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A Personal Perspective of the Endangered Species Act for its 50th Anniversary, Birth of the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation

In the fall of 1984 a husband and wife duo, both career employees in Interior Department wanted to donate $10,000 to create a foundation for FWS programs. After several years of not getting a receptive ear inside Interior leadership ranks, they took their importuning to Congress where Cong John Breaux (D-LA) chaired the Merchant Marine and Fisheries Committee, the authorizing committee for FWS and wildlife legislation, and to its Senate counterpart The Environment and Public Works Committee chaired by John Chafee (R-RI). Breaux’s clerk was Jeff Curtiss, and Senate EPW staff were Steve Shimberg, and the aforementioned Martha Pope for Senator Mitchell (D- ME). Jeff invited myself, Bob Davison NWF, and Michael Bean from the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) to meet and over an afternoon fueled by a couple of six packs, and at end of session we drafted the initial language to create the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, which was subsequently passed by both houses of Congress in 1985. Serendipity sometimes works! Thus NFWF, now the nations’ largest funder of wildlife conservation was born.

Fast forward to spring, 1986 when I got a call from Chip Collins of Western Pennsylvania Conservancy asking for background on NFWF, its potential, and whether I would recommend him to take the job as the incipient executive director? I asked him if he was a risk taker-already suspecting he was not, so I opined there was a huge leadership vacuum in the environmental movement that could potentially be filled by a new entrepreneurial organization. In other words, go for it man. He did.

And so six months later flying home from my meeting with Peter Berle, who rather ungraciously fired me for my board impertinence, but at least I would no longer be receiving Butler’s negative performance evaluations, I got a call from Chip Collins asking me to come aboard NFWF as the second employee and Director of Conservation. Chip was a skilled fund raiser, but he did not know to set up a grant program, nor how to supercharge a foundation that came into being with virtually no money in the bank.

How do you start a foundation from scratch that does not come with an endowment or a trust fund in place?  NFWF was established by Congress to support the programs of FWS and with the Secretary of Interior appointing the board. So I asked Chip and board Chair Tom MacMillan (a Reagan, Sen. Laxalt appointment) to give me six months to come up with a strategic plan. I then canvased FWS leadership in DC and all the regional offices across the country to identify problems and potential opportunities. Congress had just passed the North American Wetlands Conservation Act (NAWCA), the legislative response to a multi decadal effort by US and Canadian biologists to address declining waterfowl populations. We made implementing NAWCA and harnessing the Foundation’s authorization for federal matching dollars ($) priority number one. We worked with state fish and game directors, notably Gary Myers of Tennessee and Doc Timmerman of South Carolina, to send U.S. $ to Canada’s primarily prairie provinces where waterfowl breed and to create targeted geographic joint ventures in migratory corridors in U.S. to enhance coordination of partners. NFWF funded the first three years of NAWCA, then helped position NAWCA as a FWS budget line item through Congressional appropriations. Many endangered species dependent on wetlands benefited.

The second priority became leadership training. I had been invited as a speaker at FWS’ Refuge Academy hosted at a small Iowa college for several years, so I was familiar with the agency’s training limitations. FWS at the time was a 7,000 FTE organization with no formal leadership training programs for senior management outside the refuge academy’s two-week short course. NFWF created, designing from scratch, and implemented the National Leadership Training program for three years, and we hosted a multi week program on the Xerox campus in northern VA. We received full support and encouragement from FWS Director Dunkel. In 1989 I spent Thanksgiving weekend bedside at Sibley hospital lobbying Charlie Estes who was recovering from surgery. Estes was Senator Byrds’ (D-W.VA.) Interior clerk on appropriations subcommittee and I urged him to provide funding for a permanent campus for the training program. Senator Byrd took the challenge and provided an initial $35 million for the Training Academy that now rests in Shepherdstown, W. VA. Many of FWS’ most progressive leaders, like Steve Thompson, Anita Fuller, Monty Halcomb and Mamie Parker were graduates of our initial training program. NFWF later made the grant to purchase Turtle Neck, the property on which the training campus sits.

