates because it kept track of endangered species. Landowners
feared that federal officials could use the Heritage Program database to locate
habitat for endangered species like the Golden-Cheeked Warbler or Black-Capped
Vireo.
Some of Diamond’s peers who worked in the Heritage Program say poor
working conditions at TPWD are forcing other biologists to consider leaving.
Speaking of Diamond, one staffer said, “Here’s a man who brought $1 million or
more [in grant money] to the department and they were treating him like dirt.
He had to get out.”
Gary Graham, who was Diamond’s superior at TPWD, defended the agency’s
reorganization, saying, “there’s a lot of instability with conservation and
rare species nationwide.” When asked if morale among endangered species
biologists was suffering from the reorganization, Graham said, “from my
position, it seems like people are working and enjoying their jobs.”
But Scott Royder of the Lone Star Sierra Club calls the departure of the three
scientists a “horrible loss.” He suggests the departures are indicative of
deeper problems at the agency. “Something is terribly wrong when you lose three
of the top eco-system biologists in the state in such a short time. But it’s
not surprising when you hear the reports of bureaucratic harassment that have
come out of parks and wildlife in the past year,” he said.
TPWD’s focus has always been on servicing the hunting and fishing industries.
The reason is simple: those activities provide the vast majority of the
agency’s funding. And for many years, TPWD had an attitude of benign neglect
when it came to endangered species. Yet Kuykendall and other private property
rights advocates were able to push their agenda through the last session of the
Texas Legislature. “The Legislature was anti-environment, pro-property rights,
and anti-endangered species,” says Diamond. “That was translated to the agency,
which translated it to me. I’m not looking for anybody to blame, that’s just
the way it was.”
Phil Savoy, the new head of Take Back Texas, prefers to save species that fit
a particular profile. “We would be heartbroken, for instance, if the grizzly
bear disappeared,” said Savoy. “That’s the goal. Is a species endangered
because I found a new spider? Americans are probably not interested in a new
spider; it’s not as significant as the grizzly.”
And if Savoy has his way, TPWD won’t spend any money to save certain declining
species. “What we have to ask ourselves is: Does it make sense to spend so much
time and resources if a species just isn’t going to make it? It’s just pouring
money down a rat hole. At some point you have to pull the plug.”
The recent departures from TPWD clearly show that the agency is pulling the
plug on its endangered species biologists. Can the species themselves be far
behind? — Robert Bryce
This article appears in January 26 • 1996 and January 26 • 1996 (Cover).