Senator says Park Service is retaliating against outspoken ranger
By The Associated Press
10.16.02
A U.S. senator is demanding an explanation from the National Park Service for why it cut short the season of a Yellowstone National Park ranger who earlier was ordered to stop speaking out about unscrupulous hunters.
Meanwhile, a Park Service spokesman says the agency will clarify a memo to employees that critics have charged was a violation of the First Amendment right to free speech.
Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, said sending Yellowstone ranger Bob Jackson home early smacks of further retaliation and violates the spirit of a settlement the agency reached with him late last year.
Jackson, a 30-year park veteran, patrols a remote area of Yellowstone near the park's southeast corner. His expertise is catching poachers, and he has long criticized hunting guides he says illegally lure elk from Yellowstone by placing salt outside park boundaries on Forest Service land in Montana.
In 2001, Jackson, who lives in Promise City, Iowa, in Wayne County, said park management ordered him not to speak publicly about his concerns and sent him home from his job early, telling him he would not be hired back the next season.
Jackson filed a complaint and, under an agreement reached in December 2001, was rehired for the 2002 season to patrol the same area of the park.
However, he said the agency asked him to leave Sept. 17, long before hunting season outside the park heats up. That was extended a couple of weeks, but only after the Washington, D.C.-based watchdog group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility complained to the agency, he said.
Still, he is being asked to leave much earlier than normal, Jackson contends.
"This is a thing that is bigger than me," he said. "It has do with a lot of the status quo with the National Park Service."
Rick Frost, a spokesman for the Park Service's regional office in Denver, said Grassley and Fran Mainella, the agency's director, had corresponded about Jackson. But Frost said he did not know the extent of the discussions and could not immediately comment.
In a letter to Interior Secretary Gale Norton, who oversees the agency, Grassley said it appears the Park Service is still trying to punish Jackson for speaking out.
"When someone like him speaks up about unethical practices and gets sidelined and shut out, then there are a lot of questions for the National Park Service to answer," Grassley said in a statement. "I'm intent on stopping this kind of intimidation so other government workers who are willing to speak up about problems are not deterred."
Grassley accused the Park Service of lax enforcement to prevent poaching and of retaliating against Jackson for his outspoken criticism.
"Getting rid of Mr. Jackson serves the interests of park supervisory officials who wish to avoid high-profile conflicts with poachers and negative attention," Grassley wrote to Norton. "Mr. Jackson has proved himself to have unique skills and knowledge of the backcountry area where poaching is known to take place."
Jackson said the Park Service has purposely staffed the backcountry with a small number of rangers with little experience.
"The park needed more enforcement coverage, not less like they have now," Jackson said. "There was no intention there to have fall hunting control."
Meanwhile, Frost, spokesman for the Intermountain Region of the Park Service, said a Sept. 16 memo to employees was meant to convey that employees have an ethical responsibility when speaking about their work and not meant to muzzle free speech.
The memo prompted some Park Service employees to contact Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.
Executive Director Jeff Ruch said three people approached his group "because they all thought this memo was about them."
The memo read, in part, "Employees who are writing or speaking on a topic which is generally related to their work, who are expressing themselves as private citizens and not as representatives of the department, are communicating under the concept of nonofficial expression."
The memo said employees must apply for and receive a "certificate of compliance" to publish nonofficial expression.
"The problem with the directive is it's unconstitutional, illegal and fairly dumb to boot," Ruch said. "It appears to say if you speak about your job, even on your own time, you must get some sort of approval."
Ruch's organization complained to Mainella, the Park Service's director, in its own letter that the memo does not specify what is required for the certificate or what standards will be applied.
The group also said employee speech is protected by the First Amendment "so long as it does not impair the efficient functioning of the public agency."
Frost said the Park Service was concerned about employees' use of company time and equipment.
"We're not worried about the content of speech but their ethical obligations as a civil servant," he said. "We have to make sure we're not using those taxpayer-funded resources for our private endeavors."
He said employees cannot use government time, equipment or their title to speak or write to other groups or talk about information "that is not available to the general public."
Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, he said, "thinks this is muzzling free speech and it isn't."
He said the memo would be clarified.
The Park Service's Intermountain Region includes Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and Montana.