The third priority of NFWF’s first strategic plan was the most important, most all-encompassing, and generally least understood and appreciated; it was also our financial engine. NFWF ‘s first year of operation was 1986, so we were still in Reagan years wherein funding for wildlife programs was not deemed an administration priority. We initiated what became a more than ten-year project, euphemistically called the NEEDS ASSESSMENT, which was a series of comprehensive books that analyzed the budget needs of initially FWS programs and later included analysis of the budget needs of US Forest Service, BLM and during the H.W. Bush administration we added NOAA and NMFS to the larder.

Of course the exercise was primed to get Congress to increase funding for natural resources over the President’s budget. All our recommendations factored in inflation and were diligently researched line item by line item with accurate projections. I hired Bill Chandler to produce these tomes and we delivered the books to Congress Interior Appropriation committees by late April in time for committee hearings with agency leadership. The theory was “a rising tide will lift all boats.”, and the trust and effort that went into the production of the Needs Assessments and their relative accuracy compared to OMB and administration budgets made them a valued reference resource to appropriations committee staff. They in turn were receptive to providing matching fund ear marks for NFWF’s annual appropriation in FWS and other agency allocations (in 1999 when I departed, NFWF received funding from 13 federal agencies). This exercise propelled NFWF funding, even through four years of extreme Interior Secretarial adversity. It also let to record high funding levels in FWS and the endangered species program. It worked! Beautifully!

Lessons Learned:

In the 1970-1990's congressional add-ons drove endangered species funding.

In 1989/90 I worked hard to assist the elevation of H.W. Bush to the Presidency.

I co-chaired Conservationists for Bush, wrote numerous policy recommendations which were forwarded through C. Boyden Gray and Frank Blake, wrote drafts for his speeches (Boston Harbor, No Net loss for Wetlands) and met with the Vice President personally on three occasions. My hope was that a progressive Republican administration might provide a return of the quality of leadership enjoyed at Interior under Nixon/Ford. When Bush won, Nat Reed was briefly considered, but was black balled by his Florida Senators. Bush then appointed Cong. Manuel Lujan from New Mexico from House Resource Committee as Secretary of Interior. My NFWF board chair Jim Range, a Vice President of Waste Management based in D.C. and former staff to Senator Howard Baker on Senate EPW committee, was put forward as Under Secretary. That lasted less than 48 hours!

The day after his name was put forward as U/S, Range went to meet Lujan for breakfast and in so many words told Lujan that he Range would be running Interior day to day. That did not sit well with Lujan, and by evening Range’s nomination was withdrawn. Range had asked me to be his deputy, so I was tainted in his soup. There is an old Russian expression: “don’t spit in the soup, we all got to eat…” The next day Lujan removed Range from the NFWF board where he served as Chair (the Secretary makes all NFWF board appointments under Congress’ authorizing statute). Over the next week Lujan appointed 5 board members to our then compliment of nine members with three instructions: (1) fire Eno, (2) terminate federal funding for NFWF, and (3) do not fundraise. This became a four-year exercise of rodeo Lujan, where in I got to ride the bull. Every board meeting three times a year for four years started with motion to dismiss Eno. Lujan over time became so infatuated with shutting down NFWF that in his testimony before House Interior Appropriations Subcommittee Chair Sid Yates in 1993-94, this was the only topic of his testimony. Fortunately, the Secretary’s credibility with House democrats was not high, as he once queried: “What is the difference between a red squirrel (a listed species in AZ) and a gray squirrel?” Despite the Secretary’s fervent opposition in those four years, NFWF budget rose from some $20 million to well over $120 million. How on earth did that happen? And many endangered, threatened and pre-listing species benefited as related below.

