Controversial Mealey To Head Fish And Game He Angered Environmentalists While Chief Of Boise National Forest
Steve Mealey, a 20-year veteran of the Forest Service and former supervisor of the Boise National Forest, was named on Friday as the new director of the Department of Fish and Game.
Mealey was selected from a field of nine to succeed Jerry Conley, who left the department in October after 16 years to become director of the Missouri Department of Conservation.
Mealey, currently director of the federal Columbia Basin Ecosystem Management Project, was the only candidate interviewed twice by the commission.
The Columbia Basin Ecosystem Management Project plans next Wednesday to release a comprehensive scientific assessment of a 225,000-square-mile area in Idaho, Eastern Washington, eastern Oregon, western Montana, northern Nevada and parts of Wyoming and Utah.
Mealey angered many Idaho environmentalists with his stand on forest health and logging as supervisor of the Boise National Forest. Informed of his Fish and Game candidacy last week, some former adversaries said Mealey was too quick to cut timber and would not fight hard enough to protect wildlife habitat.
“Steve Mealey is responsible for some of the largest and most destructive timber projects in the country,” said Barry Rosenberg of the Inland Empire Public Lands Council. “The Department of Fish and Game will now be ruled by an ally of timber interests instead of an advocate for fish and wildlife.”
Supporters, including former colleagues at the Boise forest, said Mealey is an innovative scientist. They said he pioneered the forest health movement by advocating a thinning of ponderosa pine forests to restore them to their natural condition before firefighting practices allowed them to grow too thick.
He said before Friday’s announcement that he was not ready to discuss his ideas for managing Fish and Game.
Wildlife and hunting advocacy groups offered guarded initial reactions.
“I think he is a strong administrator, a strong leader,” said Kent Marlor of the Region 6 Wildlife Council, an advocacy group for sportsmen’s issues. “There is no doubt he brings some baggage, but the Fish and Game department needs a strong leader, and I think he is a strong leader. I think he can do the job, if he is very careful.”
Don Wright, the Region 6 supervisor for Fish and Game, said he was looking forward to working with the new director, whom some have described as a hatchet man sent to clean house at the department.
“He will come in and make changes where he thinks they are necessary, and I think he will take the resource into consideration when he does it,” Wright said.
The Fish and Game Department has been in political upheaval since Batt was elected governor in 1994.
Two of the four Batt appointees - a retired forester responsible for large-scale salvage logging on the Targhee National Forest and one of Idaho’s largest sheep ranchers - have drawn criticism for their support of resource development.
The sheep rancher, Jeff Siddoway of Terreton, has pressed for Fish and Game to open some of its lands to grazing and logging. Conley, the former director, was a prime target for the new commissioners’ frustrations with the department.
xxxx DIVISIVE DECISION Mealey’s selection had sharply divided the seven-member Fish and Game Commission, whose majority shifted to the appointees of Gov. Phil Batt last summer.