An Interview with Officer Mike Bireley, Enforcement Officer, Eastern Region, South Detachment Fish and Wildlife Officer Mike Bireley was honored in 2000 as the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) Employee of the Year for creating a pilot "Cooperative Compliance Review Program" in the Walla Walla River Basin where wild salmonids are listed under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). He was also recognized for his efforts to develop specialized environmental enforcement measures involving fish and wildlife hydraulics and habitat violations. Mike is a 26-year WDFW veteran, having served in enforcement officer and sergeant positions in Chehalis, Yakima, Dayton, and now Walla Walla. He was instrumental in developing the former Department of Game's first Community Affairs program in Seattle and headed up the Hunter Education program in Olympia for four years. Mike entered military service after graduating high school in Tennessee and first lived in Washington when he was assigned to the USAF Survival School at Fairchild AFB near Spokane after returning from a tour of duty in Southeast Asia in 1969. He later majored in wildlife management at Oregon State University, where his intent was to be a wildlife research biologist, but a fish and wildlife enforcement opening was his first opportunity and he's made a career of it ever since. Mike is enjoying his current work -- helping landowners comply with ESA rules for wild salmonids -- more than ever because, as he says, "I'm doing things FOR people, instead of TO them."

Q: What is the "Cooperative Compliance Review Program" that you developed and for which you were honored as Employee of the Year? A: The Cooperative Compliance Review Program or CCRP is a pilot project underway in the Walla Walla Basin that's intended to encourage people to work with us to upgrade their surface water irrigation diversions so they'll be in compliance with state fish-screening laws, especially involving fish species listed under the Endangered Species Act. The idea is to increase compliance with state law and ESA through cooperative efforts with landowners, rather than just having us writing citations for violations. Q: What is it that you're trying to get landowners to do for ESA compliance? A: In southeast Washington we have several fish species that are listed as threatened or endangered under ESA (Middle Columbia and Snake River chinook salmon, steelhead, and bull trout and Snake River sockeye salmon.) We also have many landowners who grow crops by irrigating their fields with water drawn from local streams and rivers. Fish can be, and often are, killed when they're drawn into irrigation water intakes that aren't screened, so structures need to be screened properly to save fish and still let water be used by farmers. I try to work with our habitat and fish biologists to identify intakes that need new or improved screening, then work with the landowners involved to help them get into compliance Q: How do you actually get compliance? A: First we attempt to determine how many irrigation diversions there are, where they're at, do an on-site assessment of them to determine in what way they're out of compliance, and then identify what steps need to be taken to get them into compliance, which usually just involves upgrading their equipment. Once that's done, we'll assist them with obtaining a hydraulics permit and developing operation and maintenance plans for their diversions to make sure they'll remain in compliance. Q: But how do you get people to even want to work with you? A: Mostly, it's been through information and outreach efforts, but in a lot of cases it just comes down to a hammer and carrot approach. The hammer is letting them know they're at risk for enforcement action through both state and federal courts if they're in violation. At WDFW, we're responsible for enforcing our own state fish screening laws and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) and National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) have jurisdiction for enforcement under ESA, with NMFS being responsible for anadromous fish like salmon and USFWS over resident fish like bull trout, both of which are listed as threatened in the Walla Walla Basin. If you're out of compliance with our state screening laws, you're also in violation of ESA wherever it's in effect. The reasoning is that if your screen is out of compliance to the point that it could kill or "take" a listed species, say it was fry in a spawning area that was sucked up into a pump and chewed up, that would constitute not only a state violation but also a violation of ESA because it involves the take of a listed species. But the carrot for compliance is if people agree to work with us voluntarily, we can provide them the technical assistance they need to get their diversions upgraded. We're also trying to offer them financial assistance on a cost-share basis. In addition, we help them with long-term operation and maintenance plans. Upgrading their equipment so that it meets technical specifications usually means going to a more restrictive and smaller screen mesh size and that probably results in a higher level of maintenance where they'll have to clean their screens more often. We realized that this was a concern for them, about how that would affect their ability to operate. So we're trying to do this in a way that not only protects fish, but also helps out the people by negatively impacting their ability to operate as little as possible. Q: Where will the money come from for cost-sharing? A: Salmon recovery in recent years has included tens of millions of dollars from both state and federal funds. The indication for the next five to ten years is that this type of funding will continue to be available and probably even in greater amounts as it becomes more and more apparent that the steps needed to recover this resource will come at a high cost. It's simply expensive in this day and age to implement the types of habitat enhancement projects needed to return streams to a healthy environment, and at the same time be able to continue to benefit people. Q: How do you get cooperation from those who would just as soon see ESA go away? A: Like I said earlier, part of my approach is through education and information, getting people to understand that it's in everyone's best interests to prevent this resource from becoming extinct. It's difficult to argue, at this point in time, that the risk of extinction is not real. The risk is very real. If we don't act, we WILL lose this resource. In all of my landowner contacts, I don't think I've encountered anyone who disagrees with the "what" of this issue, the need to save the resource and prevent extinction. The concerns and apprehensions are always about "how," how will it be done, how will government agencies like ours go about recovering this resource. Will we do it in a way that promotes working with them, building partnerships? Or will we do it in a way that imposes the power of the law in a punitive way? Ultimately, we'll probably wind up doing both. I hope that the major effort will center around building partnerships by seeking voluntary compliance. Q: So, are you a compliance officer, rather than an enforcement officer? A: My official title is Fish and Wildlife Officer within the Enforcement Program of the department. My job is resource protection and I do that by making sure people comply with state law. There are only two ways to gain compliance, though. One is voluntarily and one is forced. I think the preferred approach, when and wherever possible, is voluntary compliance. History and reality