At my first board meeting with Lujan appointments, I figured four of the nominees were antipathetic, and lost causes for supporting NFWF. The fifth was Neil Oldridge, CEO of Remington Arms. At the board table I placed him between John L. Morris of Bass Pro, my chair replacing Range, and Maggie O. Bryant of VA. Both of whom whispered in his ear their strong support for NFWF programs. With the board roll call for my dismissal at the top of the agenda, Chuck Yeager voiced his support and Neil voted for my continued employment despite the Secretary’s instructions. This scenario played out three times a year at board meetings for four years, until Yeager went to the White House for a one on one with President Bush. I rode the bull! It was not a lot of fun, and I suffered intestinal discomfort for four years. How did we survive and grow financially?

NFWF’s survival and funding prosperity is owed to four principals who also supported funding for endangered species during Lujan’s four-year term. On House Interior Appropriations Committee clerks Neal Sigmon for Chairman Yates, and Tim Shay for ranking full Committee member Silvio Conte (R-MA) provided year in year out support. Cong Conte encouraged me to provide language and earmarks for the Interior Committee mark-up each of those four years. He also supported many LWCF earmarks. I flew with him out to California to see the Nature Conservancy’s Llano Seco project in the Central Valley, the Thierriot family ranch, which received a $9 million earmark as a result. We took Silvio duck hunting and I swear he shot a mallard 150 yards out. On the Senate side, Senator McClure’s (R-ID) clerk Don Knowles and Senator Byrd’s clerk Charlie Estes were equally supportive year to year. This combination of House/ Senate Interior Committee staff support also provided numerous earmarks for endangered species recommended annually by our NEEDS ASSESSMENT. Within OMB, Bush’s Deputy Director for Natural Resources and Environment, Robert Grady created a firewall of support within the executive branch. Maggie Bryant, who took over as our board chair from John L. Morris became our implacable “Iron Lady” of support on the NFWF board, and she would brook no interference from Lujan protégés. She firmly stared down, and maneuvered Lujan appointees to either get on board with the foundation’s mission or get off. One by one they got off.

NFWF CARRIES ON 1990: PIF

Our second three-year plan sallied forth in 1990 with the roll –out of Partners In Flight (PIF) in a public meeting in Atlanta hosted by NFWF with federal partners FWS, USFS, BLM, and DOD, with the agencies all committed to program implementation, and many bird focused NGOs. FWS’s current PIF Coordinator, Robert Ford attended that meeting on behalf of Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency (TWRA). Ford is PIF Coordinator in 2021 and for the last two years has been discussing with me how to potentially restart the program, which as was the case with all my priority grant portfolios, was cancelled by my successors in year 2000.

Most of our neotropical birds-migratory songbirds as opposed to waterfowl and waders-winter in just a few Latin American and Caribbean countries: Mexico south to the Isthmus of Panama, and the island nations of Cuba, Jamaica, Hispaniola (Dominican Republic and Haiti), and their winter habitat was at far greater risk and embodied far smaller habitats than the breeding areas in the U.S. Our strategic plan documented this so we set up an office in Guatemala that was staffed by a brilliant woman, Megan Hill. She oversaw our grants throughout Latin America and the Caribbean that included pioneering shade coffee for bird habitat and Rare’s Banana Amigo to reduce pesticides on banana plantations, creating an ornithological curriculum at University of Guatemala and too many field and habitat projects to name. We also brought in US AID as a major NFWF partner.

If I were to restart the PIF today, I would focus on private land owners in the grassland states of Texas north to Montana and the Dakotas because grassland birds are the largest suite of declining species.

GIS-GAP:

One of our early (1987-88) grants was important for endangered species through national application. We funded Michael Scott, the new Idaho Coop leader replacing Maurice Hornocker, who had spent ten years tracking and researching Hawaiian Forest birds, all of which are listed as endangered and were a focus of LWCF earmarks. Michael developed GIS-GAP analysis, correlating species richness across geographic landscapes there by bringing better targeting and efficiency for both land acquisitions and research and recovery efforts. In Idaho GIS- GAP analysis also demonstrated where species richness lies.  Idaho is almost 70% public land but the species are concentrated on the private lands of the Snake River corridor and in the northern panhandle around Coeur D’Alene again emphasizing the underlying importance of private lands.

