In previous Coalition News items, going back at least 9 months, we have noted that restoration of public-trust, wild bison on the Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge has been mandated, supported and confirmed by Congress in the Wildlife Refuge Improvement Act (1997), by the Department of Interior’s 2008 Bison Conservation Initiative (recommitted in 2012), and by goals of the Refuge Conservation Plan (2012). Here, we add the Fish & Wildlife Service Manual (2008) as a source for these clear commitments.
The FWS Manual summarizes policy, and guides employees in the management of resources under Service supervision. Appropriate sections are based largely upon mandates of Congress in the Refuge Improvement Act. The Act mandates maintaining and restoring, where appropriate, the biological integrity and diversity of the federal Refuge System.
The Manual defines biological diversity as the variety of life and its processes, including genetic differences and the ecosystems in which they occur. It defines biological integrity as the composition, structure and functioning, at genetic, organism and community levels, comparable with historic conditions, including the natural biological processes that shape genomes, organisms and communities.
These mandates cannot be fulfilled on the CMR Refuge without restoring a large population of bison, as a keystone species managed for wildness and influencing habitats for other plants and animals over a large and diverse landscape. Despite persisting opposition to bison restoration in Montana, the Service has never claimed that such restoration is “not appropriate”.
The Manual states “biological diversity and integrity are critical components of wildlife conservation” and “We will restore lost or severely degraded elements of integrity and diversity at the refuge scale.” Despite these mandates and repeated commitments, the Service has been waiting many decades for the state of Montana to reintroduce public bison on the CMR Refuge.
That said, the Manual states that the Service will coordinate with the state wildlife agency in a timely and effective manner and will ensure that federal management plans are, to the extent practicable, consistent with state laws. Clearly, Refuge coordination with Montana on restoring bison to the CMR has not produced timely or effective results. Moreover, any such restoration of bison cannot be consistent with recent state laws and therefore could not be practicable.
It is time for the Fish & Wildlife Service to proceed, without Montana’s blessing, with restoration of bison on the CMR Refuge -- obeying Congressional mandates and fulfilling the Service’s stated commitments. No doubt, the current Montana administration would appeal to the courts. But past courts have established a federal prerogative over management of resources on designated federal lands (Nie et. al 1917), and the Refuge Improvement Act should supersede state laws.
For many years, federal natural resource agencies have ceded most of their management authority and obligations for wildlife population management on federal lands to the states, even to the extent of ignoring Congressional mandates. Restoring bison to the CMR Refuge is a clear and extreme case and deserves bold action that would result in a landmark court decision. The legal door to bison on the CMR is open; only a closed political door prevents federal action to fulfill federal mandates and, so far, empty written commitments of the Fish & Wildlife Service.
Nie, M., C. Barns, J. Haber, J. Joly, K. Pitt and S. Zellmer. 2017. Fish and wildlife management of federal lands: Debunking state supremacy. Environmental Law 47 (4): 1-126.
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