William (Bill) Henry Meyer oral history transcript

              Oral History Cover Sheet

Name: William (Bill) Henry Meyer

Date of Interview: March 4, 2008

Location of Interview: ??

Interviewer: Jerry Grover

Approximate years worked for Fish and Wildlife Service:

Offices and Field Stations Worked, Positions Held:

Most Important Projects:

Colleagues and Mentors: Mike Spiro [?], Mike Spear, Bill Atchison, Bob Peoples, Jan Wright or Jan Wriff [?], Goodman Larson, Bob Cleary, Rick Schmidt, Ken Sipple [?], Warren Nord, Bob Burrwell, Bud laPoint [?], Jim Pulliam, Gordon Hansen, Joe Cather or Catherang [?], Tom Fowler, Jim McBroom, Spencer Smith, Sharon Clark [?], Len Greenwalt, Dick Schmidt, Bud Schlich [?], Bob Stevens, Jim Langford, Morris Butstazer [?], Tom Baskett , Taylor Martinsen [?], Bill Sweeney, Dick Myshak, Chuck Lyondell [?], Julian Martinez [?], Dan Rasovitch [?], Don Odell

Most Important Issues:

Brief Summary of Interview: early life – high school, college, wife/marriage, kids; summer work in construction, biological surveys, etc.; going to work for state of Maine; moving to Minneapolis and into the Bureau of Sport Fisheries and Wildlife – River Basin Studies; Department of Interior Management Training Program in Washington, DC; back to graduate school for economics; working for the Division of Planning; working on budgets for the Service; the Biological Services Task Force; becoming Deputy Regional Director in Portland; arrangement within the Region; issues faced by the Region – steel shot, anadromous fish, the Bolt decision, etc.; politics in the Service; pressure from ‘higher-ups’; becoming Public Affairs Officer; retirement; high and low points; learning from associates – models/heroes/etc.; tape ends before interview completed.

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JG -- Good afternoon. This is Jerry Grover. I will be doing the interview today on this oral history. And Bill, would you say for the record - your name, place of birth, and birth date.

BM -- Bill Meyer -- William Henry Meyer, May 14, 1937, Cherokee, Iowa.

JG -- Thank you, Bill. Cherokee, Iowa – what kind of a place is that?

BM -- Well, they had an insane asylum [laughter] which was just up the hill from where we lived. It was a northwestern Iowa town, about 7000 people I guess. [I] lived there until I was through the fourth grade, then we moved to Sioux City, Iowa. And I was there until after my freshman year, and then moved to Storm Lake, Iowa. All of these were in the northwest portion of the state, and [I] enjoyed them all.

JG -- As a young boy, what did you do? You did the hunting and fishing, or …?

BM -- Did hunting and fishing. If we wandered into my den right now I’d show you a picture of my first pheasant that I shot when I was nine years old. And I fished quite a bit. My mother’s parents had a cottage on west Okoboji, northwestern Iowa. A nice deep, glaciated, lake -- almost 200 feet deep. Had that cottage there that they put… they built in 1914, and I knew the north end of that lake very well, and was able to fish it every summer, until I was old enough to get a summer job, which was probably about eighth grade or something.

JG -- What did you do for summer jobs?

BM -- Oh, probably the first ones were de-tasseling corn for DeKalb, to make some of their special seed. I carried washing machines for a rental company, up and down stairs in Sioux City, Iowa. Worked construction a couple of summers. Worked for the Iowa Public Service Company as a ground man for a summer or two. Construction in Yellowstone Park one summer. And worked in a greenhouse shoveling dirt in and out. I don’t think I ever touched a plant. It was simply get fresh dirt into the flats so they could grow more flowers. But, they were all good jobs.

JG -- Where did you go to high school then?

BM -- Storm Lake High, Iowa, which was a town of 7000 or so. 8000.

JG -- Basically all rural areas.

BM -- Yeah, pretty much. Farming… farm economies. Good places to grow up. Little more homogenous than I might desire now.

JG -- You went on to college. What motivated you to go to university?

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BM -- Well, I suppose because my parents were very much oriented towards education. I really didn’t know what I wanted to do for a career once I got out of high school. My dad was an electrical engineer for at least… probably, a quarter short of having a degree. He got out during the Depression, and so, he had to help support his mom and four siblings, and got out a little early and read meters initially. But, anyway, they very much wanted me to go to college, and I was oriented that way, and had pretty good grades. Started out in electrical engineering -- because that’s what he was. Was in that for about four quarters; business for a couple of quarters; and finally decided that fish and wildlife was what I really desired, and what I’d like to do for my life’s work. That was at Iowa State. Got a bachelors degree there in 1960; masters degree in 1961 -- with a minor in statistics and immature insects.

[Chuckles]

JG – After… well, you were going to the university at Iowa State there, did you work summer too? Was this when you were working in Yellowstone or…?

BM -- I was actually working up at Okoboji when Nancy and I were just married. She was 20 and I was 21. And as part of the curriculum, you were supposed to work in the conservation field for a couple of summers. So, I worked on a biological survey crew, and we netted all of the fresh water lakes of Iowa. And, I made eight dollars, a summer, an hour the first summer, and nine dollars (because I was a semi-supervisor) the second summer. Really enjoyed those field trips we had, because I get a little per diem that would help make up a little bit. We could actually eat something other than beans when I got home -- or fish.

JG -- You said you got your masters in 1961. Did you start right off into a career… your career field then, or… where did you have your first job after graduation?

