By Cat Urbigkit, Range Writing columnist for Cowboy State Daily
There are major differences in the way conservation organizations accomplish their missions.
For example, the Greater Yellowstone Coalition (GYC) has long made grizzly bear recovery in this region a top priority. In addition to traditional environmental advocacy work, this group “puts its money where its mouth is” by helping to bearproof public campgrounds, trailheads and backcountry camps. Its sponsors and support efforts to understand the causes of carnivore conflicts, and performs field work in minimizing conflicts, both with individuals and in communities. GYC installs electric fencing, provide funding for range riders, and helps members of the public learn how and why to use bear spray. It also helps to fund wildlife crossings of roadways.
To do this much on-the-ground conservation must take a lot of money, right? Not so much. In 2015, GYC quietly launched a 5-year, $10 million grizzly bear fundraising campaign (already raising more than $8 million and hoping to raise the remainder of the balance before the end of the year). According to GYC’s audited financial statement, the organization has about $12.6 million in assets, with 2018 revenues totaling $5.2 million, and personnel costs of less than $2 million, with their highest-paid employee receiving about $150,000 per year in total compensation and benefits.
Founded in 2012, Muley Fanatics of Wyoming is a relatively new organization, but it has used funding (generated primarily through events and gun raffles) to create partnerships to benefit mule deer and mule deer habitat, and in support of hunting. One such project focused on research to understand deer population declines. The group raised just over $400,000 in revenue in 2017, and paid out nearly $145,000 in grants, while spending $252,000 for salaries and other employee benefits, according to its 2017 tax report.
For years the Lander-based Water for Wildlife® Foundation has invested in providing supplemental water sources for wildlife, with more than 430 water projects in 12 western states. According to the organization’s 2016 tax filing, this nonprofit generated about $175,000, spent $185,000, and has nearly $1 million in assets.
Contrast these groups, their funding, and how they conduct business with another environmental group that seems to be in the news every week: the Center for Biological Diversity.
The Center for Biological Diversity has a $23 million budget, according to its 2017 audited financial statement, and spends about $12 million in salaries and payroll expenses. The CBD has expanded from its modest New Mexico origins (think Mexican spotted owl controversy) to having dozens of full-time staff meddling in issues on an international scale, and generating enough revenue that the organization can now afford to pay up to nearly $1.8 million “in deferred compensation payable to the founders of the organization and a select number of long-term employees.” Three of its top employees are each making about $300,000 per year – more than top congressional salaries. The group brags how it uses species to shut down commercial enterprises, such as leveraging protection for a protected bird into orders to remove livestock grazing, and their campaigns to protect raptors were used to shut down timber operations and industrial-scale logging throughout the Southwest.
Unlike some of the other groups I’ve mentioned, the Center for Biological Diversity isn’t a conservation organization that is out in the field working to recover imperiled species. CBD is an advocacy group using specific tactics to get species listed (and keep them listed) under the Endangered Species Act through “petitions, lawsuits, policy advocacy, and outreach to media.”
According to a report by the General Accounting Office, the federal government was sued 141 times in 10-year period for failing to meet statutory deadlines for making findings on petitions to list or delist species under the Endangered Species Act. Half of these “deadline suits” were filed by two groups: CBD, and WildEarth Guardians. These slam-dunk lawsuits over failure to meet required deadlines have become formulaic, and give groups bragging rights for their wins, as well as nets them awards of attorney fees. These are paper-only victories, keeping the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service busy with an overwhelming amount of listing paperwork rather than focused on actual species recovery efforts.
The CBD claims it has 1.5 million members and online activists. I doubt many people really know what they are supporting. It’s not conservation, it’s litigation.
Cat Urbigkit is an author and rancher who lives on the range in Sublette County, Wyoming. Her column, Range Writing, appears weekly in Cowboy State Daily.
