Funds for wildlife refuges are drying up

• At Ouray National Wildlife Refuge, 30 miles southwest of Vernal, about 11,987 acres, including a 12-mile stretch of the Green River set aside for migratory birds: "They have a maintenance worker and an administration position vacant that are not being filled," Rundle said.

• At Fish Springs National Wildlife Refuge, 17,992 acres with marshlands amounting to about 10,000 acres, located near Dugway Proving Ground in the western desert: "The system manager job at Fish Springs was vacated and not filled, so Fish Springs Refuge is down to only four employees now," Rundle said.

If optimal funding were available, the refuge would also have a wildlife biologist and a biological technician, he added.

Ideally, Rundle said, "they would have an assistant manager for the Colorado River Wildlife Management Area." This is a management area of 955 acres (as of 2001) of private land on the Green River, held as conservation easements with willing landowners.

The easements, intended to protect endangered fish, are located in Utah and Colorado in the vicinity of Dinosaur National Monument.

Besides positions not filled, refuges have unmet needs like roofs and equipment that should be replaced, and new construction.

According to Rundle, Utah's premier refuge — Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge, 74,000 acres of marshland near Brigham City — has suffered no position losses. Besides seasonal part-time workers, the refuge has 11 employees.

"The Bear River's a high priority for us," he said.

Still, the refuge's Web site, www.fws.gov/bearriver, carries this notice: "The road construction on Forest Street that had been scheduled for the summer of 2007 has been postponed."

An F&WS regional "Workforce Plan," prepared in February and released by the alliance, lists all three Utah refuges as targeted for staff reductions, among 42in the region.

Three positions that had been filled in Utah have been abolished, with another slated to be lost by the end of Fiscal Year 2009.

Why hasn't Congress given wildlife refuges more money?

"We had a recession, and we have a war to be fought," Rundle said, "and Congress has a lot of challenges there."

---

E-mail: bau@desnews.com