BM -- Well, things were better then as far as a graduate… had a lot of opportunities for jobs that… the things that, in the present day, graduates simply don’t have those kind of opportunities, I don’t think, because of the budgetary situations. But I had opportunity to work… oh, four or five different places. I remember it got down to Auk Bay, Alaska, with Bureau of Commercial Fisheries, or the state of Maine as a fishery biologist. And I chose to go to Maine. There were six Fishery Regions in the state, and I was an assistant fishery… regional fishery biologist. Our area had well over a thousand lakes and ponds, and it went from Bangor up through Baxter Park and over to Québec. We did most of our work in float planes and ski planes. So it was kind of the ideal idea of what you had in your minds eye when you were going to school. I was there for four years.

JG -- Four years -- from ‘61 right on to ‘65?

BM -- Right. At the time, I probably could have stayed there the rest of my career -- I enjoyed it so much. Plus, the field work was very productive, and I enjoyed that kind of work. But our… at that stage, we had two children, and, the local high school, which was a town of about 3000, the valedictorian couldn’t pass college entrance boards, and even

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though our eldest was in kindergarten, somehow, that really bugged me. And I decided it was a good time to go elsewhere, while I was still fairly young. And that’s when I decided to look for work with Fish and Wildlife Service. Or at that time, Bureau of Sport Fisheries and Wildlife.

JG -- Want to step back for a minute, Bill, and you said you had two children. Sounds like you’ve got a wife acquired along the way. How did that happen? Who is she?

BM -- Well, Nancy… Nancy Nelson Meyer. When I moved to Storm Lake as a sophomore in high school, she asked me out for our first date, for a hay ride. And we went together through most of high school. She went to the University of Iowa. I went to Iowa State. So, we kind of went our separate ways for a while. And after I had come back from working in Yellowstone that one summer, she showed up at our cottage at the lake. And we went out that night. Next day we decided to get married. And we did -- later that year. Got married on the shortest night of the year -- June 21st. One of the old fellows that came through the reception line [chuckles] said to both of us that he thought we were a little brighter than to do that. [Chuckles] Anyway, we will, this year, celebrate our 50th wedding anniversary. And she has been a delight!

JG -- You mentioned that you had two kids. They were… where were they born?

BM -- Well the daughter… or the son, Jeff, he was born in Ames, Iowa, at Mary Greeley Hospital. And he lives in Seattle, and works in Everett, Washington, as a senior software engineer for Danaher Company, which was… bought out Fluke, the company that he started out with. They make various measuring devices – electrical. Our daughter, she was born in Greenville, Maine, and lives next door to us right now, with our two grandchildren. She is… works for Kaiser as a technician in their… when they do various procedures on hearts, she in the … scrubs up and gets in the… right in the theater where they’re operating and does various work that manipulates their x-ray machines and their tracking dye through the arteries and hearts. So she’s… they’ve both gotten into fields that have been very productive. She went to junior college. Our son went to Reed College for three years where he got a math degree, and two years at University of Washington where he got a computer science degree.

JG -- Let’s go back to Maine now. You’ve been there working for the state of Maine for four years, and all of a sudden there’s an opportunity with the Fish and Wildlife Service…

BM -- Yeah. I’d contacted Goodman Larson, who was then the personnel officer for Minneapolis, for Region 3, and so Goody had included me on ‘green sheets’, getting the advertisements for job possibilities. And on one of our vacations back to the Midwest, Nancy and I went up to Minneapolis and had an interview with him. And we had a job offer, subsequently, to go to southwestern Ohio, on a River Basin Studies Office. As it so happened, the supervisor at that time in this office was a Bob Cleary, who had worked some 17 / 18 years for the state of Iowa as a fishery biologist. And because of family

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situations, the number of kids that they wanted to get through college, they simply couldn’t do it on the salary he was making there. So he had joined up with Fish and Wildlife Service, and he selected me to go to that Office, which we did in March/April of 1965. So that was when I stated out with the Service.

JG -- Well, were you… what grade were you hired in at?

BM -- I believe it was a GS 7. It was actually a bit of a decrease in salary from what I was making in Maine, but I soon got promoted to a 9. And then later, in that Office, to an 11. And, at that stage, I suppose, was the first time that we didn’t have to very carefully budget for almost everything we did. Some freedom at that time.

JG -- What was your main job at the River Basins Office? What, did you have a big study going on or what was…?

BM -- Well, the… we… that Office, I guess, was most famous for Comprehensive River Basin Studies. Bob Cleary, the supervisor, was very much involved in the Ohio Basin Comp. and he needed somebody with a statistical background and economics to do some of the projections of hunting and fishing demand. And there were any number of studies that we did. That one, and subsequently the Muskingum Basin. Although, these subsequent ones I pretty much did on my own. The Muskingum Basin and Ohio -- it was central Ohio and southern Ohio. Grand River Basin in southern Michigan. And subsequently, when I was assigned another place, the Great Lakes Basin Study. I got assistance from… oh, economics professor from the University of Dayton, and from… who had a contract, or worked for, I forget how it worked, with Resources for the Future. And he was very helpful in some of the technical means of setting up the projection studies. It got recognition, you know, various places, as being kind of state of the art.

JG -- So you worked, beginning there in ‘65, until when?

BM – Well, in 1967 or ‘‘8… ’67 - I was selected, at Bob Cleary’s urging, to apply for the Department of Interior Management Training Program, and so I applied for that and was selected, and spent the next seven or eight months in Washington, DC, in that program, which was an excellent program. Nancy and I and the kids had a furnished apartment in Shirlington, Virginia. Rented our house in Lebanon, Ohio, or where I was stationed. Rented it furnished, right down to they even took care of our dog and cat while we were in Washington, DC. I made a number of contacts when I was there; did some interesting work - to me; and kind of took the mystery out of Washington, DC.