BRING BACK THE NATIVES (BBN): another important grant portfolio came out of our strategic planning efforts: Bring Back the Natives targeting declining western trout and salmonid species. One of our early BBN projects targeted the St. Mary’s River in north eastern Nevada for Lahontan cutthroat trout; this is Cowboy country with BLM/USFS lands and the grant proved that ranchers were willing to cooperate to restore riparian habitat. A similar grant on the San Pedro River in Arizona saw breeding birds recover 300% in three years with restored vegetation and fencing out cattle from critical riparian areas. The Blackfoot project in Montana became a phenomenal success that continues to this day. We also supported Project Share in Maine’s Washington County with cooperating forest companies to improve stream passage for Atlantic salmon that also continues to this day. BBN was originally overseen by Whit Fosburgh in his second gig working for me (he interned with me at National Audubon), and when he departed for Trout Unlimited he was succeeded by Jerry Clark and Pam McClelland with Pam now serving on my LandCAN board. Riparian restoration works!

PARTNERS FOR WILDLIFE: Another critical grant portfolio involved a three-year jump start, modeled on NAWCA for FWS’ Partners for Wildlife Program, Interior Department’s only program designed to outreach and engage private land owners in pro-active conservation. We funded $46 million in grants over three years and then convinced the Interior Appropriators to make Partners a line item program in the Service’s budget. Pat and Sharon O’Toole of Ladder ranch, astride the border of Wyoming and Colorado were early participants doing both riparian restoration and a conservation easement on their ranch. Partners has been a great success and Secretary Bernhardt increased their budget in 2019. It works!

My third strategic plan launched an environmental portfolio for minority community education, pollinators overseen by Gaby Echevaria, and Invasive species.

SERDP: In 1992 President H. W. Bush appointed me to the board of SERDP, an unknown agency acronym, whom most readers will be unable to identify. It stands for Strategic Environmental Research Development Program, and it is the result of Sen. Al Gore’s only legislative achievement, largely due to the heft of his co-sponsor Georgia’s Sen. Sam Nunn. SERDP was modeled to become an environmental DARPA and the Bush administration funded it at $500 million. I served on the board throughout the Bush years and replaced Larry Jahn as Chairman in 1994. The incoming Clinton administration downsized funding for SERDP to $25 million- yup, Gore did not support his own legislative legacy, and I resigned in 1997. SERDP still exists and today is funding research to develop radio tags for highly endangered right whales through the Navy’s ONR. DOD environmental programs work!

YELLOWSTONE WOLVES: In 1995 Secretary Babbitt asked for help from NFWF. He wanted to restore wolves to Yellowstone. He was prevented from doing so by report language in annual Interior Appropriations bills. Whitney Tilt and I had earlier authored a booklet on restoring wolves to the Northern Rockies (19). This was the second occasion where NFWF faced controversy and adverse Congressional action where conservative Republican members of Congress wanted to defund NFWF, arguing that our federal grants were “fungible “and providing support for environmental advocacy organizations. A gaggle of Congressional members led by Helen Chenoweth (R-ID) on House Resources and David McIntosh (R-IN) on Government Affairs lambasted NFWF in a string of hearings. NFWF funded the reintroduction of wolves-which came from Canada- into Yellowstone NP, but you will not see mention of this grant in any of our annual reports or press releases. The wolf population expanded quickly across multiple states. Although ranchers and cattlemen organizations I know, wish we had not done this, it worked and ecologically it is a net benefit to Yellowstone’s ecosystem especially with regard to reducing elk populations which were pulverizing aspen growth (highlighted in Alston Chase’s book PLAYING GOD IN YELLOWSTONE) and this has benefited many species in what is often characterized as a trophic cascade. The story continues and wolves have high reproductive rates, compared to grizzlies for example, so they can sustain annual management mortalities.

