Larry Debates oral history transcript

              INTERVIEW WITH LARRY DEBATES

BY MARK MADISON, MAY 1, 2004

RETIRED USFWS EMPLOYEE REUNION

NCTC, SHEPHERDSTOWN, WEST VIRGINIA

DR. MADISON: Why don’t we start out Larry with the spelling of your name and your

birth date? The easiest questions are first.

MR. DEBATES: It’s actually Lawrence, but Larry is what I’ve gone by. I was born

December 18, 1931. After finishing high school I enlisted in the U.S. Navy on January 8,

1951. I was discharged from the Navy in the fall of 1954 to start college at South Dakota

State University. I met my future wife Greta Houtman at the University where she was

in the Pharmacy School. I was pursuing a degree in Fish and Wildlife Management. We

both graduated in 1959 and were married in 1960. I went to work for the State of South

Dakota Game Fish and Park as a summer intern while in school and then as a full-time

employee after graduation in 1959. Then in August 1961 I took my first job with the

USFWS as an Assistant Refuge Manager at Lower Souris NWR. It is now the J. Clark

Salyer NWR.

And like many wives of FWS employees, my wife Greta was my wonderful

supporting partner throughout my career. Any successes I had were because of that

support and sacrifice on her part. She practiced as a Pharmacist in many different places

as I moved many times pursuing my career in the fish and wildlife profession. During

these early years of our marriage she also took on the role of mother. Because we moved

so often, our three daughters were born in three different places. Our eldest, Kari, was

born in Aberdeen, South Dakota in 1961. The second, Renae, was born in Wishek, North

Dakota in 1962. And the youngest, was born in Fergus Falls, Minnesota in 1966. This is

probably not unique to my family, but many times our spouses’ sacrifices and their

contributions are not fully recognized as an important part of a successful career in the

USFWS. In my particular case, my wife and family were the most important part of

making my career a success.

DR. MADISON: The next question is your education and how you came to the

USFWS?

MR. DEBATES: I went into the military for four years before I went to college. I came

back and went to South Dakota State University. I quit for a short period of time and

went out to California and worked so I could get out of debt. I came back and finished in

April of 1959. Then I went to work for the State of South Dakota. I worked there for

about two and a half years. I had done some summer work with them too. I had about

three and a half years with South Dakota. Then, I was in Webster, South Dakota after

having been in about three different places with them. Harvey Nelson, who I think that

then the Deputy in Refuges in the Minneapolis regional office. He came out and talked to

me and asked me how I’d like to go to work with the USFWS. I told him that I’d really

like to work in wetlands. We were working a lot in wetlands already in South Dakota. I

told him that I’d like to see if I could it, and to see if I could stay right in the state.

Harvey said, “Well, we’d like to have you go to Refuges first”. This was so I could get

indoctrinated there. He then said, “We’ve got a position up at Lower Souris Refuge and

we’ll put you up there.” The FWS was kind of shaking out the national wetlands

program. I had been involved in the State program for quite a while. That was in 1961.

He told me that I would stay up there for a while but, “Then we’re going to be developing

some strategies on protection of wetlands in the Dakotas, and we’ll get you back into

wetland work, if everything works out”. I went to Lower Souris, which is now the J.

Clark Salyer Refuge. Ed Smith was the Manager there. I was a Biologist. My title was

Assistant Refuge Manager, but I worked with Merle Hammond quite a bit because he was

a really noted biologist in the FWS. I also worked with the Refuge people. I stayed there

for about six months. Then they put me down in [sic] Wishek, North Dakota. I

delineated wetlands there for a couple of years. We picked out the wetlands that we

thought ought to be protected. Then, Jim Gillette and Ed Crosier, there was a whole crew

of us down there who all had areas that we worked on. When we finished that we were

going to take over and manage the wetlands. As things go, the wetlands program didn’t

move quite as fast, so they were going to have to move some of us to other places. I was

married by then and had two children. I was getting a little nervous about just not

knowing where I was going. That’s one of the other reasons I left working with the State

of South Dakota. I liked the work there, but they didn’t have medical insurance or life

insurance and after you get married, that’s pretty important. I just got a little nervous

and I decided to go and see if I could get in to some more wetland work. I went into River

Basins then. River Basin had a wetlands aspect in it. I went to Aberdeen, South Dakota

where I had working with the State. Milt Reese was the Supervisor there. I was there for

a couple of years and they moved me to Fergus Falls. I worked in wetland there. Then I

went in to the Regional Office and supervised the Biologists in the prairie who were

working on the wetlands program. Then, they were setting up Denver as a new Region.