JG -- What grade were you at that time

BM – 11.

JG -- GS 11? 5

BM – Yep. And we returned to Ohio just for, like, three months. And then I was selected… actually, I don’t think I ever applied for a job in the Service after that. I was asked to come to Minneapolis and head up a Comprehensive Planning Unit within the River Basin Studies. Did so, and was there for only a year. We actually expected to be there much longer, and wanted to, because of the proximity to our parents in Iowa. But I was then… through contacts that I’d had when I in the Departmental Management Program… at that time, I suggested that I thought we were a little narrow in the Service in our just having biological training, and thought so many of our problems were people problems, and had to do with economics and some of the softer sciences, that it would be good if we cross trained some people. So, in 1968 or ‘‘9, I was asked if I would want to go back for graduate work in economics. And I agreed to, under the provision that they were… they would be setting up a Planning Group within the Service, and that I would be able to go into that if I were going to make the commitment to go back for the studies.

JG -- Okay. In Minneapolis, when you went up there, this planning group and all, what was your grade then? Did you get your 12 then?

BM – I think I was a 12 then. I think… yeah, I got a promotion to a 12 at that point.

JG -- And you were offered to go get your cross training in economics, and you did?

BM – I did. I went for that for a year. I had only had six hours of 100 level economics at Iowa State, so, well, well over a decade before that, and I was thrown in to compete with people who had just got their bachelors in economics. And I didn’t even really remember even the vocabulary. And so it was a real shock. And I didn’t want to blow it, because I… I didn’t want others to not have the opportunity that I’d been given to go back to school, so, there were a lot of very late nights and a lot of long weekends of study, and I just, kind of, wasn’t known to my family for about a half a year while I played catch-up.

JG -- Who was the supervisor in that… you were able to talk to in getting this economic training…

BM – Well…

JG -- … at that time?

BM – The… there was really nobody within the Service, but I think some of the people that I made contact with during the Training Program -- perhaps Rick Schmidt, perhaps Ken Sipple [?], various people who apparently it rang a bell with them, to do some of these things.

JG -- Who was your supervisor in Minneapolis?

BM – Warren Nord was the supervisor of River Basins at that time. Bob Burrwell was Regional Director. Some of the people I worked with were Bud laPoint [?] and Morris

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Butstazer [?], really… old guard folks who had done a lot for preserving wetlands and prairie potholes.

JG -- So you… after you’ve been missing for… with your family for a half a year or so, you went back to Minneapolis. And, in fact, did you head up this section?

BM – Actually, I stayed in… I then stayed in DC. The University of Maryland…

JG – The training to the place in DC?

BM – Part… it…

JG -- Where did the training take place then?

BM – Well, at the University of Maryland.

JG -- Oh, okay.

BM – At the University there. At the time, was when the Cambodian situation was going on.... They were blocking the major highway that went through College Park, and I was wearing a flat-top butch at the time. And so I felt the students looked at this older guy with a flat-top and thought I was part of FBI or CIA, so I tried to let it grow out. And that’s why I found out I was bald. [Chuckles] The… they wanted me to write my thesis there, but they didn’t want me to do it in the natural resource field. They wanted me to do it in something to do with the Department of Defense. So, I never did actually write a thesis. I chose to disregard that and just be satisfied with the training I got and the classes I attended. A lot of it was program analysis and various aspects of economics. So then I went downtown and worked with the Service under Ken Sipple [?] in their new Planning Division. Worked with people like Bob Peoples. We did… I guess one of the first major projects that we had there was a huge backlog of maintenance requirements within the Fish and Wildlife Service at refuges and hatcheries, and there was a designed a fairly… not fairly -- very labor intensive maintenance inventory, which must have driven our field folks up the wall. But it did result in… I don’t remember the numbers. It was, I believe, well over 50 - 60 million bucks, which was real money in those days, of maintenance funds that then filtered back out to the field for them to correct some of the problems that were, you know, most needed. and that credibility that was built through what the field folks did in that inventory, you know, lasted for several years, in terms of what they could be used… to show that to the Department and to the Hill, as to what was necessary. I was in that Planning Group, under Sipple [?], for a couple of years.

JG -- What years would that be?

BM – That would have been ‘69, ‘70 -- ‘69 through ‘71, Division of Planning. And then I was selected for Chief of the Division of Planning and Budget. And I was in that job until 1975, when I came out to Portland.

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JG -- What was that grade then?

BM – Eventually a 15. I think, at the time, I was hired in at a 14 for Chief of that Division; it became a 15. And I must have been about 38 years old at the time. And I was told that I was the youngest 15, at that time, within the Service. About the same time, a fellow had been hired, the first fellow to become Assistant Director of Planning and Budget for the Service that was really trained for that. There had been another individual that had been in that job but it was more to find a place for him. And this new fellow was Mike Spiro [?], who later, of course, held a number of key jobs in the Service, including this one. And I had a lot of respect for Mike, and I think the two of us did a lot of good things, in terms of getting program management system developed, getting a group of people - including Bill Atchison and Bob Peoples… Jan Wright [?] - who were… get budget sessions within the Service, kind of sharpened up what… how we were to allocate our funds. It was kind of a new way of doing business within the Service.

