10-22-13 former dnr secretary blasts deer trustee report

A former Wisconsin DNR secretary says he’s concerned that outside special interest group money and partisan politics is threatening Wisconsin’s long history of solid conservation policy.  In an

interview with AM 1170 WFDL’s Between the Lines program, Wisconsin Wildlife Federation director George Meyer says one of the major changes he has witnessed is that those with expertise are being shunted aside.  "This should be a combination of the public and experts working together and coming up with sound conservation policies.  But what has taken the scene in the last ten almost going back 15 years, partisan politics has really interjected itself,"  Meyer said.   Meyer is highly critical of Governor Walker’s hiring of so-called deer czar James Kroll from Texas to study and make recommendations on Wisconsin’s deer herd and deer hunt.  "Its the same people that were behind the United Sportsmen.  What came out of the Kroll report they were saying six years ago before James Kroll came in the state.  That was a set-up,"  Meyer said.   "James Kroll has an expertise in certain things...ranch, farming in terms of raising big deer and I'm not quarreling with that.  But he surely had no expertise in setting broad-based deer management in a northern state like Wisconsin."