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JOURNAL-SENTINEL (Milwaukee, Wisconsin) 28 July 06 Snake may lose status - Legislators want DNR to roll back protection for species (Lee Bergquist)
A state legislative committee has taken the apparently unprecedented action of removing all protections for the Butler's garter snake unless officials roll back regulations for the controversial reptile.
The July 18 vote has once again provoked a showdown between the administration of Gov. Jim Doyle and the Legislature over environmental protection.
In this case, the Butler's garter snake is the pawn in a intensifying struggle between lawmakers and the Department of Natural Resources over how best to manage Wisconsin's environment.
The lawmakers voted to suspend safeguards after DNR officials outlined their current policy of protecting the snake. Except for small pockets in Fond du Lac, Sheboygan, Walworth and Jefferson counties, it is found only in Milwaukee, Waukesha, Ozaukee and Washington counties.
It also happens to be the spitting image of the Eastern Plains garter snake, which is known to interbreed and produce a hybrid that is not protected.
But for years the protected status of the Butler's garter snake has slowed - and sometimes stopped - construction projects, making the snake a lightning rod for controversy between environmentalists and developers.
The DNR said that no project has been stopped in the past year, however.
After hearing the testimony from the DNR, many members of the committee became convinced that the Butler's - a garter snake that has been listed as a threatened species since 1997 - was not in danger at all.
The committee voted, 8-4, to push the DNR to roll back regulations. And if it doesn't do so by Oct. 1, lawmakers would suspend regulations that protect the snake.
The Republican-controlled Legislature has squabbled with the DNR in recent years over the size of piers on lake property, the length of deer hunting season, air and water regulations, and how much feed property owners can legally place in their yards to attract deer.
"I would never vote to delist a species lightly," said Sen. Glenn Grothman (R-West Bend), chairman of the committee. "But the DNR testimony indicated this snake is not what an average person would call threatened."
Ordinarily, the DNR has the power to protect endangered and threatened species in Wisconsin. But the Legislature can review all regulations by state agencies.
In this case, last week's action meant the committee could suspend the rule and remove all protections for the snake until the spring of 2008 because the lawmakers could introduce legislation, and then sit on it without allowing a vote or potential veto by the governor, said Ron Sklansky, an attorney with the Legislative Council.
DNR officials and environmentalists have criticized the vote, saying the Legislature is venturing into waters in which it has no expertise.
The agency said the protection for the snake was the result of the work of scientists from inside and outside the agency, and no scientist testified before legislators to say that the snake is flourishing.
"For a legislator without a scientific background to determine in their mind that there is enough habitat out there for the snake is tantamount to a legislator not trained as a doctor making medical diagnoses," said Mary Schlaefer, executive assistant to DNR Secretary Scott Hassett.
Schlaefer said the DNR is not aware of the Legislature taking action to remove protections of endangered or threatened species in the state.
Former DNR Secretary George Meyer, executive director of the Wisconsin Wildlife Federation, took it a step further and said no other state legislature has tried to overturn a protective listing of a state environmental agency.
He warned lawmakers that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service could step in and reassert controls, forcing the state to live by federal and not state regulations.
"What is disturbing is that this would be the first delisting of a threatened or endangered species in the country based not on science, but politics and economics," Meyer said.
Grothman rejected the claim.
He noted that he was influenced by the troubles he was hearing from constituents - a church that was having trouble expanding soccer fields in the Town of Jackson, a Yamaha dealership stymied in an attempt to build on land it owns in the Town of Grafton. Grothman said he has not been lobbied by groups such as the Metropolitan Builders Association.
Instead, he and other lawmakers listened to the presentation of the DNR's current plan for the Butler's garter snake, a compromise formulated last year that breaks down habitat for the snake into three classifications.
Developers must take extra steps to ensure that habitat for the snake is not harmed in only the third classification, where the Butler's habitat is best. The DNR has allowed development on more than 1,000 acres in the four counties and where they think some snakes have been killed by construction.
The DNR wants to establish 65 sites for protection in areas with the best habitat and has found 50 to date. Grothman noted there are another 111 potential sites in the four counties.
"And some of these sites are really big - the Cedarburg Bog, the Jackson Marsh," Grothman said. "These snakes aren't going anywhere."
J. Scott Mathie, director of government affairs with the Metropolitan Builders Association, said his group remains frustrated about the Butler's garter snake because the DNR can't seem to move to a point where the snake would eventually be removed from protection.
The group is "somewhere in the middle" on the issue, Mathie said, but agrees with Grothman that there is plenty of Butler's habitat in the region.
But the DNR's Schlaefer disagreed with the assessment and said DNR wants to ensure biological diversity.
"There is a web of life, and all species are important," she said. "You can't pick and choose based on whether it is cute and pretty or not."

Snake may lose status

them leg guys suck. Can you imagine having a species protected from development until developers want the land. Nice.

Ian