The recent article (Missoulian, 11-4-16) on the proposed changes by the USFWS involving Western Montana Wildlife Refuges is both interesting and troublesome. Staff cuts at various Montana refuges could eliminate twelve positions and many educational programs would be abolished.
Locally, the Lee Metcalf National Wildlife Refuge (NWR) is going to lose Bob Danley, its excellent Outdoor Education Planner, thereby eliminating the refuge’s environmental education program. That would leave the Metcalf NWR with a GS-12 supervisor to manage a 1,200 acre refuge. This could possibly end the refuge as we know it today, but probably preserve the waterfowl and deer hunting that takes place on the refuge in the fall.
Both Missoula and the Bitterroot Valley are blessed with many volunteer/wildlife educational organizations: Montana Natural History Center (MNHC) naturalists; UM Wildlife Biologists; Friends of the Lee Metcalf NWR volunteers; Ducks/Trout Unlimited groups: Pheasants Forever and the like.
Rather than allow the Metcalf NWR to disappear in the sunset from lack of support, it might make better sense to hire a GS-7/8 Wildlife Biologist to manage environmental education programs with volunteer assistance, rather than retain a GS-12 supervisor to sit around an empty building with an administrative assistant. The worse case scenario would be to abandon the refuge entirely and manage it from the Benton Lake NWR north of Great Falls.
Here’s hoping that the USFWS does the right thing for our community.
Jim Hamilton
Florence