We were kind of uncertain as to who was going to end up in certain places. Ed Smith had

since moved on from the refuge to being the Supervisor of Refuges in Region 1 in

Portland. Phil Morgan had been his deputy out there. I had been out of Refuges. One

thing is that Forest Carpenter was a pretty parochial kind of guy. When I first hired in to

Refuges; I think they kind of expected that once you were in Refuges, you stay there!

Well, I moved back in to River Basins, so when Ed said that maybe he should move me

back in to Refuges and have me as his Deputy, there was a little bit of resistance in

Refuges. Eventually, I went out there in 1973 in January. I was his Deputy replacing

Phil Morgan who had just left and went out to Atlanta. I served in that function until

he…well, then the Area Offices came into being. I was one of the first Assistant Regional

Directors that they hired under the Area Offices. That’s when they had the Area

Manager selected, and Lynn was the Director. They got the ARD positions filled before

the Area Office, so we still functioned in sort of the old way. We supervised refuges out

of the Regional Office. When Area Offices came in, I went out there and came back again.

I was still in that position. I served in that position I think, from 1976 when Lynn put

me in until 1988. I had twelve years there. For the last year, I was working on waterfowl

stuff, but it was in Central Valley, California. I spent a brief amount of time in Wildlife

Services too, in Minneapolis. I had three divisions that I had worked in, so I had some

experience. I probably wasn’t the best Biologist in the world because you lose that

capability pretty quick. I knew wetlands pretty well. Then I got in to administration,

and like those people this morning pointed out, we didn’t have too many skilled

administrators. Maybe I was a better administrator that I was a biologist, but that’s

what…we set out to do some things in Refuges in Region 1 and we made some changes.

It was Ed and I to start out with and later it was with some of the RDs. After a time, I

eventually started the first North American joint venture in California as kind of a

collateral duty. I was doing that along with being the ARW for Wildlife. That’s when I

was back for my mother-in-law’s funeral and found out…Wally Stupki called me and said

that the Director had called him and told him that Rolf Wallenstrom had been terminated

because he didn’t take the move that they were giving him. Dave Riley had been stripped

of his responsibilities. He was the ARD for Ecological Services for River Basins, I guess,

at that time. I think it was Eco-Service then. I was reassigned from my job to be

assistant to him by Dunkle. I’d be in charge of the North American waterfowl planning in

the Pacific Region. It was just really punitive is what it was. My understanding was, and

I am not sure I am correct on that, but John Doebel had worked for me before. He was a

good employee and he had gone to Washington, D. C. and he came back. When he was in

Washington, I think Bill Horne who was the Assistant Secretary at the time…there was

some work to be done in Alaska that some of the Alaskan people weren’t comfortable

with. It was a land exchange or something. I’m not sure this is all factual, but this is the

way I recall it. Bill Horne told John that he’d like to have him go and work on that

project. John was a doer, so he went up there and worked on it. I think Bill promised

him that when he was done with it, and had done a good job, he would be placed in a new

position. I think John wanted the job I was in. I still wasn’t out of there. If they’d have

talked to me and let me know, “we’d like to do this, and we’d like for you to work with

John and make it an easy transition”…

But instead, when I got back from my mother-in-law’s funeral John was sitting at my

desk and it made it uncomfortable for him, and for me, and the staff. So I ran around and

tried to find a new office and stuff. We started to fight back. They had the Government

Accountability Office in Washington, D. C. They kind of oversee the government. They

came out and interviewed us. Eventually, I think they had some hearings at the GAO.

They kind of saw that there were some things going on in the FWS. They were creating

positions that weren’t really positions but they were trying to put people aside. It was

costing money. I think that might have been part of the demise of Dunkle. They

reassigned him. They took him out of the Director’s job and sent him to OBS in

Colorado. Then John Turner came in. I think that was right after President Bush

[President George H. W. Bush] got in. John Turner kind of put us back onto more of an

even keel. By that time, I think OPM ruled that he had to reinstate Rolf. Turner wrote

me a kind of a letter of apology for the way they handled the situation. That made me

feel better, but I think it made…that’s the way a lot of people were treated as they got

towards the end of their career. They kind of jerked them around and didn’t treat them

the way they should have been; with a little dignity. I see that they are still making that

mistake. I worked for one year, while this appeal was going on at the North American