JG -- The big issue and the focus at that time was what -- trying to retire this backlog of maintenance, and planning for it or….?

BM – That had been… certainly during the… about 1970 was the big issue. I think, once, about ‘72 and ‘3 and that time, the issue was to try to find a better way to allocate resources and be able to determine, you know, what our outputs were for the Service versus what our processes were. And it sold a lot better with the Department… O M… the Office of Management and Budget on the Hill, in terms of being able to really up our budgets at that time. When you took our budget forward, you sort of showed a different facet to each of these groups as you run it along. Some wanted to see it in terms of outputs -- the Hill still kind of wanted to see it in terms of processes. And so you had to show a different facet at each level to try to get acceptance of what we needed. This Office that I headed up at that time, we were responsible for putting the budgets together, for tracking them, and so we had about three budgets going at any one time -- the one that would be coming up next year, the one we were defending, and the one that was just being allocated. It was a big job, and kind of a bit of a rat race at times. But the people that worked within the divisions at that time, people like Jim Pulliam, and Gordon Hansen, and refuges -- Joe Cather [?] and Tom Fowler, and River Basins’… Bill Atchison, and hatcheries…. They were all just really top drawer folks. And very much appreciated.

JG -- And this is all your… this is all that they… they were circa 1971 when you were kind of…?

BM – Yeah.

JG -- This is all coming together, this budgeting… and did you ever have a chance, or have to go up on the Hill to testify, or have backup? Or were you just…?

BM – I used…

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JG -- … doing positional papers?

BM – I was usually doing position papers and, you know, putting the papers in the right people’s hands. Those that wanted papers -- there were people like Jim McBroom that took great pride in never having a paper in his hand, and did very well with it. Others wanted lots of backup. And so, between our Office and the various divisions, you know, we tried to get everybody prepared to defend our budget.

JG -- Did you supervise any staff at that time?

BM – Yeah, I… from ‘72 ‘till ’75 I had a very small staff -- Bill Atchison, Bob Peoples, Jan Wriff [?], Sharon Clark was our secretary. And, we cranked out a lot of work. They… plus we had special assignments at times, too. For example, in 1971… late in ’71, when Richard Nixon was elected president, Spencer Smith was our Director. Spencer asked Bill Atchison and I to do what was called a post elections activity book. Which basically was what Spencer’s view of how the Service could fit into the new Administrations objectives of how government ought to work. and so Bill and I worked on this for… oh three or four months, and had meetings with Spencer couple of times a week, in putting this document together, which I’ll provide for the archives if they don’t already have it.

JG -- Did it have a title?

BM – I think it was very non-descript -- ‘Post-Elections Activities Book, Bureau of Sport Fisheries and Wildlife, December 15, 1972.’ But basically, it was to convince the new Administration why Spencer was the guy to continue to lead the Bureau.

JG -- And did he?

BM – He did. He did. He was the… was appreciative of what… how Bill and I had been able to put into words his ideas.

JG -- So you were basically working across program lines at this time. You had everything from River Basins, to refuges, to fisheries program, administrative, and support.

BM – That’s correct. I kind of got a very broad view of everything the Service did -- including research and law enforcement. Because, again, we were defending their budgets and trying to integrate them into how they supported migratory birds or anadromous fish or farm ponds or whatever.

JG -- How long did you stay in that job then, Bill?

BM – It was three years. And I gained a lot of respect for our top management. I didn’t get out in the field that often, but folks like Len Greenwalt, who was had then become 9

Director towards the end of this, Dick Schmidt was the Deputy, fellow by the name of Bud Schlich [?], who I greatly admired, was Dick’s primary assistant. He had been Superintendent of Warm Springs, in Coleville, I believe - Yakima actually. And, because of an Act that required that those superintendent jobs be filled by Native Americans, bud had…

JG -- Bud was a Native American?

BM – He was not.

JG -- Oh, he was not. But he was working for BIA -- or for us?

BM – For BIA. And he had been a Superintendent, but he could no longer fill these jobs. So, he was reassigned within Interior, and became a White House Fellow, and ended up being in the Services’ hierarchy. And extremely talented and useful, and a personal friend later on, after we kind of got beyond our professional relationship.

JG -- What was the… the next step in your career then?

BM – Well, even before I left that job -- the job of Chief of Planning -- there had also been a… kind of come out of some of our discussions, that the Service needed more talents because of things like oil shale that were coming on, and we were having lots of problems with oiling of bird eggs, there was simply things that fell somewhere between Research and Operations where we needed to get a…some new problems we were facing, and Spencer Smith had asked me to lead up a task force to determine what we might be able to do to address these kinds of issues. And this was called a Biological Services Task Force. And I had some really, really talented people that I worked with, put that together. Folks like Bill Atchison; Tom Baskett, who at that time was head of Wildlife Research; Bob Cleary, the fellow who had been my boss in River Basins in Ohio, was now with Federal Aid as their Planner; Joe Cathrang [?] who was in River Basins; and Jim Langford [?] who was in WYLAF [?]; and Bob Stevens who was in Fisheries Services. And the group of us put together what we felt were a package of activities that we could do to address the issues of the day. I may recall that we were also faced with the situation of wanting to becoming more energy independent at that time, and that raised various problems with fish and wildlife - or potential problems. This resulted in about 50 people, most of them from beyond the Service, being hired at the GS 13 or above level, many of them talents that we’d never had before. And, I think it infused the Service with some of the talents that we needed to expand ourselves to kind of meet the problems of that day. And those people, you know, later moved up through the Service and kind of gave us a new breath, if you will, of talent. It was another one of those jobs that kind of ‘duties as assigned’ but….

