10 years after wildlife refuge law, critics say areas neglected

WASHINGTON — Ten years after a landmark law was adopted to improve national wildlife refuges, the 96 million-acre system is neglected and undermined by political meddling and chronic underfunding, former Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt said Tuesday.

Babbitt, who played a key role in developing the 1997 law, said years of budget cuts have led to staff shortages that have left huge swaths of refuge land unstaffed, with maintenance projects delayed by years.

The 1997 law "was a promise to the American people: that the system of lands and waters that had been set aside for wildlife ... would be properly cared for. I fear this promise has not been fulfilled," said Babbitt, now chairman of the private World Wildlife Fund.

Under the Bush administration, the nation's 548 wildlife refuges have been neglected and are "reeling from years of fiscal starvation," Babbitt said. In some areas of the West, he added, "huge swaths of land are left to lone law enforcement officers. This is no way to treat this great system of lands or the public."

Faced with a $2.5 billion budget shortfall, the Fish and Wildlife Service has eliminated hundreds of jobs in recent years, cut back programs and left more than 200 wildlife refuges unstaffed.

By the time cuts are completed in 2009, the agency will have lost 565 refuge jobs — a 20 percent reduction. Jobs that have been eliminated include biologists, maintenance and education workers and even refuge managers.

The Fish and Wildlife Service, an arm of the Interior Department, oversees 548 wildlife refuges — including one added in July at the former Rocky Flats nuclear weapons complex in Colorado. The refuge system encompasses more than 96 million acres in all 50 states and attracts about 40 million visitors a year.

Babbitt and other critics say the staffing cuts have left an already lean work force depleted and have resulted in less habitat management, fewer restoration and education projects and minimal law enforcement.

H. Dale Hall, director of the Fish and Wildlife Service acknowledged the budget woes, but said the agency is committed to meeting its mission.

Since 2001, annual funding for refuges has increased by about $83 million, but costs have far outpaced those increases. Most of the money has gone to control invasive species, improve border security and meet a $2.5 billion maintenance backlog.

"Today's challenges are new and vexing, and we all have some trepidation about an uncertain future," Hall said at a congressional hearing on the 10th anniversary of the National Wildlife Refuge System Improvement Act. President Clinton signed the law on Oct. 9, 1997.