STATE OFFICIALS WALK OUT
2 environmentalists ejected from meeting on grizzly bears
By MICHAEL MILSTEIN
Gazette Wyoming Bureau
BOZEMAN - The head of a multiagency committee developing a conservation strategy for Yellowstone grizzly bears on Tuesday ejected members of an environmental group from a committee meeting, prompting Montana officials to leave, too.

Environmentalists said the action illustrated the secretive approach of agencies developing the conservation strategy. Officials of some agencies involved said even they did not understand why the meeting was closed.

Biologists of the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks said state open meetings laws prohibit them from taking part in meetings that are closed to the public.

"If I were to stay in a meeting like that, I am putting myself in jeopardy due to the laws in Montana, and that's not something I want to do," said Kurt Alt, a wildlife biologist in the Bozeman office of Fish, Wildlife and Parks.

The standoff arose Tuesday morning when a technical subcommittee of the Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee began a four-day meeting at a U.S. Forest Service office in Bozeman. The meeting was planned to complete work on a conservation strategy for grizzly bears in and around Yellowstone National Park that is a prerequisite to taking the Yellowstone grizzly bear off the federal endangered species list.

Subcommittee head Chris Servheen of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced at the start of the meeting that it was closed to the public and ordered Louisa Willcox and Vanessa Johnson of the Sierra Club Grizzly Bear Ecosystem Project to leave the room.

Montana officials then stated they could not participate in a closed meeting and they left, too.

Servheen offered no explanation for his decision to close the meeting, said Willcox and others who were there. Servheen did not return phone messages left at the office where the subcommittee was meeting on Tuesday.

Willcox said Servheen's action contradicted earlier statements by U.S. Forest Service Regional Forester Dale Bosworth, chairman of the higher-level Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee. At a December meeting, Bosworth said meetings of the committee or subcommittees would be open to the public unless they involved personnel or legal issues.

U.S. Forest Service Public Outreach Coordinator Laird Robinson, who serves as executive assistant to Bosworth, confirmed Bosworth's earlier statements.

"I really don't understand the thinking behind what happened this morning," Robinson said.

He said he planned to meet Wednesday morning with Bosworth, who was out of town on Tuesday, and draw up a formal policy statement on when meetings will be open or closed.

"We've got to get this thing resolved so we don't have people being told they have to leave," Robinson said.

Tuesday's meeting included representatives of the National Park Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, U.S. Forest Service, Idaho Department of Fish and Game and Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks. Only Montana officials left the room when the meeting was closed.

Montana endangered species biologist Arnold Dude said he saw no reason for closing the meeting.

"I'm not averse at all to having the public listen in on anything I do," he said. "That's who we work for."

He said he personally did not want to participate in a closed process.

"People have a right to attend the meeting as long as they're not disruptive," he said, noting that Willcox was not disruptive. "That's not to say anyone can get up and talk, but they can certainly sit and listen."

Fish and Wildlife Service spokeswoman Sharon Rose said she could not reach Servheen on Tuesday and did not know his rationale for closing the meeting. She said past meetings have sometimes been closed when they were for purposes of "brainstorming - to give all the agencies a chance to put their thoughts together and not look foolish - just to come up with some ideas."

Willcox said grizzly bear meetings had been closed off and on for the past four years, but she thought Bosworth had changed that. Closing meetings on a grizzly conservation strategy is counterproductive, she said.

"They're trying to create a conservation strategy without everyone in the room," she said. "It's not just that we're frozen out and we're tired of it, but at some point the public's got to understand what's in this document so they know what it means for grizzlies."

Servheen has said the conservation strategy is almost done. The meeting that began Tuesday was intended to iron out final points in the document.

"We're not trying to interfere with anything inappropriate or find out the details of people's personal lives," Willcox said. "We're just trying to be part of the public discourse."

Alt said it was difficult to tell whether Montana's absence from the meeting would make the final conservation strategy less responsive to Montana's concerns.

"It was their choice to close the meeting, not ours," he said. "We in Montana feel no need to keep the public from sitting in and listening to what's going on, whether that means snowmobilers, environmentalists or people from agriculture interests."