REGIONAL— The Office of the Legislative Auditor, or OLA, has announced it will undertake what’s known as a “special review” to examine the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources’ alleged misuse of federal grant funds designed to benefit wildlife and their habitat. The OLA informed DNR Commissioner Sarah Strommen of the review in a March 1 letter that noted that the legislative auditor recently completed a preliminary assessment of the allegations.
The decision by the OLA to undertake a special review is extraordinary. The office typically conducts only two or three such reviews annually and only in cases where there is at least some evidence of a failure to follow state policy or laws. While the DNR has been subject to such reviews in the past, they are infrequent and the agency has never been investigated for its handling of the federal grant dollars, known as Pittman-Robertson funds, at subject in the upcoming review. That’s according to former deputy DNR Commissioner Steve Thorne, now retired, who spoke to the Timberjay for this story. “This is very unusual nationally,” said Thorne.
Craig Sterle, a retired DNR forester, agreed. “Our take is that they wouldn’t be looking at this if it wasn’t serious.”
Special review authority
The OLA is authorized by state law to undertake special reviews to investigate allegations that an entity subject to OLA review, such as the DNR, “may have failed to comply with legal requirements related to the use of public money or other public resources.”
The letter to Commissioner Strommen indicates that the OLA will be in touch soon to discuss the special review process going forward. The OLA indicates they expect their review to be completed in the second half of 2024.
The only other special review currently underway by the OLA focuses on the Department of Education’s oversight of the massive fraud committed by representatives of the nonprofit Feeding Our Future, which bilked millions in federal COVID dollars by falsely claiming they had provided meals to students. The OLA expects that investigation to be completed in the first half of the year.
Longstanding concerns
The Timberjay reported on the allegations most recently back in January, when the Fish and Wildlife Service released a draft report on its findings in the matter in response to a Freedom of Information Act request by the nonprofit Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility. That report, originally written in early 2020 during the final year of the Trump administration, provided stunning conclusions on what appeared to be a wholesale violation of a federal grant program by the Minnesota DNR.
The 28-page report, which was never released publicly in final form, provided the conclusions of a series of visits by FWS biologists in early 2020 to three state wildlife management areas, or WMAs, to investigate complaints that the DNR was misusing its federal funds to support logging urged by the timber industry. The federal funds obtained by the DNR were specifically dedicated to benefit wildlife and wildlife habitat yet appeared to be used instead to pay for hundreds of commercial timber sales that the DNR’s own biologists said provided little benefit to wildlife or were even detrimental due to the environmental damage caused by the loss of important habitat or the logging activity itself.
As the Timberjay reported last August, the FWS has been at odds with the DNR over its use of federal wildlife funds for what appear to be purely commercial timber sales on WMAs since at least 2021. The FWS had actually suspended its funding to the DNR for a time, but that funding was restored this past September after the DNR agreed to do a better job of documenting the wildlife benefits of its management activities.
While many field level wildlife officials within the agency continue to express disappointment in the agency’s actions surrounding timber sales on WMAs, top officials within the agency insist that the agency has done nothing wrong, and that the disagreement with federal officials has mostly been resolved. “Let me assure you that Commissioner Strommen expressed to me her continued confidence in our management of WMAs,” wrote Dave Olfelt, director of the agency’s Division of Fish and Wildlife, in a March 7 email to DNR wildlife staff.
“The fact that FWS fully reimbursed our 2021-2023 grant and has issued our 2023-25 grant demonstrates their confidence in the work we do and that issues FWS identified have been addressed,” said Olfelt in response to questions from the Timberjay back in January.
Former deputy commissioner Thorne calls Olfelt’s comments “cynical” and suggested that the division head is well aware that it’s the field staff who have lost confidence in DNR brass over the issue. What’s more, he said the DNR has failed to comply with the agreement it signed with FWS last year, under which the federal agency agreed to release some funds it had earlier suspended.
Thorne accuses the DNR of stonewalling on the issue. “Instead of responding positively, and addressing the issue, the agency has tried to say, ‘there’s nothing to see here.’” Thorne said back when he was with the agency, officials would have spoken out publicly and resigned over the mismanagement of WMAs and the misuse of federal funds. “Instead, the agency is running true to form with its pattern of recent years, trying to tell the field staff to stay quiet and that everything is fine. Everything is not fine, and someone from the agency needs to stand up and say that.”
Close-knit agencies
The alleged misuse of federal wildlife grant dollars by the DNR appears to have come as a consequence of a 2018 change in DNR policy to substantially boost timber harvests in response to pressure from the timber industry. The new policy, known as the Sustainable Timber Harvest Initiative, or STHI, came under fire from the start from wildlife officials who argued that the harvest targets in the initiative made it difficult, if not impossible, to meet the DNR’s obligations to provide adequate and appropriate wildlife habitat on DNR-managed lands.
That change devastated morale among DNR wildlife managers. An internal survey conducted by the DNR last fall found that 90 percent of its wildlife officials reported being either “very or somewhat dissatisfied,” primarily as a result of the new focus on commercial harvest and the widespread discounting of wildlife concerns within the agency, even when involving WMAs. Of those surveyed, fully two-thirds indicated they were “very dissatisfied.” Some wildlife staff reported seeking medical help for stress management and panic attacks brought on by the disagreements within their offices over forest management.
The change also faced pushback from the federal FWS, particularly when the pressures to boost timber harvest seemed to leave wildlife concerns secondary. Thorne said that while FWS could have pushed the DNR harder over the issue, he recognized that that isn’t always easy to do between agencies that typically work as partners. “They’ve always cooperated closely, so it’s very difficult for them to start taking a public position that you guys aren’t doing your jobs. As a longtime manager, I know it’s very easy to damage an agency over something like this. They tried to work out an agreement, but every time the DNR didn’t follow through.”
While the FWS has released some funding, Sterle noted that the agency is conducting its own regular five-year audit a year ahead of time given the concerns about the DNR’s use of the funds.