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Calling it a “historic opportunity,” James Steele Jr. pledged Thursday that the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes will make the most of a new funding agreement that will return some responsibilities at the National Bison Range to the tribes.
Steele, CSKT chairman, and H. Dale Hall, director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, signed the agreement at a late-morning ceremony in Washington, D.C.
Among those in attendance were Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne and Montana Sens. Max Baucus and Jon Tester.
“It is a day of great pride for my people,” Steele said at the signing, “because we will now be able to demonstrate that we can be effective and innovative partners with the Fish and Wildlife Service for the operation and management of the National Bison Range.”
Said Hall: “The Bison Range occupies a special place in the hearts of tribal members. I know the passion that they have for the land of their ancestors, and for the wildlife that sustained them. Fish and Wildlife Service employees also care passionately about the future of the Bison Range, and I strongly believe this agreement will serve to bring everyone together to accomplish great things for the refuge.”
The new agreement was signed 1 1/2 years after the FWS abruptly canceled a previous agreement and locked tribal employees out of the Bison Range as a bitter feud broke out between the two sides.
The Fish and Wildlife Service accused the tribes of failing to perform some of their duties properly and neglecting others altogether, and said tribal employees created a hostile work environment - charges the tribes strongly denied.
Tribal employees, meantime, accused the agency of deliberately sabotaging their work in a turf war designed to return the tribal jobs to federal employees, while the FWS insisted it had gone the extra mile to help the tribes succeed.
With this new agreement, the CSKT will assume a substantive role in managing mission-critical programs at the Bison Range.
The Bison Range manager - currently Bill West, a 20-year employee at the range who assumed his present duties after the previous agreement fell apart - will remain a FWS employee and have final decision-making authority on management direction, approval of plans, refuge uses and priorities.
A refuge management team, made up of wildlife and land management professionals from both governments, will inform those decisions.
Approximately three-quarters of the people working at the Bison Range are expected to be tribal employees after the new agreement takes effect next year.
Examples of responsibilities the tribes will undertake at the Bison Range include the annual bison roundup, migratory non-game bird surveys, waterfowl pair counts, bird banding, vegetation monitoring, geographic information system mapping, invasive plant control, wildfire suppression and prescribed burning, and dissemination of oral and written information to visitors.
U.S. Rep. Denny Rehberg, R-Mont., did not attend the signing but issued the following statement:
“I applaud the efforts of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes and the Department of Interior in coming to an agreement regarding future management of the National Bison Range. The Bison Range is a true Montana treasure and I'm glad both parties could find an agreement that protects the range's integrity and recognizes the role of the tribe(s). I look forward to working with my colleagues during the Congressional Review period to get the new deal approved as soon as possible.”
The agreement now goes to Congress for a 90-day review.
For Steele, Thursday's signing marked the latest step in a 14-year journey begun by one of his predecessors.
“An aspect of this that makes me particularly proud is to know that our former tribal chairman, the late Mickey Pablo, is looking down on us from heaven and has a big smile on his face,” Steele said. “Many of you never knew Mickey, but he was one of the great modern-day tribal leaders and before his untimely death he started the wheels in motion that led us to this day.”
Both the previous and new agreements were negotiated pursuant to the 1994 Tribal Self-Governance Act. It provides that qualified self-governing tribes who can demonstrate a significant cultural, geographic or historical connection to facilities managed by the Department of the Interior, with the opportunity to assume certain programs, services, functions and activities at those facilities.
One of Pablo's dreams, Steele said, was to see the tribes play a major role in operation of the Bison Range.
“He wanted this not only because the range is in the middle of our reservation and because he knew we could play an important role in the next 100 years of the Bison Range,” Steele said, “but also because of the critical role his great-grandfather, Michel Pablo, played in literally saving the bison from extinction.”
Some of today's herd of 350 to 400 bison descend from bison brought to Dixon in the 1870s by an Indian worried the species was about to be hunted to extinction. The herd slowly increased, and those animals were purchased in 1884 by Michel Pablo and Charles Allard Sr. They also added 26 purebred bison from Kansas.
Although Allard's widow sold his animals to Charles Conrad of Kalispell, and Pablo was forced to sell his bison after the 1904 Flathead Allotment Act limited land ownership, Steele said many of their animals were reacquired by the federal government after the Bison Range was established in 1908 and the nation's bison herd was begun.
Why will this agreement succeed where the previous one failed so miserably?
“When we entered negotiations in January, I think we all recognized there were hard feelings on both sides,” Steele said in a telephone interview with the Missoulian after the signing. “In order for us to move forward we had to realize the commonality we all have. We could spend many days, months, even years going back over the old problems, but we worked toward an agreement that would be beneficial to the bison and the refuge itself.”
Many organizations have opposed tribal involvement in the Bison Range, most notably Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, who see it as the start of a weakening, and potential dismantling, of the National Wildlife Refuge System.
Jeff Ruch of PEER told Land Letter, a natural resources publication, that the problem is the agreements are reached through negotiations between sovereign governments that leave the U.S. government without effective measures to ensure the Bison Range is managed as a national wildlife refuge.
“We suggest that they look at cooperative agreements, that they're treated more like contracts, with provisions like liquidated damage, ability to withhold payments for failure of service, the kinds of things taxpayers expect when they pay others for important work,” Ruch said, adding that he faulted the Department of the Interior, not the tribes.
“Interior hasn't thought out how they want these things to operate,” Ruch told reporter Patrick Reis. “They don't have any policy, they don't have any guidelines. (Interior) makes scores of public lands available every year, and if each is handled as badly as this one, it's going to be a disaster.”
The National Wildlife Refuge Association expressed similar concerns Thursday, but added it is hopeful this new agreement is a success.
“Our hope is this agreement will result in a National Bison Range that thrives in achieving its vital wildlife conservation mission,” said Evan Hirsche, president of the organization. “Yet, we remain concerned that such an agreement may be implemented absent a national FWS policy governing such partnerships.”
Both CSKT and the Fish and Wildlife Service stressed that the Bison Range remains a part of the National Wildlife Refuge System under the control of the service, and that duties performed by tribal employees must meet federal guidelines.
Steele has often pointed to the tribes taking over management of Mission Valley Power, a move opposed at the time by many non-tribal members on the Flathead Indian Reservation, as evidence that CSKT is fully capable of successfully tackling large responsibilities.
The rates remain some of the cheapest in the region and no one gives tribal involvement in the power company a second thought now, he has said, at one point noting that the tribes “have a much longer history with bison than we do with electricity.”
On Thursday, Steele predicted CSKT's presence on the Bison Range would come to be just as accepted.
“There are those out there who are skeptical of this agreement and I commit to you all now that we will earn their trust and their understanding,” Steele said. “We believe the Bison Range can be improved, and we believe a partnership between the Salish and Kootenai Tribes and Fish and Wildlife is the right ticket to make those improvements.
“We will make you proud of this historic opportunity.” |