PRE-LISTING CONSERVATION:

By the mid-1990s it became clear that the most efficient way to treat prospective listing of endangered species under ESA was to be pro-active, putting on the ground conservation or analysis of status on the table before litigants and regulatory courses are served. NFWF did over 140 grants to either keep species off the endangered species list, or support recovery in the last five years of my tenure. Two examples: the ferruginous pygmy owl which inhabits live oaks in South Texas coastal habitats. A local Audubon chapter touring the King ranch when it opened for ecotourism found owls and immediately proposed listing. Our grant to Texas AM proved the obvious: ferruginous pygmy owls are the most abundant raptor in the Americas and can be found from south Texas to Tierra del Fuego. Second the Karner Blue butterfly, (listed 1993) across Midwestern and NE states which we supported with grants matched by forest products companies. All our grants worked!

DOJ Fines, REPURPOSED: Among other notable grants and initiatives benefiting endangered species which carries on to this day is the reallocation federal judicial fines. Thanks to both Ken Berlin and Don Carr’s assistance (they served back to back as chiefs of DOJ Wildlife Division) in 1989-90 NFWF negotiated with Department of Justice to receive fine monies from federal prosecutions to reinvest in priority conservation projects. One of the first applications of this program involved Paul Tudor Jones, a hedge fund CEO (Tudor Investments) who was one of the most generous conservation donors in the country. He purchased a 5,000-acre lodge on the eastern shore of Maryland and was improving wetland habitat for waterfowl. However, it was a droughty year and environmental advocates took offense and with their cohorts at EPA filed suit under the Clean Water Act precipitating prosecution. National Wildlife Federation’s CEO, Jay Hair, got in the act naming Jones their “Eco Criminal of the Year” in their magazine.

Jay Hair was another example, as with Brower of FOE and McCloskey of Sierra, of an endless parade of environmental CEO messiah types who ignored on the ground facts to hyperventilate an environmental agenda. National Audubon’s Russ Peterson did likewise on Three Mile Island-all to our long term detriment. Jones was prosecuted, hit with a $2 million fine, and his lodge manager went to jail for a year. NFWF received a $1million of the fine monies which we put to good use expanding habitat for Blackwater NWR. This worked as did countless others as we received hundreds of rewards. This program, which Whitney Tilt and I documented in a booklet entitled: AFTER THE GAVEL (20), which was distributed nationwide to DOJ prosecutors, provided the precedent for the award of BP and Halliburton fines totaling $ billions to NFWF following the Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico in the past decade. Those funds are restoring habitat in all Gulf of Mexico states today. However, I will note that Jones was not an eco- criminal; he was in fact expanding and improving wetland habitat. I put Jones on the NFWF board in the early 1990s on which he still serves. He also insisted that I resign as CEO of NFWF in December, 1999.

EXXON, SAVE THE TIGER: in 1989 I got a call out of the blue from the Exxon Head of Office asking me to fly to Dallas to meet with CEO Lawrence Rawl. In the wake of Valdez, Exxon wanted to reach out to a strategic environmental partner. NFWF was not particularly well known nor established as a large environmental NGO at the time. Exxon had invited all the big environmental players: WWF, TNC, and National Audubon. They selected NFWF. I suspect because instead of just asking for their financial underwriting and putting their logo in our annual report, I pushed them on how to solve their damaged reputation and marketing problems, and I recommended a joint strategic grant program. Of course I mentioned tigers out of the box (then still an anchor of their advertisements), but they did not bite. The first two years we did grants for bird and whale conservation. The third year at their annual meeting a Dutch investor asked why they were not saving tigers; that blip on the screen and my persistent pleadings brought them across the goal line. We set up the SAVE THE TIGER FUND and for more than a decade funded tiger conservation across India, my old haunt in Nepal’s Chitwan, southeast Asian countries, and Maurice Hornocker’s multiyear studies in the Russian Far east of Primorye Ski, Khabarovsk (north of Vladivostok) province which benefited both Siberian tigers and leopards. This project brought National Geographic in as a sponsor. The Tiger Fund also funded education programs at zoos in Washington, DC, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Houston, Dallas, San Francisco, and Toronto. It worked!

