There is such a beast that begins to address the effects of the the current budget on southern refuges. The only place that I have found the report is:
http://www.wilderness.org/Library/Do...kforcePlan.pdf
At the risk of being lengthy, I'll copy-and-paste a few items of interest here. My interest was relative to Santee NWR and I should note that the impact there is the loss of one Administrative position (as I read this), so it could be worse.
"Southeast Regional Director Sam Hamilton and Regional Refuge Chief Jon Andrew established three Teams to address these issues for refuges in the Southeast. The teams established
were:
(1) Field Review Team,
(2) Regional Office Review Team, and
(3) Outreach Team"
As it happens, the Santee Manager at the time (Mark Purcell) was a member of the Field Review Team. The Outreach Team is tasked with providing info on the subject. That made me wonder why I had to go to a non-FWS site to even find the plan, but they pointed it out to me (in more difficult format) on the FWS site as follows:
http://www.fws.gov/southeast/workforce/
"The plan identifies three tiers of refuges, which are defined further in the document:
1. Focus Refuges
2. Targeted Reduction Refuges
3. Unstaffed Satellite Refuges
...The 128 national wildlife refuges located in the Southeast Region were divided into three tiers as follows: 24 were identified as Focus Refuges, 61 were listed as Targeted Reduction
Refuges, and 43 were identified as Unstaffed Satellite Refuges"
These are listed in the Appendix of the Plan. SC Focus Refuges are Cape Romain and Carolina Sandhills (WHY?). SC Targeted Reduction Refuges on the list are as follows:
E.F. Hollings ACE Basin
Santee
Waccamaw
Did we trade Santee for Carolina Sandhills???
Finally, Pinckney Island is the only Unstaffed Satellite Refuge in SC.
"No refuge is identified for closure in this plan and core mission functions will be maintained at least minimally on each refuge in the Southeast Region....The primary purpose of this plan is to realign our declining staff to the Southeast Region’s highest priority resources, primarily to refuges in the Focus category."
That's good...IF we have the right ones on that Focus list.
"The Southeast Region currently manages 128 national wildlife refuges, encompassing nearly four million acres. This is 24 percent of the total number of refuges in the Refuge
System, making the Southeast Region the largest Region. Refuges in the Southeast Region also host 30 percent of the total visitation nationally."
I'm afraid that's NOT good and, given waterfowl migration, becomes a reason TO CUT part of the SE refuge budget. However, the southern MF IS in this region and that helps at the bureaucratic level.
"The Southeast Region currently manages 128 national wildlife refuges, encompassing nearly four million acres. This is 24 percent of the total number of refuges in the Refuge System, making the Southeast Region the largest Region. Refuges in the Southeast Region also host 30 percent of the total visitation nationally.... our hope is to achieve a significant percentage of the 79 positions....the reduction of 54 positions will result in close to a 20% operational margin."
What HE said. They developed a list of over 90 positions to cut, added BACK enough to make the number 79, decided that they couldn't cut 79 on attrition alone and are busy justifying a cut of 54 to achieve their goals. It should also be understood that this is in addition to the 64 positions cut in the FY 2004-2006 period.
"Focus refuges (Figure 2) were not selected because they were either fully funded or fully staffed. Focus refuges were selected because they
had at least adequate staffing to provide quality management for some aspect of the primary mission of the Refuge System. Some were
selected because of their successful management of migratory waterfowl, endangered species or various important habitat types, such as
bottomland hardwood or coastal environments.
Additionally, showcase environmental education and visitor programs were selected. There is tremendous variety in the Focus refuges, such as station size, staffing size and specialization,
and habitat importance and type."
THE ISSUE: Should be read with the phrases "good judgement", "politics", snd "compromise" spinning around in your head. That's why Santee suffers and we preserve a unique ecosystem like Carolina Sandhills...to give an example.
"DISCUSSION:"
"Currently, the Region has 671 permanent field staff to manage its 128 field stations, which is an average of only 5.2 staff per station. This
staffing will drop further as we implement this plan....The fundamental basis of this report
is that we must now focus our attention on fewer priority resources with emphasis on “Wildlife First. This forces us to limit our attention
on all other refuge priorities, principally the “Big 6” priority wildlife-dependant public use opportunities...the National Wildlife Refuge System has looked beyond its boundaries to seek out creative partnerships that will benefit wildlife resources. With less people it will be impossible to develop and maintain as many unique
cooperative opportunities."
There is a huge amount of info in this Plan with its Discussion, Conclusions, and Appendix. I suggest the first site noted in this post as the best place to review it.
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