| 2002 Annual Report Contents |
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For obvious reasons, directors like to recognize extra effort by their employees. But at the Colorado Division of Wildlife (DOW) in 2002, there was such a high level of effort, it really wasn't "extra."
For instance, there was the work of the hatchery staff to protect the Glenwood Springs facility from summer fires and, according to the Rocky Mountain News, the "heroic" effort to collect kokanee eggs from fish trapped by an irrigation dam in the Gunnison River. There were the efforts of aquatic biologists to salvage big, beautiful trout from Antero Reservoir as it drained, and of customer service reps who opened offices early and closed late in order to help license buyers.
Or, consider what chronic wasting disease (CWD) meant for the DOW. We don't know enough about the disease, but it is apparently the result of an aberrant protein, and it is always fatal to deer and elk. This obviously proved to be a large hurdle for Colorado's hunting season and hunting traditions. In fact, CWD could have been a tremendously negative blow to the state's economy a loss of hundreds of millions of dollars a year. But that did not happen and will not happen in the future, based on what we saw in 2002.
There is little that is extraordinary about CWD in Colorado, except for the efforts of our people in dealing with it, and the unusual things we've done. CWD control efforts began in the area northwest of Fort Collins where DOW employees put in a lot of extra work trying to understand and manage the disease. Last spring, a handful of cases of CWD was discovered on the West Slope. The effect was to step up the pace, and we've been running hard ever since. It is difficult, however, to name specific individuals who deserve credit because there are so many.
Do we credit the heavy duty thinking of researchers and managers in Fort Collins who set up the teams to deal with CWD? Do we credit the team of field officers and biologists who spent two weeks culling 1,000 deer and elk near Meeker in the mud, ice and snow, and 860 more deer collected at isolated hot spots in eastern Colorado? Unless you were there, you don't realize how difficult it was. And yet there was never a whimper.
Maybe we credit those who put aside their regular duties and pitched in to help with the testing of harvested deer and elk, so the DOW could understand more about the spread and prevalence of the disease. Like the technicians who endured the cold weather and long hours to actually collect samples from animals for testing.
People from outside the DOW volunteered as well. Members of the state's hunting community and the Colorado Veterinary Medical Assn., guides and outfitters, and staff from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the U.S. Forest Service and other federal and state agencies lent much needed hands to the effort. Colorado State University's Veterinary Diagnostic Lab was a tremendous partner with staff devoting many extra hours to ensure quick, reliable test reporting. Many, many people pitched in. We could not have done it without all of them.
DOW employees spent a lot of time in public meetings in western Colorado where people were legitimately concerned about the impact of CWD. We tried to decide how best to strike a balance between community expectations and fears, which were mostly economic; between our own expectations and fears, which were mostly scientific; and between onlookers' expectations and fears, which were mostly political.
In doing so, we learned that CWD isn't the message, it's the medium that gave us the message. That message is that extraordinary efforts are ordinary for the employees of your Division of Wildlife. In 2002, we were truly for wildlife, for people.
Russ George
Director,
Colorado Division of Wildlife
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