A recent federal audit of Colorado wildlife funding
has gotten some people upset. Among other violations, the audit has
revealed that license fees intended for state wildlife programs
were spent on land for a prison in Rifle,
Colo.
Each year, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service reimburses state agencies for a portion of their wildlife
spending. To receive the federal funds under the Pittman-Robertson
Act of 1937, states must agree to use all fishing and hunting
license money – and any property purchased with this money – for
wildlife programs. The audit found that some of this land has
changed hands several times, obscuring the original source of its
funding.
In one example, the Colorado Department
of Parks and Recreation deeded a portion of the Rifle Gap State
Recreation Area – property originally purchased with $57,000 in
license fees – to the state Department of Corrections. The Rifle
prison was then built on the land, a purpose “clearly unrelated to
the management of the fish- and wildlife-oriented resources of the
state,” says the Department of Interior audit, U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service Federal Aid Grants to the State of Colorado for
Fiscal Years 1994 and 1995.
Kathy Kanda of the
Colorado Department of Natural Resources says that state agencies
have been meeting with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to try to
resolve the problems. The Fish and Wildlife Service has recommended
that the state reimburse its wildlife programs for the current
value of the land in question, a proposal that the state has
strongly opposed.
The Sportsmen’s Wildlife
Defense Fund is suing the Colorado Department of Wildlife and the
Fish and Wildlife Service, charging that the Rifle prison and a
prison in Delta, Colo., were built illegally (HCN, 6/26/95). Tom
Huerkamp, the group’s founder and a longtime opponent of prisons in
rural areas, says the Fish and Wildlife Service is legally required
to suspend its federal grants to Colorado – about $10 million per
year – until state lawmakers pass legislation to ensure that
wildlife dollars are used appropriately in the
future.
“It seems to me they’ve made our case,”
says Huerkamp of the audit. “This shows we were absolutely right.”
*Michelle
Nijhuis
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Wildlife dollars fund prison.
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