REGIONAL— A recently released report by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, or FWS, provides stunning conclusions on what appears to be a wholesale violation of a federal grant program by the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources. The draft report, completed nearly four years ago, was only made public last month in response to a Freedom of Information Act request by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, or PEER, which made the document available to the Timberjay.
The 28-page report provided the conclusions of a series of visits by FWS biologists in early 2020 to three state wildlife management areas, or WMAs, in order to investigate complaints that the DNR was misusing its federal funds to support logging urged by the timber industry. The federal funds obtained by the DNR were specifically dedicated to benefit wildlife and wildlife habitat yet appeared to be used instead to pay for hundreds of commercial timber sales that the DNR’s own biologists said provided little benefit to wildlife or were even detrimental due to the environmental damage caused by the logging activity.
As the Timberjay reported last August, the FWS has been at odds with the DNR over its use of federal wildlife funds for what appear to be purely commercial timber sales since 2021. The FWS had actually suspended its funding to the DNR for a time, but that funding was restored this past September after the DNR agreed to do a better job of documenting the wildlife benefits of its management activities.
DNR and FWS supervisors have, for the most part, sought to portray the matter as a misunderstanding over paperwork. DNR Division of Fish and Wildlife Director Dave Olfelt said the FWS had placed conditions on the grant that required documentation of the wildlife purposes for forest habitat work covered by the grant. “Unfortunately, this change in the language for the 2021 grant was not fully clear to DNR,” said Olfelt. “As a result, DNR and FWS were operating for a period of time with different understandings regarding the scope and timing of required documentation of wildlife purposes for forest habitat management activities.” 
The 2020 report suggests a far more serious and systemic issue, however, in which the DNR’s Division of Forestry effectively usurped the authority of the DNR’s Division of Fish and Wildlife to utilize federal wildlife funds to support commercial timber harvest.
Olfelt notes that the recently-released document was a draft that was never finalized, and that the DNR had disagreed with some of the investigators’ conclusions. “Among the challenges we had with the 2020 draft report is that it included some unfounded preliminary conclusions that did not tie to clear protocols or standards and did not reflect an understanding of our broader forest management framework,” added Olfelt, who noted that the FWS never concluded that the DNR misappropriated federal funds or that the forestry division had taken over management of the wildlife funds.
Those views generally run contrary to the findings in the report, however, and it is also in contrast to the views of many within the DNR division that Olfelt leads.
“It appears the primary purpose of the observed timber harvests were commercial,” concluded the FWS report. “DNR Forestry seems to be planning and implementing timber harvests on WMAs with little or no Fish and Wildlife oversight. This appears to constitute a loss of control of federal grant funds…” In addition, because the federal funds must be matched by Fish and Wildlife license revenues, the report concluded that those funds, which typically come from the state’s hunters and anglers, were being diverted to pay for commercial timber harvesting that frequently provided no benefit to wildlife, or to the hunters or anglers who helped pay for them.
Wildlife staff express deep dissatisfaction
The possible misuse of federal wildlife grant dollars by the DNR appears to have come as a consequence of a 2018 change in DNR policy to substantially boost timber harvests in response to pressure from the timber industry. The new policy, known as the Sustainable Timber Harvest Initiative, or STHI, came under fire from the start from wildlife officials who argued that the harvest targets in the initiative made it difficult, if not impossible, to meet the DNR’s obligations to provide adequate and appropriate wildlife habitat on DNR-managed lands.
That change has devastated morale among DNR wildlife managers. An internal survey conducted by the DNR last fall found that 90 percent of its wildlife officials reported being either “very or somewhat dissatisfied,” primarily as a result of the new focus on commercial harvest and the widespread discounting of wildlife concerns within the agency, even within WMAs. Of those surveyed, fully two-thirds indicated they were “very dissatisfied.”
Wildlife officials offered unflattering comments as well in the survey. “Wildlife staff have been marginalized and not empowered to advocate for the benefit of a diverse wildlife and habitat system. We are told to find the harvest needed to support cord targets,” stated one of the respondents. Others reported feeling punished for expressing their professional opinions when they didn’t coincide with the demands of the STHI. “It’s obvious they [DNR leadership] have no respect for us or our concerns,” commented one official.
Some wildlife staff reported seeking medical help for stress management and panic attacks brought on by the disagreements within their offices over forest management. “I take frustration home from the office, defeated and on the verge of just giving up,” commented another survey respondent. Still others accused top DNR officials of caving into pressure from the timber industry to put up more wood for harvest and worried the agency’s actions could set a dangerous precedent for the future, in which wildlife habitat is discounted in favor of commercial interests. “It’s disgusting” concluded one wildlife official.