Waterfowl Plan. I got it up and running and it’s been very successful. I was invited back

to the ten-year anniversary in 1996. It’s really going good, so I felt really good about

that. Some of the things that I felt good about after I had worked on them…we did a lot

of things, and turned around the use on some of the refuges out in our region. They had

kind of gotten away from the primary purpose of managing a refuge. They had water

skiing going on in some of the area of Ruby Lake where we had some of the best

waterfowl production, especially Red Heads. We finally got that turned around. It took

awhile, and it wasn’t just me. You had to have the RDs. Kahler Martinson when we

started that. Of course I knew Kahler from college. I was there in Portland about nine

months ahead of him. We turned something around on Ruby Lake. We also got control

of the cattle management on Malhuer NWR, which was pretty that was pretty much in

the hands of ranchers. There are a number of things that we did on refuges. We also tried

to upgrade, a little bit, the quality of some of our managers. Some of them just needed

some improvements and you can’t blame it all on them. It was the way they were

managed; just kind of let them manage the refuges in the field like they wanted to. We did

initiate some of the things in California that were unique. We established an easement

program on wetlands in California. That had never been done before. We kind of picked

that idea up from the Prairies. They used it for production habitat. We picked it up and

used the same concept out there for wintering habitat. We had a lot of resistance to start

out with, but it really has worked out well. It’s not a perfect program, but better that

sitting and watching it disappear. A lot of times it was the hunting clubs and the like who

still had the good wetlands. Some would say, “Why do you agree about that?” A lot of

times, what was happening was that these old time hunters that were really dedicated to

the waterfowl and hunting were either dying or leaving. What we were finding was that

some of the kids didn’t have that same feeling. So even if it had been a waterfowl club for

years, it was not guaranteed. A lot of these old guys really had a strong feeling about that

wetlands, so they kind liked the idea that maybe even after they were gone that wetland

was going to be there. We got a number of areas where we got the easement program

going and it was really successful. That fit right in with the North American Waterfowl

Plan.

DR. MADISON: Why don’t you tell me about that, since you were there?

MR. DEBATES: Okay, the North American Waterfowl Plan first came into being, and

Harvey Nelson was kind of the overseer of that out of Washington, D.C. They wanted to

get up one pilot program to see [how it would go]. Bob Streeter was in there too. They

picked the Central Valley of California. It was a new approach to doing business. We

established the committee, on the ground. We had the Audubon Society, the Defenders of

Wildlife, California Fish and Game, the California Waterfowl Association. There were a

number of groups who had actually in the past been our critics. We put them together,

and I kind of chaired those meetings. I had a good Biologist named Dick Bower who was

very good technically. Mike Miller had put together a concept plan on the wetlands that

were valuable. Then we went in with this group and developed some strategies to make

sure we protect those wetlands long after we are gone. We sat down, and I think we

wrote out about six major objectives to keep the focus. All of these guys had a lot of

differences of opinion. The Defenders of Wildlife were not in our camp, but they knew

that this was a key issue, even to their values. We tried to stress that we were not doing

this just for waterfowl. We worked on that as a committee, to find the objective. Then

we started to try and implement them. I remember some of those objectives. We had a

lot of discussion as to whether or not some of them were real or aren’t they. Some

thought we’d never get the Central Valley Project reauthorized. It was an irrigation

project and we didn’t have any guaranteed water supply for our refuges. We were just

doing it with water that was return flow irrigation water. It was getting tougher and

tougher. But we put in it there as a goal. There was one guy who was very astute in the

political arena. He was with the California Waterfowl Association. His name was Dan

Chapin. He had really worked the California legislature and he knew how to work with

the legislators. He really got a lot of stuff done in California. After I left, I heard that he

had actually gotten Senator Bradley out to conduct a hearing on the reauthorization of the

Central Valley Water Project. That was almost unheard of, but eventually, it happened.

Eventually, they got some firm water supplies for refuges, and also for some in stream

flows. That was after I was gone. I didn’t have anything to do with that, but I think that

the fact that we put that in the objectives and gave them something to really work on, it

really focused them. That was the best accomplishment to me, in the Central Valley. Of

course the easement thing was a tool used. There were some new acquisitions and the fee

too. One of the major objectives was to get the rice growers to leave some of that stuff

out there in the fall of the year. We were in an adversarial relationship with the rice

growers. I went back in 1996, they had that celebration of the ten-year plan, and there

were 400 and some people there. There were rice growers and all kinds of people who

had come together to work on a common objective; The North American Waterfowl Plan.

It was rewarding to me. Recently I went to the North American Wildlife Conference in

Spokane. The thing that really impressed me was how many joint ventures there are

going on now, throughout the United States. They are incorporated into the flyway

management. There is a lot of support. And the political situation is favorable because is

gives the politicians something to spend money on in their own areas. They can do it.

It’s kind of a Senator Byrd concept. If you give them something that they can do for

you, they are willing to help. From what I understand from talking at the Wildlife

Conference, most of the funding for the North American is pretty good. It’s primarily

because you’ve got that broad political support.

