WASTE NOT — Wildlife biologist Robert Miller stands next to the huge dumpster filled with supplies, records and other materials being trashed at DEC’s Wildlife Resources Center in Delmar in preparation for a move to downtown Albany. The dumpster is emptied and refilled several times daily.
PEF scientists at DEC:
Relocation threatens more than work environment
BY SHERRY HALBROOK
PEF scientists and other environmentalists are outraged by a state plan to close the Wildlife Resources Center in Delmar and move the field biologists conducting wildlife research to cramped offices in downtown Albany.
They say the move — slated to begin in June — would make their work so inefficient that it could move the state’s entire wildlife research program to the top of the endangered species list.
State Department of Environmental Conservation managers say they want the researchers to spend their time in Albany offices supervising work that will be handed off to the private sector or DEC regional staff.
That’s a bad plan, says PEF member Bob Miller, who heads the non-game and wildlife unit at the research center. He was among the first to try to head off the research-center closing. He wrote to Gov. George Pataki in January to alert him to the problems associated with the plan.
“DEC’s technical expertise and ability to deliver science-based wildlife management will be reduced because regional staff already have too many responsibilities to develop the breadth of knowledge that Delmar staff now provide,” Miller wrote to Pataki and copied it to then DEC Commissioner John Cahill.
“Certain special skills, such as aerial surveys and peregrine falcon banding, would have to be duplicated among regions to replace the expertise that Delmar staff currently apply efficiently on a statewide or multi-regional basis,” Miller wrote.
“A central office, such as Delmar, ensures that the Bureau of Wildlife can respond quickly to new research or management needs anywhere in the state without re-assigning regional staff. Central office staff need to participate in field research and management to provide effective program leadership and coordination, and maintain credibility and expertise when challenged,” Miller added. Neither Pataki nor Cahill responded to Miller’s letter.
No time for foot dragging
But wildlife pathologist Ward Stone, whose laboratory is scheduled to remain at the Delmar site, says Miller is making very important points.
“There has never been a more challenging time for protecting the environment than now,” Stone says. “Because of many factors — such as higher ambient temperatures, suburban sprawl, loss of habitat, hazardous wastes, endangered species, and air and water pollution — situations are continuously and rapidly changing. They require constant and close monitoring and the ability to respond quickly and effectively.”
The move would impede both monitoring and response, Stone says.
“If current plans are carried out,” say two retired state wildlife biologists, “a great episode in New York conservation history will end.”
In an opinion piece published in Capital Region newspapers, retired PEF members Joseph Dell and Don Foley condemned the plan to move the research center as “the kind of decision that gives bureaucracy a bad name.”
All central office affected
The furor over plans to shut down the country’s oldest wildlife research center has erupted this spring as a small, but intense, skirmish in the larger fight against state plans to move the entire state DEC central offices to a new building in downtown Albany. These offices are currently housed on Wolf Road in Colonie — another close suburb of the capital.
“PEF went to court to oppose the relocation of the central offices to 625 Broadway,” says PEF Executive Board Member Wayne Bayer. “That building was designed for an administrative agency, such as Tax and Finance, not an agency with the many diverse responsibilities and missions that DEC has.”
Some of the same efficiency concerns are being raised by PEF leaders regarding both moves — extremely cramped space in the new building will leave no room for seasonal staff or field-research equipment and force many important records to be stored elsewhere.
Likewise, a shortage of parking downtown means most of the DEC fleet will be kept off-site at the Port of Albany while the rest of the vehicles and the field equipment will be stored in Delmar.
“Even as DEC planning personnel are scratching their heads about how to squeeze 1,800 employees and their tools and equipment into the new leased facility, they appear to be hidebound in their determination to consolidate central staff under one roof,” the PEF retirees Dell and Foley say.
“Meanwhile, the unique research center — fully paid for and specifically designed for the work that has gone on there for 60 years — will essentially be mothballed. Its planned future use for storage and occasional meetings is worse than wasteful. It is a very sorry statement about the direction our commitment to wildlife appears to be taking,” say Dell and Foley.
“Productivity will suffer as people have to search for historic records and data on 1970’s technology — microfiche,” Bayer says. “Worse, many important agency records are being thrown away in order to shoe-horn staff into 625 Broadway. Many professionals must discard or take home their reference materials, books, journals and periodicals because there will not be room for these tools of the trade once they relocate.”
Bayer foresees, “The success of future court cases involving our natural resources is in jeopardy and we won’t know the price for years to come.”
No more surprises
Miller, who has 38 years of state service, says he will retire rather than be a party to the quiet strangulation of the research program that for 60 years has made New York a leader and model for wildlife programs throughout the nation.
“Some permanent staff will retire or find other employment,” Miller says. “It will be hard to attract qualified new staff to replace long-time program specialists who have passed up promotion opportunities to stay at Delmar.
“Working in a place, such as the Delmar office, with its setting next to Five Rivers Environmental Center and its history of achievement, is something most people in wildlife research value,” Miller says.
The small community of approximately 30 expert biologists at the Delmar research center form a tightly knit nucleus that produces a synergy that has attracted talented scientists nationwide, Stone says.
“It takes about 10 years for a new, young scientist to develop expertise on a particular species,” Stone says. “We don’t have a system in this country to develop that expertise, and it’s not often found in academia or the private sector.
“The pay isn’t high enough to be an attraction,” Stone says. “The motivation for scientists is the opportunity to do research and field work. They don’t want to end up in a cubbyhole with a computer.”
It’s very clear to the scientific community, Stone says, that DEC wants to move the scientists into headquarters downtown because, “It will be a very controlling work environment. It will eliminate the surprises that only field research can provide.”
While scientists live for those surprises, environmental polluters and exploiters dread them.
“This move is part of an unhealthy national trend to control environmental scientists,” Stone says. “And the timing couldn’t be worse in this period of rapidly changing environmental conditions. This is no time for cutbacks in bio-monitoring. We should be doing more, not less.”
“Our talented wildlife research staff will no longer be conducting field research, but pushing papers in the central office. It would mean really the end of the wildlife research program,” John Stouffer of the Sierra Club told Albany reporters at a May press conference on the issue.
The Sierra Club and PEF are urging New Yorkers to call the governor’s comment line at 518-474-1041 and express their opinions and concerns about the move.
- Restoration of bald eagles;
- Restoration of peregrine falcons;
- Monitoring endangered species;
- Most intensive breeding-bird atlas in US;
- Conservation of the Catskill black bear;
- Wetlands protection and restoration;
- Establishment of Natural Heritage Program;
- Carnivore research and monitoring;
- Statewide habitat and species inventory;
- Wildlife damage; and
- Many others.