Padre Island National Seashore officials are being criticized for failing to respond to a cold-stunning event one day last week./Rebecca Latson file

Editor's note: This updates to reflect some questions answered by the National Park Service.

A decision by Padre Island National Seashore officials to close the seashore during a recent cold snap that stunned nearly 1,000 green sea turtles in the Gulf of Mexico, killing an unspecified number, has drawn concern from Sierra Club members in Texas and prompted a county commissioner to call for the seashore superintendent to be fired.

When the cold weather arrived on January 21, "so many agencies and organizations came to the rescue of the sea turtles here locally," said Nueces County Commissioner Brent Chesney. "Yet the one agency who is charged with doing so, did not. The Padre Island National Seashore under the direction and order of [Superintendent] Eric Brunnemann shut down and went home while everyone else did [the National Park Service's] job for them."

According to a statement on the seashore's website, park staff and volunteers started collecting stunned turtles within seahore boundaries on January 20.

"Stunned turtles were transported to a triage area (“warming center”) at the park’s headquarters and then relocated to the Texas State Aquarium or the Texas Sea Life Center to begin the rehabilitation process," the statement went on, then added that "[D]ue to extreme cold and icy conditions, Padre Island National Seashore was closed on January 21 to protect visitor and staff safety. The recovery effort was temporarily suspended until conditions improved and the park could re-open."

That decision was criticized not just by Chesney, but also by the Lone Star Chapter of the Sierra Club, which on Monday sent a letter to Kate Hammond, the Park Service's regional director in Denver, to voice its concerns.

"There were many volunteers ready to help rescue sea turtles from the cold stunning event recently, but [the seashore] had locked up shop and gone home. Not only that, but Supt. Brunnemann has 'fired' an unknown number of long-term and valuable volunteers for undisclosed, unspecific reasons, including at least one Sierra Club supporter," wrote Dr. Craig Nazor, the chapter's conservation chair.

National Park Service and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service staff did not respond to all questions from the Traveler, saying they needed them in writing and then needed to get permission from upper levels to answer them. One dead green sea turtle was found on the seashore's beaches. Regional officials declined to comment on Chesney's request that Brunnemann be removed from Padre Island, saying they don't discuss personnel matters.

Chesney, during a phone call, said the superintendent's decision to close the national seashore on January 21 was just the latest straw in his relationship with Brunnemann.

"It's really been an ongoing battle with this particular [superintendent]. Whether he's just doing what his boss is telling him to do or not, he's someone that just doesn't engage with the community, doesn't talk to the media," the commissioner said, noting that Brunnemann prefers written questions that he can respond to in writing.

"You want to talk to people, right? You ask me a question and I answer. You may get three other questions that come from it, right?" said Chesney. "It's a continual problem of just a lack of communication, a lack of regard for the sea turtle program, a lack of regard for Donna Shaver and all things that she's done. This was kind of the icing on the cake for me, if you will."

Dr. Donna Shaver is a sea turtle biologist whose Student Conservation Association intern stint at Padre Island in 1980 launched a career that took her from the Park Service to former Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt's short-lived National Biological Survey and back Padre Island in 2003, when the Park Service recruited her to run the seashore's Sea Turtle Science and Recovery Program.

Padre Island also is the only area in Texas where all five threatened and endangered species of sea turtles — Kemp's ridley, Green, Loggerhead, Leatherback, and Hawksbill — nest or rely on habitat in the seashore. Though the diminutive Kemp's ridley turtles call the entire Gulf of Mexico home, Padre Island dominates their nesting in U.S. waters, according to the Park Service.

Indeed, in the 1980s the national seashore was specifically chosen by international experts to develop a satellite nesting population of Kemp's ridley turtles that could both contribute to global recovery and serve as a backup population in case a disaster hit the Mexican populations, which are largely centered around Playa de Rancho Nuevo at Tamaulipas. Too, the Padre Island work was seen as a way to develop protocols for a captive breeding program, if ever needed.

During the summer of 2020, the Park Service issued a 51-page report that reviewed the Sea Turtle Science and Recovery Program, or STSR. The report said the program had gotten unwieldly and too costly at roughly $1.9 million per year. Within 3-5 years, the review added without any detail, the program would be unsustainable. As a result, it should be tightly reined in, the report recommended.

The Park Service also prohibited Shaver from discussing the report with media, and she has been unavailable for interviews since then.

On January 21, area staff from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service went to Padre Island, according to Chesney, to pick up some equipment needed to document recovery efforts because the seashore's facilities were not available because of the seashore's closure.

"They couldn't search on Padre Island National Seashore on Tuesday [for stunned turtles] because it was closed," the commissioner added. "So, that put a cog in an unfortunate situation, too."

According to Chesney, in spite of the cold weather Fish and Wildlife Service staff was working to recover stunned turtles, as was staff from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the county.

"Volunteers were out there doing their thing. Texas State Aquarium was taking turtles. Keep Texas Sea Life Center. Everybody else was, go, go, go, because they know that when it freezes, that's when the turtles are in the most danger," he said.

A similar cold snap that reached the Florida Panhandle about the same time spurred a similar rescue effort that involved a number of federal and state agencies along with volunteers.

In his letter to Hammond, the Sierra Club's Nazor renewed the chapter's concerns that the Park Service was scaling back the Sea Turtle Science and Recovery Program at Padre Island. The chapter a year ago launched a petition drive to raise those concerns.

"This situation is what our local members’ feared all along: The dismantling of the STSRP to the point where it no longer supports the recovery of Kemp’s ridley sea turtle, and turtles die," he wrote this week. "[Publicly-viewed hatchling] releases are reduced. Eggs are no longer incubated. Despite the denials of Supt. Brunnemann, it has been clear to us for some time that the NPS no longer wants to support this program.

"... The Sierra Club would like a robust STSRP at Padre Island, because it is an iconic, endangered species — like the California condor at Pinnacles, the black-footed ferret at Badlands, the wolves and bison of Yellowstone, or the bald eagles of the Channel Islands. We would like to be a part of making that happen."