JG -- Okay. Were these people you’re talking about -- Joe Catrang [?], Jim Langford, Bob Stevens, Tom Baskin [Baskett?] and all, these -- were all people in Washington, or were they out in the Regions or…? 10

BM – These were all Washington folks.

JG -- So this was our Washington Office issue and focus?

BM – It was, except -- they’d all had extensive field experience. So it’s not like they were ‘ivory tower’ folks in any sense. Tom, I’m sure had… I believe he’d been head of the Wildlife Unit at Missouri. Jim had… Jim Langford had come up from Region 4 in Atlanta. Bob Stevens I know had been in the field various places. Anyway, they’re a good, talented group. And the problems… some of the problems that had been identified in the field through the budget process, is to things that we needed to address, but when we looked around, we really didn’t necessarily have the answers, nor perhaps the disciplines, to find out what we needed to do. We were also trying to update our wetlands inventory at that time, which is more of a traditional thing. That was included in the Biological Services packages. It ended up also garnering us -- not that much hard money, I forget what the numbers were now, it would certainly be in the budget documents of the day, but it got us a lot of soft money -- around 100 million dollars, from places like Bureau of Mines, and some of the other… Department of Commerce… places that wanted these answers too, and were willing to fund the Service to get them, because they didn’t have the type of people to address the issues.

JG -- As I recall, about this time in ‘72, you would have been… were you part of the conversion to the ‘US Fish and Wildlife Service’? When Commercial Fisheries went to NMFS, and we dropped the ‘Bureau of Sport Fisheries’. Were you part of that planning?

BM – I wasn’t part of the planning. It happened well above the Service even, I think.

JG -- But you had to be a part of the implementing of it. At least… your planning, how did that dovetail, or how did that fit?

BM – Well, I don’t recall that we had a whole lot of involvement, Jerry. I know that… see the Bureau of Commercial Fisheries, at that time… it seems to me that they maybe even had their own… did they have their own Assistant Secretary at that time? Potsky [?] perhaps? Maybe it was after that.

[indecipherable – both voices at once]

BM – Anyway, I don’t recall that the Service itself… it may have been before my time there because I don’t recall having anything… any involvement in that at all.

JG -- Your next assignment … where’d you go from Washington then?

BM – Well, I knew that there was an opening of Deputy Regional Director in Portland. And, I think, probably well over half the people in the Fish and Wildlife Service either wanted to end up in Portland or Minneapolis, if they were going to be in a Regional Office, because… well, if you were… if you liked fish and wildlife and that kind of thing, those were two great places to go. Anyway, I was recommended to then Regional

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Director Taylor Martinsen [?], for that job. And, was selected, and came to Portland in August of 1975. And it was a real break, because, obviously, we still live here, and we’ve met so many really, nifty people, and we had such a wonderful resource to work with. At the time, Region 1 was… had the states of California, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Nevada, Hawaii, and territories of Guam and….

JG -- Montana had gone to [Region] 6 by that time?

BM – It had. We still had some support services for Alaska.

JG -- That was before it became a free standing Region.

BM – That’s right. That’s right. And it… as I recall, we had say 120 - 130 field stations, maybe 1300 full time employees. I don’t recall what our budgets were at the time. But, it was a real break to come in and work with, and for, the kinds of people I did. And when I say “for” I don’t mean just for Taylor, who was a delight, but for the field people, which I felt, as Deputy, that’s really who I worked for. Always have felt that way.

JG -- This had to be a good departure -- going from Chief of Planning, all of sudden ending up in Operations in the Region that had the largest number of people, and the goodest budget, in the Fish and Wildlife Service.

BM – Yeah, it was. Before I left DC, I went to every office and tried to find out as much as I could about issues as they saw them in Region 1 -- strengths and weaknesses of people and so on. And when I got out here, and I was accepted -- and greatly appreciated that, but also knew that I had to show, you know, that I wasn’t some ‘ivory tower’ kind of a guy.

JG -- What were the issues that were facing Region 1 at that time?

BM – Well, steel shot. We were just in the process of converting out of lead. Most of the states did not like this position at all -- particularly California. There… the long standing issues of anadromous fish migrations, on the Columbia River certainly.

The Bolt decision?

BM – The Bolt [baloney?] decision was very big, with Indians being recognized for hunting and fishing rights, again putting us crosswise with some of the state fish and wildlife agencies. Endangered Species Act had come in, been strengthened considerable in the early 70s. It brought to the table… us to the bargaining table on a much more powerful way, not unlike the Clean Water Act and some of the other things that appeared in the early 70s. And so, it gave us more power, but it also gave us a whole lot more responsibility to get it right. And so, to deal with industry, and the various other federal and state agencies in an effective way, we simply had to do our science well. And that was our… in my mind at that stage our… the biggest product the fish and wildlife service had was the quality of our science. And I don’t mean just basic research. I mean the

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whole array -- everything from how we handled our fish husbandry, how we handled fish elf, how we dealt with haying and grazing on refuges, and whether we knew what we were doing regarding that. There were many, many operational kinds of questions that needed the very best kind of research and study to prove our way. Because, with these new laws… now, we were deep in the pockets of many developers, determine how we came out on certain issues. If we couldn’t defend ourselves well, oftentimes in court, our credibility would go. And as I had said many times, you win credibility very slowly and you loose it damn fast if you [indecipherable – ‘earned it right’?].

JG -- Was the Fish and Wildlife Service right? Did we have the good science? Did we have the people in place?

