Senator says Park Service is retaliating against outspoken ranger 

By The Associated Press 

10.16.02 

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A U.S. senator is demanding an explanation from the National Park 
Service for why it cut short the season of a Yellowstone National Park 
ranger who earlier was ordered to stop speaking out about unscrupulous 
hunters. 

Meanwhile, a Park Service spokesman says the agency will clarify a 
memo to employees that critics have charged was a violation of the 
First Amendment right to free speech. 

Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, said sending Yellowstone ranger Bob 
Jackson home early smacks of further retaliation and violates the 
spirit of a settlement the agency reached with him late last year. 

Jackson, a 30-year park veteran, patrols a remote area of Yellowstone 
near the park's southeast corner. His expertise is catching poachers, 
and he has long criticized hunting guides he says illegally lure elk 
from Yellowstone by placing salt outside park boundaries on Forest 
Service land in Montana. 

In 2001, Jackson, who lives in Promise City, Iowa, in Wayne County, 
said park management ordered him not to speak publicly about his 
concerns and sent him home from his job early, telling him he would 
not be hired back the next season. 

Jackson filed a complaint and, under an agreement reached in December 
2001, was rehired for the 2002 season to patrol the same area of the 
park. 

However, he said the agency asked him to leave Sept. 17, long before 
hunting season outside the park heats up. That was extended a couple 
of weeks, but only after the Washington, D.C.-based watchdog group 
Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility complained to the 
agency, he said. 

Still, he is being asked to leave much earlier than normal, Jackson 
contends. 

"This is a thing that is bigger than me," he said. "It has do with a 
lot of the status quo with the National Park Service." 

Rick Frost, a spokesman for the Park Service's regional office in 
Denver, said Grassley and Fran Mainella, the agency's director, had 
corresponded about Jackson. But Frost said he did not know the extent 
of the discussions and could not immediately comment. 

In a letter to Interior Secretary Gale Norton, who oversees the 
agency, Grassley said it appears the Park Service is still trying to 
punish Jackson for speaking out. 

"When someone like him speaks up about unethical practices and gets 
sidelined and shut out, then there are a lot of questions for the 
National Park Service to answer," Grassley said in a statement. "I'm 
intent on stopping this kind of intimidation so other government 
workers who are willing to speak up about problems are not deterred." 

Grassley accused the Park Service of lax enforcement to prevent 
poaching and of retaliating against Jackson for his outspoken 
criticism. 

"Getting rid of Mr. Jackson serves the interests of park supervisory 
officials who wish to avoid high-profile conflicts with poachers and 
negative attention," Grassley wrote to Norton. "Mr. Jackson has proved 
himself to have unique skills and knowledge of the backcountry area 
where poaching is known to take place." 

Jackson said the Park Service has purposely staffed the backcountry 
with a small number of rangers with little experience. 

"The park needed more enforcement coverage, not less like they have 
now," Jackson said. "There was no intention there to have fall hunting 
control." 

Meanwhile, Frost, spokesman for the Intermountain Region of the Park 
Service, said a Sept. 16 memo to employees was meant to convey that 
employees have an ethical responsibility when speaking about their 
work and not meant to muzzle free speech. 

The memo prompted some Park Service employees to contact Public 
Employees for Environmental Responsibility. 

Executive Director Jeff Ruch said three people approached his group 
"because they all thought this memo was about them." 

The memo read, in part, "Employees who are writing or speaking on a 
topic which is generally related to their work, who are expressing 
themselves as private citizens and not as representatives of the 
department, are communicating under the concept of nonofficial 
expression." 

The memo said employees must apply for and receive a "certificate of 
compliance" to publish nonofficial expression. 

"The problem with the directive is it's unconstitutional, illegal and 
fairly dumb to boot," Ruch said. "It appears to say if you speak about 
your job, even on your own time, you must get some sort of approval." 

Ruch's organization complained to Mainella, the Park Service's 
director, in its own letter that the memo does not specify what is 
required for the certificate or what standards will be applied. 

The group also said employee speech is protected by the First 
Amendment "so long as it does not impair the efficient functioning of 
the public agency." 

Frost said the Park Service was concerned about employees' use of 
company time and equipment. 

"We're not worried about the content of speech but their ethical 
obligations as a civil servant," he said. "We have to make sure we're 
not using those taxpayer-funded resources for our private endeavors." 

He said employees cannot use government time, equipment or their title 
to speak or write to other groups or talk about information "that is 
not available to the general public." 

Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, he said, "thinks 
this is muzzling free speech and it isn't." 

He said the memo would be clarified. 

The Park Service's Intermountain Region includes Texas, Oklahoma, New 
Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and Montana. 

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