Wildlife Agency Disputes Story Director Beattie Supports Agents, Contrary To Account By Lawmakers

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials contend director Mollie Beattie supports agents involved in a confrontation with a Salmon rancher last week, despite what Idaho’s congressional delegation says.

Rancher Gene Hussey and Lemhi County Sheriff Brett Barsalou said the agents intimidated Hussey on his land last Wednesday while investigating the Jan. 29 shooting death of a Canadian gray wolf released in central Idaho.

Barsalou called the agents’ tactics “heavy-handed and dangerously close to the use of excessive force.”

After meeting with Beattie in Washington, D.C., last Friday, the congressional delegation issued a statement saying she “recognized errors were made and pledged her efforts to make sure similar events do not occur again.”

David Fish, a spokesman for Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, said Tuesday that the congressional delegation stands behind Friday’s statement. But Fish and Wildlife Service spokesman David Klinger said it does not reflect Beattie’s position.

“Director Beattie has complete confidence in the manner in which the agents conducted themselves,” Klinger said Monday.

One of the agents on the scene, Paul Weyland, said he personally received Beattie’s assurance that the agency would back its officers.

“Tom (Riley) and I briefed Mollie on Thursday morning and we explained to her everything that happened, and she said she fully supports us,” he said. “Politics have gotten in the way of the truth. That’s what happened up there.”

In fact, Weyland and fellow agents Tom Riley and Steve Magone said the 74-yearold Hussey was the aggressor when they arrived to search for spent cartridges from the wolf shooting. Weyland said Hussey used obscenity, tossed at least two softball-sized rocks at them and tried to flip Magone’s cap off and punch him.

Hussey said Saturday that he had been provoked by the agents and that they had called him a welfare rancher. He acknowledged trying to flip Magone’s cap and that he picked up a rock, but he said he took no aggressive action.

Rep. Michael Crapo, R-Idaho, has called for a congressional hearing on the confrontation, and Weyland and Magone said they are eager to get the chance to testify about the incident under oath.

“If they want to have hearings, I’d be glad to testify because we did absolutely nothing wrong,” Weyland said.

He also said the agents did not contact the sheriff before serving the search warrant because “he has not been supportive of this investigation since it started.”

Barsalou was quoted earlier as saying he “didn’t give a damn who shot the wolf.” Weyland said such statements eliminated any chance of cooperation.

“Here we have a sheriff hostile to our investigation. Absolutely we’re not going to contact him before we serve a warrant,” he said.

Fish and Wildlife officials said they would have considered notifying or even including Idaho Department of Fish and Game officers, but Fish and Game director Jerry Conley prohibited any such cooperation in a memo to regional supervisors two days after the shooting.

Tom Reinecker, chief of the department’s wildlife bureau, said the memo was largely the result of the Legislature’s failure to adopt a statewide wolf management plan.

“Our direction is that we’re not to get ourselves involved in that,” Reinecker said. “There are an awful lot of people in Idaho that agree with that hands-off policy.”

With that restriction on Fish and Game and Barsalou’s statements, Klinger said, “I’m afraid we may not have had much of a choice but to go it alone.”

But Weyland said Fish and Wildlife tried to make the search as lowkey as possible by using only three agents who arrived wearing plain clothes and - as standard practice - carrying sidearms in holsters under their jackets and sweaters.