BM – I thought we were the premiere biological science arm of the federal government at that time. And you may want to come to it later in the interview, but I thought that was one of the sorriest things that happened to us is when, after my retirement, we lost research. I think it was critical that it be close enough to operations, and operations close enough to research, so that there was a real two plus two making five, you know, that it really worked well, and we had a number of people that really appreciated people from another side of the operations and research.

JG -- Our track record during that time, you’re saying often we went to court, we’d loose credibility very quickly, but slowly build up. Did we loose many cases, or did we get turned around?

BM – No. We did… there’s perhaps some that became very famous, not necessarily in our Region. remember the Tellico [Dam] Project in southeast with the snail darter.

JG -- Snail darter.

BM – You know, big bucks on the line. And here was a little tiny fish, that nobody’d even heard of, that was stopping, you know, a multi-million dollar type project by TVA, as I recall -- Tennessee Valley Authority. No. I think we had a pretty good batting average. But we were pretty careful about what we took on, because we certainly didn’t want to loose cases and set bad precedent. Because that can come back to bite you pretty badly.

JG -- What was the role of politics into these decisions at that time, in the role of Fish and Wildlife Service?

BM – Well, different than now -- but not that much different. For example, the… I’ve always felt that politics has an appropriate role, you know, that’s kind of what democracy is all about in many respects, but in those days, much more than what I read about and understand now, is that the best science was oftentimes brought into the political discussion. And while we might not win some of those arguments, they were discussed. And people at least understood in making certain decisions that they were trading off let’s say economics for natural resource / biological kinds of benefits. But later on, into the

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‘80s, it became more and more where they tried to tell you what the answer was to your study before you even started it. And of course, that almost always came back and to, not only harm our credibility, but harm how people looked at the federal government in general. And some times the Administration that put out that kind of guidance to start with. It also… given I was Deputy Regional Director, one of my primary roles was kind of the inside manager, where oftentimes, the Regional Director was the individual that, you know, dealt more externally, and I dealt more internally. And oftentimes, if some of our studies didn’t come out where certain people in high places wanted then to, they wanted us to get rid of certain people and move them or whatever. And so, kind of, as time went on, and I got towards the end of when I wanted to continue to serve, that the job became less and less pleasant, I guess you’d say. And there were a number of times when, like I said, if they were going to go that way I no longer wanted to do that job. And then I knew someday somebody was going take me up on that. But, I… Taylor Martinsen [?] was cleaning out his files the other day, and he found one that had given us particular grief. And it had occurred with a fellow by the name Bill Sweeney. And Bill, at the time, was our Area Manager in California, having responsibility for all the Service activities down there, except for research and law enforcement. And there was a very powerful agribusiness group in that area -- particularly in the San Joaquin / Sacramento Valley, and they had a lot of political clout. There was also a water district called the Westlands Water District. We had established a working group down there of economists and various people, to look at the cost of water and how that affected fish and wildlife. And, that had rankled some of the agribusiness people. And we were told to get rid of Sweeney. And both Taylor and I at the time, which I had frankly forgotten all about until he found this file and we were looking at it, we both decided that we were going to resign, or at least get transferred to some non-supervisory job, if that were to happen. Because we felt that there was no way you could try to lead a Region if people knew that one of our very good performing people had been let go under false pretenses. Plus, we were pretty sure that once it got to some of the review Boards, through the political process or otherwise, the Service and Interior would look very bad. We were eventually… were able to convince people that were telling us to do this that they were going to have egg on their face if they did it. So it never happened. But, this was not an isolated incident.

JG -- So the climate had changed? Or was changing?

BM – It was. It wasn’t limited to one party or the other. I want to emphasize that. During that time, Cecil Andres, who was Secretary of the Interior, he was from Idaho, one of our states. Ronald Reagan later was President. Of course, he was from California. And any of these people who had association with some of these folks when they got into these positions, you know, they felt like it was payback time to them. So there was kind of continual drumbeat of people wanting certain things through those offices. You just simply had to keep your chin up and do good work. And feel that your good work would pull you through. And generally it did.

JG -- How long did you last then, on this job, before you… what happened next? What was the next step in your career? 14

BM – Well, at this stage, I was like 48 and a half or so, and I… neither my wife or I have… we lived… neither of us live a real high life style, so we figured that we had enough to last us in retirement. Nancy was working three day-a-week / 30 hour job with TriMet, with elderly and disabled, and I was pulling down, you know, a decent salary with the Service.

JG -- As a GS 15?

BM – Yeah. And because of kind of this constant drumbeat of, you know, get rid of this person or that person, I felt that my time was probably shorter than that Deputy’s job, and that time Taylor Martinsen [?] had had to leave, in fact, because of, as nearly as anyone could figure out, and I think it was fairly clear, we had taken positions against Bonneville Power Administration on varying certain transmission alignments, one which would have gone down through the Upper and Lower Klamath / Tule Refuges… transmission line where we felt the bird strikes would be significant, given that that was kind of the hourglass within the Pacific Flyway. And so, we had opposed it. And we had also opposed another one up or the Columbia River at Crow Butte, which we were unsuccessful. And a fellow, by the name of Don Odell, at the time was head of the Bureau of Bonneville Power, and he later became Undersecretary of the Interior. And when he became Undersecretary of the Interior, in my mind, he was vindictive against Taylor and therefore trans… wanted Taylor to transfer to another job, away from Portland. One of Taylor and Dawn’s children had a medical situation where it simply was not in the cards for them to be able to transfer. So Taylor resigned. And it was a great loss to the Service. Because I think Taylor probably had more integrity than anybody I’d ever worked with.

