Wyoming Game and Fish suspends wolf-policy critic
By MIKE STARK
Gazette Wyoming Bureau
One of Wyoming’s top predator biologists has been suspended from his job after making comments last week that were critical of the state’s proposed wolf management plan.
Dave Moody, a Game and Fish employee since 1976, was suspended apparently for voicing concerns about the plan at a conference on wolves in Montana on April 9. Moody’s comments were reported by The Billings Gazette in a story that was later picked up by the Associated Press.
At the conference, Moody said he had doubts that the plan approved by the Wyoming Legislature would do enough to ensure a sustainable wolf population in the state, which is a key prerequisite for the federal government to hand over management to Wyoming.
Top government officials in Wyoming, including Gov. Dave Freudenthal, were upset by Moody’s comments, especially because he was charged with developing a wolf plan to present to the Game and Fish Commission.
Moody has since been placed on administrative suspension, according to sources close to the situation.
Moody, reached at his home in Lander this week, declined to comment, saying he’d been told not to speak to the press.
Game and Fish officials would not confirm or deny Moody’s suspension.
“All I can tell you is the standard government response: it’s a personnel matter and we can’t comment on it any further,” said Bill Witchers, deputy director of the Game and Fish Department.
Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, a Washington, D.C.-based watchdog group, was contacted by other employees at the Game and Fish Department who were “afraid of the implications” of Moody’s suspension, according to Eric Wingerter, the group’s national field director.
Wingerter said those employees confirmed Moody’s two-week suspension.
In an interview with The Gazette on Wednesday, Freudenthal said he didn’t know the status of Moody’s employment or whether he has been disciplined.
“It wasn’t initiated or cleared with me,” the governor said. “I clearly support the (Game and Fish) director. He didn’t ask me about it. He’s entitled to run that agency.”
Early in his administration, Freudenthal publicly rescinded a longstanding policy that state employees speak publicly with “one voice” and without dissent.
Freudenthal said he entertains “as much dissent as possible” in his administration. But he said any action to discipline Moody should not be seen as an attempt to keep employees from speaking out.
The difference between Moody’s comments and other employees simply stating their opinions is that Moody was in charge of drawing up the wolf plan but was already predicting its failure, Freudenthal said.
“I kind of like to have a trial before we have a hanging,” Freudenthal said. “This is a case of an administrator announcing, before [the plan] was put together, that it ain’t gonna work. Maybe a better course of action is to say ‘someone else should manage it because I don’t think it’s going to work.’ ”
At the conference, Moody criticized the wolf plan — approved by the Legislature and signed by Freudenthal — on several fronts.
Moody particularly worried about a provision that limits wolves classified as “trophy game” to Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks and a few adjacent wilderness areas.
The wilderness areas are used by wolves only about 11 percent of the time, he said. When they wander into the rest of the state, they’d be considered predators and subject to unregulated killing.
“That does not provide long-term, adequate protection,” Moody said last week.
Although wildlife managers would be allowed to change the status of some wolves from predators to trophy game when populations dipped, Moody said the plan would be “cumbersome” and require extensive monitoring and more personnel.
He said he had asked the Wyoming attorney general’s office for guidance on how much latitude there was in the Legislature’s plan as Game and Fish officials began drawing up a final version for the commission this summer.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which now manages wolves, will review state wolf plans from Wyoming, Montana and Idaho before handing the responsibility to the states. Each state has to show that its plan will foster a self-sustaining, viable wolf population.
Freudenthal and Witchers said the FWS has indicated support for Wyoming’s general approach in the wolf plan.
Moody was hired as a Game and Fish biologist in July 1976. He received several promotions over the next 15 years and became the state’s large-predator coordinator in the early 1990s.
He has received several awards for his work, including two merit awards from the department, and accolades from the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, the Wyoming Wildlife Federation and the Wyoming chapter of the Wildlife Society, a professional organization.
“He’s a well-respected biologist,” said Jeff Obrecht, a Game and Fish spokesman. “A hard worker.”
PEER’s Wingerter said he worried that a veteran scientist such as Moody was being punished for offering his professional opinion in public.
“This kind of behavior sends a chilling effect through an agency,” Wingerter said. “It’s injecting politics into biology.”
Wingerter emphasized that PEER was involved at the request of other employees and not Moody.
His group is expected to send a letter to Freudenthal and the attorney general this week asking that they enact a “non-retaliation policy for all government employees who are collegially sharing their opinion,” Wingerter said.