DR. MADISON: You’ve done a good job.

MR. DEBATES: Well, somebody has done a good job. The O and M part is still a

problem. There is still not that kind of support, not just for North American but also for

the entire Service. The Migratory Bird Program has been short changed. They are in bad

trouble; the flyways and stuff. They don’t have enough money. It was gratifying to me

to see all of the North American plans, and they are just about all throughout the United

States now. They are also in Canada. We were working with Canadians too. I think

that’s been a successful program. I had a part in it, but we had some good technical

people that helped guide us and made sure we had the right things to work on. Then we

had some good people following up to implement it. It wasn’t just the FWS people. It

had good representation and cooperation. I think really showed what you can do if you

work together, and that was an accomplishment. So anyway, that was kind of a good

final project for me to be on. I probably would have stayed on a little bit longer, but

when you get in an adversarial relationship with your own organization, you kind of get,

well, people are a little bit cautious of you. I shouldn’t necessarily say ‘cautious’ of you

so much, but the mid-career people are nervous. They can wonder if that is going to hit

me? Is that going to happen to me? So I think I lost some credibility with some of the

administrators; not so much with the troops. I think the troops liked that somebody

stood up and talked back to somebody who they didn’t think was doing a good job. I

served under five RDs in Region 1. I went there with John Finley, and Kahler Martinson

came. Then there was Dick Myshak and the last one I worked directly under was Rolf

Wallenstrom. Then Plenert came in while I was on the North American Waterfowl Plan.

There was more and more politics getting involved, each year that I was in the FWS. One

of my former bosses, Ed Smith, was very experienced. He told me that the big changed

that occurred in the FWS while he was there; and it continued to go that way, was back

when we used to be able to stand up to management when somebody wanted to say

something. Politically, if we had a good case, we could go back and it was non-biased. Ed

said that changed a great deal when they started adding a lot of staff at the Assistant

Secretary level. He said that back then, they used to only have one or two guys over at

the Assistant Secretary’s office.

DR. MADISON: That wasn’t that long ago.

MR. DEBATES: He also said that when you sent something back to the FWS, it was

usually your Director and key staff people who have you that kind of support. He said

that all of a sudden, most things that were controversial headed right up to the Assistant

Secretary’s office. I think that has continued to grow. I don’t know what the staffing

there is like now. But then, the other thing they used to do was to bring people up from

the Service to work up there. This was fine, but still, they just got more into the

management of your business than you really needed them in.

DR. MADISON: Were there other changes that you observed in the Service? You had a

pretty long tenure.

MR. DEBATES: For one thing, when we first started we were pretty much fish and

wildlife. The Endangered Species Act came in 1973, or whatever, and the National

Environment Policy Act came in. Both of those things changed the way we did business.

The laws that came in on the archeological side, and the Administrative Act, and all of

those things changed things. It was no longer manage your own refuge, dig your own

dikes and that stuff. You had to go through a lot of the same hoops that we wanted other

people to go through. So it was a different way of doing business. We had to hire people

who worked on impact statements. We had to have people with that skill; not just

reviewing them but writing them too. We had to have archeologists to look at the

archeological stuff. You couldn’t just go out and start moving dirt until that was done.

The Administrative Act made it so we had to make sure we did a much better job of going

through and making sure we involved people in the right decision making process. It was

pretty simple when I first started in the profession, but it got more complex. I think

today, I’ve been out for a long time, but I think it’s even more difficult. Now there are

just so many things that you’ve got to make sure you go through the right hoops. From

and outfit that used to drive around, and if they saw some predators, or saw some

burrows or whatever on the refuge that were doing damage, why, they shot them. They

didn’t tell anybody about it. But those days are gone forever. We just managed with a

lot more freedom. I think the other thing that changed an awful lot was that we never got

in the legal arena as much as we began to do towards the end of my career, and even more

so now. We did have a little bit of that at the end of my career. I had oversight, along

with Rolf Wallenstrom on the Spotted Owl issue. I had worked on an inter-agency

committee on that with BLM, the Forest Service, SCS, and everything. We knew that

this was a real problem. We had a subcommittee on the Spotted Owl that was essentially

made up of all the biologists from all of these agencies. They just told us that this was

headed for extinction if you don’t do anything about it. It was associated with old

growth, but it was as indicator of species. We tried through that inter-agency, or at least I

did, in getting BLM and Forest Service because they had mostly old growth forest left, to

start paying attention to the owl. They were really reluctant to do it. They’d tell us that

in a meeting, but when you got out on the ground, they were still cutting timber and not