JG -- And as you’re… were winding down at that time, were you soon to follow? Or… what happened then?

BM – Well, I lasted… let’s see, I think Taylor left in about ’82, and I was still Deputy through ’85, I think. Worked for Dick Myshak, who had come in. And Dick had some strong attributes, too. Dick was… I learned a lot of how to play politics with Dick. He had been in the Assistant Secretary’s Office. He absolutely believed in what we did. Defended to the best of his ability what we did. But he also knew how to get peoples attention through politics, which, you know, I’d never quite been that close to somebody that was that good at it. And in a very favorable way I would say. And so Dick knew, kind of, how many brushes I’d had with coming close to being transferred, so he suggested, because our Public Affairs Officer was leaving, that I fill that job, and kind of be out of the line of fire. So I did that job for the last year and a quarter, before I retired at age 50.

JG -- Okay. what year was that then?

BM – 1987.

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JG -- You retired. Okay.

BM – Yeah. I knew it was… appropriately, you know, with the reduced annuity, but… it happened, and I’ve never looked back, and I’ve been very, very happy that I did it. The only thing I really missed was the people I worked with, within the Service primarily. Anyway, it was a good move.

JG – So, you don’t regret it. Retirement has treated you well then?

BM – Very well. Yeah. I’ve got to be with a lot of good friends, doing good stuff -- like the four of us going to [indecipherable] [Laughs]

JG -- Looking back on your career, 1975 you say, if I recall, is when you came in? ‘65.

BM – Yeah.

JG -- Is there something really stands out, that it just gives you an immense pleasure, or that you thought was something that was really worked well for the Service?

End of tape, side A.

BM – Well,

JG -- [indecipherable] I guess.

BM – I think the same thing as my high and low point. I thought our… when we established Area Offices, that that was the best we ever functioned within this Region. We had four Area Managers, staffs of -- small staffs of three or four people, including the secretary, for our various states – Washington / Oregon was one. Idaho and Nevada was one. California was one. And then Hawaii and the area out beyond was our fourth Area. And these setups, these structures, allowed us to be very close to the action, very close to the project leaders, which again, I think we all work for, because they are the ones that are really getting it done. And they allowed us excellent communications with the state / federal agencies in those places. And I think it was just an outstanding place to train our people. they were able to see beyond their… wherever they’d come up through the service and work elbow to elbow with people who were dealing with something that they might know hardly anything about, but they had to work together to get certain jobs done. And we simply seem to really roll effectively with that. Plus, a number of the people that worked in those areas, later came to assume some really key jobs. And I attribute… obviously, some of those people were just really good to start with, but they also got a certain level of training I don’t believe they could have gotten any other way within the service. And that was… probably my low point is when… it was no longer… when that organizational arrangement went away, and everything was pulled back into the regional

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offices. and then, after I retired, they sort of went back to the area concept, but they ran it out of the regions by having people who were… oversaw the Columbia Basin or the….

JG -- The geographic…

BM – Yes. The [indecipherable] system…

JG -- [indecipherable]

BM – … or geographical area, that previously were done on the ground, were now done out of the Regional Office.

JG -- Is there something that you wish you had done differently? If knowing back in, you know, hindsight’s always 20/20, but….

BM – I suppose that there were… a personnel situation or two that I lived with longer than I wish I would have. It was always interesting to me when you asked somebody to leave a particular position, that they were oftentimes relieved more than you were. It took me a while to learn that. That they usually knew they were over their head before you did. And I wished at times that I would have used my initial reaction, my initial thought, that these folks had other jobs that they could do a lot better, and get somebody else into those jobs. Because, I think, some of the people that worked under them suffered that situation longer than they should have, just like perhaps I did over at…. I got a lot of pleasure, on the other hand, out of watching folks develop. I was kind of a hands-off type of a manager, to the degree that we always tried to work it out what the key objectives were that they wanted to try to get done in any year, and we followed them pretty close. So, we usually didn’t have that many surprises. And I didn’t always… I didn’t ask for a whole lot of feedback, as long as they thought they were on line and I thought they were on line. I think people sometimes learn their lessons a lot faster if they make a few small mistakes rather than great big ones.

JG -- You seem to be pretty philosophical in your career and all. is there somebody that had a great influence on your career? Was there a university professor? Or, who within the Fish and Wildlife Service was….

BM – Well,

JG -- … that you just greatly admired and had….

BM – There’s several. I think everybody that you come in contact with in your work, you know, for any length of time, you learn things -- good or bad. I remember my first boss in Maine, who was outstanding biologist, but, he really had difficultly getting along with folks. And law enforcement people, wardens, wouldn’t hardly talk with biologists. And I still carry around a billfold that they gave me when I left. I don’t have the several bottles of hooch that they also gave me -- that’s long gone. The ability to get along with

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folks was one of the things that I learned from him. But, the key people, Bob Cleary certainly was one….

JG -- Early supervisor?

BM – Yeah, my first supervisor in the fish and wildlife service. Taylor Martinsen [?], one of my very favorite people. One that I learned how to stand tall on tough issues. Mike Spear – he… I think we both learned from each other on that case, because he was new to the service and I was able to maybe point out a few of the minefields that he might avoid walking through. But, he was one of the smartest people I’d ever dealt with. I appreciated him a lot. of course, Bill Atchison -- he was an English major, perhaps the only English major in the fish and wildlife service for all I know. But, he thought critically, and he wrote beautifully. And he had a wry sense of humor that oftentimes kind of carried the day when we were both…. we had poster on the back of our door, we shared an office, and it showed a vulture and it says “patience my ass, I’m going to kill something.” And, he and I had a lot of good times and got each other through some of the bad times. Probably, the person I learned the most from was my wife Nancy.

