I have been waiting for one of my fellow Badgers to pick up on this story, but haven't seen it diaried yet. So I'll give it a go.
It's from Milwaukee Magazine, published 1/3/2014. Here's the opening tease: "As the head of the [Wisconsin] Department of Natural Resources, Cathy Stepp is gung ho on building bridges to businesses and boosting customer service to sportsmen. But after a string of political blunders, many fear the agency is drifting too far from its fundamental mission."
With all of the other criminal, thuggish, arrogant, Koch-funded, Bradley-Foundation-driven, anti-democratic things that Scott Walker and his minions have done to Wisconsin, it is hard to keep up. This article does a through job of describing the record of cronyism and incompetence that has marked Walker's assault on Wisconsin's natural resources and on our storied legacy of conservation leadership.
One of the long-time WI Department of Natural Resources employees quoted in the article nails it exactly on the head:
“Wisconsin, once upon a time, was a leader in resource management, certainly in endangered species management. You know, revered among other agencies around the country,” says Jurewicz. “Well, that has changed, but I think a lot of people don’t realize it. They don’t realize that the DNR is no longer looking out for them and their environment here in Wisconsin. I grew up in a Wisconsin where the DNR was our watchdog, they protected us,” he says. “Well, that DNR no longer exists.”
For those involved in conservation, Wisconsin for generations was been a beacon. For generations untold, its eleven tribal communities have been devoted stewards of the Wisconsin landscape. Wisconsin welcomed John Muir to the new world, and his passion for natural beauty and wild things was forged in his Wisconsin boyhood. Fighting Bob La Follette started his career-long progressive crusade based importantly on his opposition to the timber barons and land despoilers of the late 1800s. Charles Van Hise, then president of the University of Wisconsin, wrote the first textbook in conservation in 1910. Aldo Leopold came to Wisconsin in the 1920s and changed the course of conservation history through his profound scientific acumen, his poetic voice, and his call for a "land ethic." For three decades Gaylord Nelson served as governor and senator, bringing Wisconsin's leadership to the world through the creation of Earth Day in 1970. Our lands, lakes, rivers, forests, prairies, wildlife have inspired generation after generation to think long-term, and to take care of the land for each other, for future generations, for all the species we share it with. It is an amazing record.
No more. That is now history. The tradition is broken. We were leaders. Now we are a wholly owned subsidiary of the Kochs and Bradleys. If ever anyone doubted it, Wisconsin is Exhibit A in demonstrating that the destruction of democracy and the destruction of the land go hand in hand.
The article explains in detail the impacts of Walker's reign on several key conservation fronts ("In her push to transform the agency, though, [DNR Secrtary Kathy Stepp] seems to have found herself at the center of one embarrassing PR crisis after another.")
- The criminal mining legislation that is intended to allow one company, Gogebic Taconite, to open the world's largest open pit iron mine, in the pristine Penokee Hills, upstream from Lake Superior and the lands and waters of the Bad River Band of Ojibwe.
- The crass cronyism that was aimed to hand over hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars to friends of the administration.
- The devastating growth of frac sand mines -- essentially mountaintop removal, Midwesterm-style -- in the Driftless hills of western Wisconsin, with no oversight, regulation, and even concern on the part of the agency charged woith protecting environmental quality.
- An assault on scientific-based decision making in environmental policy, seen most blatantly in the headlong rush to institute a hunt on Wisconsin recovered wolf population.
That is just a small sample. It is easy to name dozens of other small and large assaults on the Wisconsin landscape, performed by those very authorities who are supposed to be protecting it.
Cathy Stepp is the face of all this. But make no mistake, the loss of Wisconsin's conservation tradition goes well beyond her. And it must be said: the former Democratic governor James Doyle did little to stop it, and had he stood up we wouldn't be in this mess. When he had a chance to return to the former policy of the DNR secretary being a non-political appointment, he vetoed the bill -- after promising twice in campaigns to sign such legislation. Now we reap the awful fruits.
Enter Scott Walker, who tapped Stepp to head the DNR, saying, “I wanted someone with a Chamber-of-Commerce mentality.” Stepp assembled a team that included Deputy Secretary Matt Moroney, previously the executive director of the Metropolitan Builders Association of Greater Milwaukee. She tapped Gunderson, a former Republican state representative with close ties to bear hunters, to be her executive assistant.
I have friends who have worked and still work for the DNR in Wisconsin. They are hamstrung and brow-beaten. They are afraid to speak up for fear of losing their jobs. They are bullied and gagged.
This article does a thorough a job of describing the loss of conservation values in Wisconsin -- more completely than anything that's been written since Walker and his reactionary overseers took over our state. I don't want this article to disappear. If you care about conservation, or about Wisconsin, or about democracy, please read it and share it widely. We owe it to Gaylord Nelson, and Aldo Leopold, and La Follette and Van Hise and Muir and our Native brothers and sisters. We owe it to future generations. We owe it to the land and to all the life and beauty the land offers and supports.