Federal grant program substantial
The two federal programs at issue, known as Pittman-Robertson and John Dingell grants, have typically provided $20-$30 million to the DNR every year. Those funds are supposed to be managed by the DNR’s Fish and Wildlife Division to help pay for a wide range of management practices, including brushing, prescribed burning, or other methods of forest, brush, or grassland improvement. While timber harvest is allowed under the program, the primary objective of the project must be to benefit wildlife.
But the FWS report concluded that is not what was happening. During their examination of DNR actions within the Red Lake Wildlife Management Area, for example, DNR’s own wildlife officials cited 101 instances where they were unable to identify any wildlife benefits from timber harvests within the WMA. Indeed, the report states, “Results of these timber harvests were considered by [DNR wildlife staff] to be detrimental to wildlife or not to have wildlife objectives at the WMA.”
The Red Lake WMA, the state’s largest WMA, is home to some of the state’s most extensive stands of black spruce and DNR foresters appeared keen to liquidate as much of this high value timber commodity as possible.
While the DNR’s long range plan for the Red Lake WMA cited its desire to “conserve, enhance, and restore all native plant communities… for the benefit of native wildlife,” the FWS report found the agency’s actions belied those words. “Timber harvests observed at Red Lake seem to contradict these long-range goals, especially timber harvests including black spruce, which are important for wildlife, and are underrepresented on the surrounding landscape.”
The report further found that DNR Forestry was charging personnel time against federal wildlife program dollars for timber sales that had no apparent value to wildlife and were, in some cases, decreasing the quality and quantity of wildlife habitat.”
The FWS investigators found that DNR Wildlife staff were frequently unaware of the location of many timber harvests that had been done within WMAs and had little or no input into the projects.
At the Whitewater WMA in southeastern Minnesota, the investigators found that the DNR appeared to be focusing its timber harvests in high value oak stands, which provide important sources of mast for many wildlife species, including white-tailed deer and turkeys. The investigators reported that some of those timber harvests had created erosion on hillsides, soil compaction in lowlands and the introduction of invasive species and reduction of natural forest regeneration.
“DNR Forestry and contracted loggers seem to be selecting mature oak stands to bid on almost solely for economic reasons, while leaving low economic value stands unharvested,” concluded the FWS report. “Mature oak stands have high wildlife value, and harvest of these stands for non-wildlife reasons is inconsistent with the purpose of the [Pittman-Robertson] Act, federal regulations, and purposes, objectives, and approach of the Wildlife Habitat grant.”
Questions raised
While the report highlights an apparent breakdown in oversight of these federal grant dollars within the DNR, Bob Bryant, a longtime FWS official who now works for PEER, said the FWS has questions to answer as well, including why the agency waited until just last month to release the report in response to PEER’s FOIA request for documents. He said the federal agency had omitted the damning report during an earlier release of information to the group.
Bryant said any of the half dozen findings included in the report should have been a red flag that prompted intervention by the federal agency back in early 2020 when it was written. “The FWS should have taken action back when the report was done,” said Bryant, adding that it was clear from the report and other information gathered by PEER that the DNR’s fish and wildlife division had functionally lost control of the federal wildlife grant funds, even though the funds are supposed to be managed by wildlife officials in states where the funds are utilized. “That should have been a red light that stopped the logging back in 2020,” he said. “They [FWS] have some explaining to do.”
Hudson Kingston, an Ely-based legal counsel for the group CURE, agreed. “When DNR staff in 2019 indicated that this program was harming protected habitat, the FWS and the public knew there was smoke. This 2020 report shows that FWS staff investigated and found the fire,” he said. “Then agency management withheld this information from the public for years, letting it smolder and destroy irreplaceable old-growth habitat that should never have been cut.”
The Timberjay reached out to Will Meeks, the FWS’s new Midwest regional director for comment on this story but he did not respond prior to press time.
Issues resolved?
Top DNR officials insist the issues with the FWS have been largely resolved and that some of the FWS’s critiques had led to considerable discussions between the two agencies that helped to clarify expectations moving forward. “The fact that FWS fully reimbursed our 2021-2023 grant and has issued our 2023-25 grant demonstrates their confidence in the work we do and that issues FWS identified have been addressed,” said Olfelt.
Kingston isn’t so sanguine and faults the FWS as too lax in its oversight of the DNR. “How is this excessive deference to DNR not a loss of control of federal funding committed to habitat management?” wrote Kingston in an October 2023 letter to the FWS.