Slashing and burning for the ducks of Wister

Some visitors to the Wister Unit near Nyland, California have been surprised to find the entire area surrounding the Nature Trail burned and bulldozed, with only a few trees still standing along the road.

What's going on here?

The California Department of Fish and Game (DFG) reports that the Imperial Wildlife Area was created in 1954 in order to safeguard habitat for migratory birds, alleviate crop damage to adjacent farms and to offer some unique recreation opportunities to Californians. Facilities at the area include roads, parking areas, portable restrooms, flat hiking trails, public phones, primitive camping, maps, bird check lists, and a special viewing platform is available. Drinking water, however, is not available.

So far, so good.

Then in  2008-09, extensive habitat "enhancement work" (at least from a hunter's perspective) at the Wister Unit was funded by a North American Wetlands Conservation Act (NAWCA) $1 million grant administered by DFG. The first step in that action was bulldozing salt cedars and phragmites from levees and units. Units were then burned to remove dense stands of cattails.

This latest effort looks to be more of the same kind of "habitat enhancement."

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As background, Congress passed the NAWCA in 1989 to encourage partnerships to conserve North American wetland ecosystems for waterfowl, other migratory birds, fish, and wildlife. The NAWCA also encourages the formation of public-private partnerships to develop and implement wetland conservation projects consistent with the North American Waterfowl Management Plan (NAWMP).

If there's a problem with any of this, it's that NAWCA-fostered public-private partnerships often involve hunting organizations.  In the case of Wister, substantial money grants went to the California Waterfowl Association (CWA) of Roseville, California.  CWA is a nonprofit organization whose principal objectives are the "conservation, protection, and enhancement of California's waterfowl resources, wetlands, and associated hunting heritage."

Before CWA, Ducks Unlimited (DU), another non-profit with a core hunting mission, was involved in "enhancing" 6,000 acres of the Wister Unit through at least 11 major projects spanning a decade.   

Given all this hunting organization involvement, it should not come as any great surprise when these kind of taxpayer-funded "habitat improvements" focus only on attracting ducks and geese, and on making it easier to shoot them.

It can also be a problem that state wildlife agencies like DFG often have dual missions: endangered species conservation on the one hand, and hunting and fishing enhancement on the other hand. That tends to create a political balancing act that doesn't always end well for non-game species that aren't otherwise protected by the Endangered Species Act or other specific laws.

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Don't get us wrong.  Some of us here at SDVO have done our share of duck hunting.  Some of us even still have a fowling piece or two in the old gun rack.

The real problem, in our view, is the accelerating shift generally away from public projects, to these so-called "public-private partnerships."

This has been a groundswell change in American public administration philosophy based on the dogmatic ideal that government is inherently wasteful and inept, and that private interests will always do a better job of spending the public's money.

Moreover, this concept has been seized upon -- and often cynically in our view -- by a legion of lobbyists from hunting, conservation, and other organizations who adeptly recognized in this emerging "public-private partnership" concept a way to obtain substantial taxpayer funding, combined with broad action authority.  And the beauty of it is, it can all be shamelessly and openly done to primarily benefit these organizations' own memberships.

Unfortunately, what the hunter-friendly "habitat enhancements" at places like Wister show, is that so-called "public-private partnerships" most often involve granting private organizations like CWA and DU a way to further their private interests (i.e., duck and goose hunting for their members) by giving them access to the public checkbook, and by giving them a remarkable degree of control over re-shaping and managing our irreplaceable public lands.