paying that much attention to the Spotted Owl. We were unsuccessful in getting things

changed through that media. Then, when it came up to being listed, there was some real

reluctance because Watt and Odell and some of those guys were in there. It’s a little bit

like the climate now; they don’t want to add any new species. We knew that the

biological stuff was there. And Rolf was RD then. There were three of us that tried to

convince Rolf that we ought to move ahead no matter what. But Rolf had a good

relationship with the Chief of the Forest Service. They talked in over and thought they

could…. Well, what happened was that the environmental community on the outside

sued us. When it got to the Judge, the Judge sent back and essentially told us do a better

job. He said we couldn’t ignore this. Then when you get the legal stuff involved, you

lose all of your flexibility. You are better off doing something rather than getting the

Judge to tell you what to do. That happened in the Fisheries program when Sam went

out there. It happened with the Spotted Owl. It happened in all kinds of places; where

you get the Judge starting to tell you what to do. And then, I think too, that when we

implemented steel shot, which was a very controversial issue; that probably got Kahler

Martinson canned. We pushed it in Region 1 because EIS was down and everything.

Arnett was the Director of California at the time and we were really booming on it.

California was absolutely adamant against steel shot. They didn’t want nothing to do

with it. It seems hard to believe now, because steel shot is implemented all over. But

that was in the late 1980’s and early 1981. We pushed ahead with it, and Kahler

particularly. When Arnett got to be the Assistant Secretary, of course Watt was in there

then, a lot of people who came in from the outside into those political positions kind of

had an axe to grind. They didn’t necessarily come in a real good supporter of the FWS.

They were usually after [something]. They had some adversarial relationships. When

Arnett got in there, he just started chipping away. We had some research guys out

working under contract and he got those cancelled. That was about the same time that the

Senior Executive Service came in. I guess that would have been under President Carter, or

just before in the late 1970s. When Kahler was RD then, he had been under the old Civil

Service Program. When they interviewed him, they asked him if he wanted to be in SES.

He asked what the pluses of that were. They said he could have unlimited leave to

accumulate. The also said that if he didn’t like it and wanted to drop back in to the

biological end, he could do that. But when it came time for him to do that, they wouldn’t

let him. They essentially gave him an ultimatum of either going to Albuquerque, or be

terminated. He had some special family situations that made that bad. He could just see

the handwriting on the wall. He saw Albuquerque as the first; but what was the next.

They were using it as a punitive thing rather than on a positive note. That was another

issue we were involved in that was very controversial.

Another issue that we crossed Hodell on was, well, I shouldn’t say crossed, but

there was some power line crossings that they used to like to string across federal lands;

particularly BLM, but they could go across us too. We took them on on that. Hodell

was head of BPA at the time. They were going to string a line across our Refuge up at

Umatilla. The first time I met with them, well, they came in and met with me because I

had oversight on Refuges, they said they were doing to do this. I said, “Wait a minute!”

They said that they had the steel bought and everything already. I asked them where

they had been. “We’re going to let you [do that]”. That was a key waterfowl area. We

fought with them for quite a while. Hodell was the BPA Director. Word got our among

the power companies out there that the RD and some of his people were going to be hard

nosed about going across refuges with power lines. The word was that every one should

be aware of this. I remember that we had a major one that was going to go right across

Klamath Basin Refuge. It was a 5000kv line I think. We said, “No”. As I remember at

the time, Hodell was no longer head of BPA, but he was a kind of consultant for another

power company PP&L that was going to bring this line through. There was good

biological data that said this was a poor idea. We tried to stop it, but it was still moving

ahead. Kahler Martinson was pretty hard nosed on resource issues, so he asked Lynn,

who was the Director. Lynn didn’t want to take it on real bad. But Kahler asked Lynn if

he minded him going to talk with Andres. That’s kind of different. So Lynn told him if

he wanted to, it would be all right. Kahler got the maps and went and got an audience

with Andres. He just laid it out on the floor and explained another alternative that would

be better than this one. After one briefing with Andres, he said that the alternative should

be taken. Of course, he had oversight over BLM too. There was a BLM alternative, but

it took it away from Klamath Basin.

There were a number of issues like that, which were kind of tough from a political

end. Laxhalt was a Senator when we took on some of those issues out at Ruby Lake

where the powerboats were at. In California there was Arnett with the steel shot and

there was Hodell with the power lines. We weren’t exactly making a lot of good political

moves. Maybe we were naïve, but it sure got their attention enough so that they weren’t

just going to do some things that they had done in the past.

DR. MADISON: Larry, thank you very much. I’ve got to break it off here. This is

great!