DAM REMOVAL: in 1998 and 1999, as a follow on to our Bring Back the Natives project portfolio, NFWF underwrote the first three main stem dam removals in the U.S. The Mothership dam was Edwards Dam on the Kennebec River within sight of Maine’s state Capital building in Augusta. This was a multi-year effort involving permitting as well as physical removal. Our grantee was Natural Resource Council of Maine (CEO Brownie Carson) who distinguished themselves as the only grantee to not raise the required matching funds for our grant during my tenure. I had to fly in my board members from California (C. Getty) and Virginia (M. Bryant) to tour the site and have them put up match funding. Gov. Angus King’s office was supportive throughout the process. Secretary Babbitt took the podium to celebrate the bull dozer breaking the dam and initiating the removal process. NFWF hardly got a mention. Our partner was FWS’ Coastal Office in Maine led by Stewart Fefer. We later took out a main stem dam on the Nueces River in North Carolina, and at Stewart Fefer’s request removed a small dam on the Presumpscott River within sight of Portland. The removal of Edwards Dam opened miles of river and several tributaries for endangered Atlantic salmon as well as sturgeon and shad. Dam removal works!

PRIVATE LANDS CONSERVATION: My final strategic plan, and I will note that over my 15-year tenure all these plans were presented to the NFWF board and FWS director for approval, focused on creating a grant portfolio to engage and conserve wildlife on private lands for conservation purposes. My early career introduction to farms and ranches conserving endangered and declining species in eastern and southern Africa, and our implementation of NAWCA grants which introduced me to the importance of private land owners for waterfowl, steered me to focus on private lands. We made grants to rice farmers in California and Louisiana for holding water for wintering waterfowl populations, and much of our work in Canada involved private farmers. Our next big step in private lands was in Texas where Director Andrew Samson of Texas Parks and Wildlife Department asked for a grant to underwrite a private lands program for Texas. Texas is 97% privately owned so you do not do conservation in Texas without hooking horns with private land owners. NFWF responded with a $1.7 million grant –our largest to date, and an additional $300k the following year. Today TPWD has over 33 million acres enrolled in conservation agreements, almost 20% of Texas. Private land owner engagement works at scale!

A couple of years later I was introduced to the Malpais Borderlands Group, an association and newly formed nonprofit embracing some 40 ranch families in southeastern Arizona and the boot heal of New Mexico including the Gray Ranch. I attended a board meeting at Warner Glenn’s ranch (he had photographed a jaguar in the Peloncillo Mountains earlier that year on a lion hunt). Their board Chair was Bill McDonald and the board was comprised of some of the finest people I have ever met and all dedicated to conservation. They emblemized bottom up conservation and neighborly engagement. NFWF funded Malpais for five years and introduced them to other funders like the Packard Foundation. Malpais initiated projects to conserve the endangered Chihuahuan leopard frog, prescribed burning on their USFS and BLM leased lands, and many of the ranches were encumbered with conservation easements. The Malpais Group provides an enduring model for engagement and pro-active conservation by ranchers, and has been used as a model for the Maasai in Eastern Africa.

My first slate of memorable private land projects involved giving start up grants to underwrite three ranch/agriculture land trusts: The California Rangeland Trust (CEO Nita Vail), The Colorado Cattlemens’ Agriculture Land Trust (CEO Lynn Sherrod), and the Texas Agriculture Land Trust (Clark Willingham, board member-they had not hired a CEO yet). The TALT grant was my last grant at NFWF in Dec., 1999. Today these three land trusts are the largest in their respective states in terms of acreage in conserved status. AG and ranch land trusts work! And they do a better job engaging and enrolling landowners than traditional environmentally focused land trusts.

Lessons Learned:

Ag and ranch land trusts are successful, and private land conservation is both cheaper and more effective than public efforts.