Wyoming Game and Fish rejects 60-day comment periods
Associated Press
CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) – The Wyoming Game and Fish Commission has
unanimously rejected a Game and Fish Department recommendation to make a
60-day public comment period the standard for species management plans.
Commissioners said during a meeting Wednesday they did not want to
get locked into requiring a certain number of days for public comment.
The recommendation was one of 18 presented to the commission in a
special report on the Draft Wyoming Gray Wolf Management Plan. Besides
wolves, the recommendation would have affected the management planning of
species such as grizzly bears, sage grouse and black-tailed prairie dogs.
Larry Kruckenberg, a special assistant for policy and development,
said the management plans for the four species vary widely in the number
of days allowed for public comment.
The department recently completed a 35-day comment period for the
draft wolf management plan. Past comment periods have ranged from 120 days
for the state’s grizzly bear plan to 60 days for the sage grouse plan and
90 days for the prairie dog plan.
The department received nearly 8,000 public comments on its most
controversial plan, the draft grizzly management document released for
public comment in the spring of 2001.
Department officials said it was the most comments received by the
agency on any wildlife management issue.
Kruckenberg said hundreds of comments were submitted on the draft
wolf plan after the Dec. 12 deadline, for a total of about 6,000 comments.
He said the agency received two formal requests to extend the
35-day deadline. The requests were denied in part so the commission
could meet its Feb. 24 deadline for adopting a wolf plan.
“There’s been some level of complaint … about the insufficient
amount of time on the wolf plan … we may be pushing the edge of the
envelope,” he said.
The public comment period on the draft wolf plan was the shortest
comment period ever for the agency.
“Maybe we’ve crossed the line of the public’s tolerance from that
standpoint,” Kruckenberg said. “But we feel there’s some rationale to say,
and this is not hard and fast, but to say 60 days seems to be acceptable
to us and seems to work for the public.”
But Commission President Doyle Dorner wondered what the public’s
reaction would be if the commission adopted a 60-day public comment period
rule.
“We’d just be setting ourselves up to get beaten with a hammer if we
make 60 days the norm when we’ve just got done with a 35-day comment
period” on the gray wolf management plan, Dorner said.
Kruckenberg said the department was simply responding to public
attitudes about the process.
“We’re saying we learned from the (draft wolf management plan)
process and we’re responding to the public concerns raised during that
process,” he said. “This recommendation says we heard that message and
we’re trying to strike a balance.”