JG -- What were some of the changes that you’ve seen in the service -- good or bad?

BM – Well, I think we became a lot more businesslike over the years, with a lot of growing pains along the way. There were a couple of other studies I was involved in that might sort of pertain to that.

JG -- As examples?

BM – Yeah, as examples. We had… after I was in Portland, both of these occurred. The service had chosen to centralize paying bills and their financial management in Denver. And instead of running a pilot program in one region, they implemented it throughout the service. The problem being that many of our projects were having their electricity cut off and their utilities stopped because things weren’t getting paid on time. Of course, many of our field stations were in very rural areas with, you know, one hardware store, one feed store, whatever. These people were ending up waiting for their money for six or seven months, and nothing happened. So, I was asked to head up a task force and provide a report evaluating the way we do our financial business. And, with that group, there was, again, Jim Langford, Chuck Lyondell [?], Julian Martinez [?], Dan Rasovitch [?] We made a number of recommendations to then Director Lynn Greenwalt. And things did improve. But it still took a while to do it. I think it was the right idea, but the implementation was too fast and not ground truthed well enough to make it happen seamlessly. As a result, a lot of our projects… project leaders had some real tough times because of it. Later, Lynn Greenwalt asked Dick Smith, who would later become Deputy Director of the Service, and at that time was Chief of Research, head of Research, or perhaps it was Assistant Director for Research, I forget the title… he and I were asked to see how… look at better ways to the Service might do their managerial business. I don’t have a copy of that report anymore, but it would have been somewhere around 1980, ‘81 perhaps. And Dick and I interviewed people from all levels of the Service, every Region,

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all Research Centers, over a two and a half month period. We were on the road constantly, and ended up [La Crosse?] to write our report. And then gave our report to the Directorate meeting in Burlington, Vermont, I believe it was. The… I think a number of the recommendations were implemented over time, because many of them were self-evident and were almost universal in the kinds of complaints that people had. Anyway, it… not unlike the financial business, I just think we became a more of a business-like outfit. That… those are kind of the positive end of them. The negative end, I think the way that bad politics… politics in a bad sense has intruded on the way the Service does their business is obvious. And, as a result, I think moral has to be quite low in the Service now. I’m far removed, about all I know about it anymore is what I read in the paper or those few people that I still know that are working in the Service. As it’s really unfortunate… when I first joined the Service you almost had to kick people out to get them to retire. And now, it’s almost the 180 degrees from that. They get out just as fast as they can. And, I think government needs… they need the very best people, if were gong to handle the number of the issues that were involved with. I was just talking with an individual the other night, whose son in is FBI, and he said it’s manifest there, too. It just seems to be across… all levels of government right now. So, I guess it’s not just the Service, but that don’t make it all any better.

JG -- Do you have any thoughts on how to get these very best people, and get them into the right positions?

BM – Well, I think….

JG -- Different than what we’re doing, or….?

BM – I think, you know, word of mouth advertising, probably, is the best way to get people to join a group, or join the government. When you have… starting in the Reagan Administration, with the… using as a campaign device, was to bad mouth government workers, and bureaucrats. And the way it’s used, that’s continued to be a singsong device of campaigns. I don’t think that’s the way you then turn around and try to get the best people in those positions. So, it’s a mindset,

JG -- If you had the power, or were invited to, this group, this magical group, what would you tell them about a career in the Fish and Wildlife Service?

BM – Well, it’s… the best of my whole professional career was with Fish and Wildlife Service. The types of issues we worked on, the habitat that was ours to try to protect, or enhance, the people I worked with, they were just… it was all top drawer. I can’t say how it is now. I know it’s harder to get in. Many people have to volunteer just to… or get a… part time work with us. but I still think it’s a profession, and an area, that will become more and more important over time -- whether its intrusion of global warming, or pesticides, or the decreasing amount of water that’s available -- potable water -- for the worlds population, we’re going to be continually hit with any number of potential, environmental catastrophes unless we can convince people that they’re real. And that we can figure out answers to address them. So, that’s the kind of thing I’d want to be part of.

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Bob Cleary, who had a wonderful way of telling you what was expected of you, or not, as an employee, and he never had a safety meeting, for example, in the small office I was in I think…

JG -- How’d you get by without that? I thought you had to send in reports every month.

BM – Well, somebody sent them in. His advice to us was… he said “any of you [indecipherable] that have a car wreck, you’re going to have to fill out your own damn paperwork.” That convinced any of us that that would be worse than anything. He also had advice that… “never park your government car in front of the bar, always put it around behind on the next street.” So, there was a lot of practical advice. There was just any number of good stories. When Taylor had to retire, or resign, I recall we had Regional Directorate together, and we gave him a gift that was heartfelt, but in the process of… there was a whole series of things that we reminded him of. Somebody had suggested that we give him a camouflage dress shirt so that the next time he had to go to Elko, Nevada, that he indeed could convince that that he was a duck hunter. By the way Taylor is just an outstanding duck hunter. And he had a public hearing down there, and somebody said ‘well, I can tell you’ve never hunted ducks before.’ There was just a lot of funny stories, as they occurred. Sometimes, it was a lot better to laugh than cry, you know.

End of tape Side B

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