show us that's not always a viable option. Sometimes it's necessary, and appropriate, to use forced compliance. In a situation where we're dealing not only with benefits to the resource, but also public protection and welfare, the prudent approach is to address both and try to do it in a way that avoids conflict as much as possible. Q: With your years of experience, is this a different way of looking at the job? A: It's a different way of approaching some types of resource protection, but not an unorthodox way. The down side is that it takes a much higher degree of effort on our part to make it workable. You have to weigh the benefits and the outcome, considering what's at stake. In the Walla Walla Basin under ESA, the needs of fish and wildlife and the needs of the user are so closely intertwined that it's the preferred approach. It's a win-win approach, and I think that should be our first choice. Q: With needs of the resource and user so intertwined, which do you address first? A: My goal is to protect the resource. In the case of fish and people under ESA, the common denominator is water. Fish need water to live and so do people. The conflict comes when both need the same water. You have to find a balanced approach that enables both to survive. The public has a legal entitlement to use water, and that's as important as the fact that fish need water. We have a legal mandate with water that it be clean and abundant for both uses. Unfortunately, that's easier said than done. Q: So it's not "fish first"? A: It's not just "fish first". In my opinion, it has to be about both. I've heard individuals in one extreme maintain that this is just about the needs of fish. I've also heard individuals on the other extreme maintain that this should and must be first and foremost about the needs of people. Both of those viewpoints are wrong. If we're going to recover this resource, it has to be about the needs of both and I don't think we'll see really meaningful progress until that happens. I find it terribly disappointing that one interest group will sell the other down the river if that's what it takes to get what they want. Q: Are we going to be able to save salmon in Washington? A: It all depends on the approach we take. Something that's become clear to me in the course of being involved with ESA is that we will NOT recover this resource without the cooperation and support of the public, and specifically not without the cooperation and support of the people who own the property adjacent to the streams where fish live. We will not do it without them. It stands to reason if we can do it in a way that builds and maintains a partnership, that's in everyone's best interest and we'll make the greatest amount of progress in the shortest period of time. If we resort to a way that pits one interest against the other and promotes conflict and creates adversaries, like is happening over and over right now, recovery may come, but it will come at a much higher cost and it will take a lot longer to achieve. And the longer it takes, the greater the risk that we may lose it before it can be recovered. Q: Your distinction as Employee of the Year is also for your special efforts in "environmental enforcement" - how did you get into that? A: Before I explain environmental enforcement I want to say that I consider the award of Employee of the Year a special honor and all the more meaningful because I'm the first enforcement officer to receive it and because it involves what I regard as our highest priority resource protection issue, saving a species from extinction. Thinking of fish and wildlife enforcement as resource protection, I can't think of a higher goal to aspire to than to protect a species that's on the verge of extinction. As for my role in "environmental enforcement," I have to admit first that I didn't always feel this approach to resource protection was a higher priority than trying to enforce our more traditional fish and wildlife laws, like closed season, poaching and licensing violations. I didn't think we could divert our efforts from one in order to do the other. I've since decided it's not a matter of either-or. If our job is resource protection, we've got to do both and it's that simple. If we don't have the resources to do the job and do it right, we need to find a way to get whatever it takes to do the whole job, not just part of it. If we don't, we're going to see some of these resources, like salmon and steelhead, become extinct during our watch and that's unacceptable in my mind. How I got involved in "environmental enforcement" was really a result of the floods in southeast Washington a few years ago when I realized that some of our efforts in hydraulics enforcement seemed to be in conflict with landowners who were trying to protect their property. It was just like with ESA and fish. The needs of fish were important but so were the legitimate needs of the people that lived along the streams. I decided if this kind of work was important, it was important enough for us to do it right. Like I said earlier, it's not just about what fish or people need, it's got to be about both. I started using a computer-enhanced graphics software program to show landowners a kind of before-and-after fish-protection picture of their property. I asked if I could work strictly hydraulics and habitat enforcement for an interim period to see if I could make a difference. I wrote a proposal for the enforcement division about the need for all officers to include environmental regulation compliance monitoring and violation detection and response in our work plans and submitted it to Chief Bjork at our Enforcement Headquarters in Olympia. With his support and approval, we reviewed it with Habitat Management and recognized that this was a resource protection issue we needed to take a closer look at. It seemed apparent that we need specialists who could devote more time to work on major hydraulics violations that are complicated and extremely sensitive. I addressed one violation that way last summer, where I could see that the situation would take some extraordinary time. The Habitat Biologist I worked with appreciated the help, but recognized that the time I was spending on this one hydraulics violation was time I could have probably spent writing 50 tickets for more traditional-type violations, especially since overall enforcement activity is a typical part of an officers job evaluation. But this involved a bigger bang for the buck. The end result was that this landowner, who had fought with the department for years over how we handle hydraulics, now is a big supporter because we took the time to show him how to do it right. He saw that it protected fish but it also helped him protect his property and he felt that was a reasonable way for us to do our job and it kept him out of trouble, and he liked that. Q: Is yours a pretty rewarding job in that way? A: We've all heard the old joke, "I'm from the government and I'm here to help you." Everyone laughs, and that always makes me want to ask two questions: When did that become a joke? And why can't I be from the government and genuinely be here to help you? It can be true, but people in government have to make it come true. There's nothing more demanding than working with the public, but it can be done well with the right attitude. I feel like what I'm doing is really beneficial for the resource on a big scale. I also enjoy helping people. I spent most of my career doing things TO people, most of whom certainly deserved it because they broke the law. But now I have the opportunity to do things FOR people, so they won't break the law, and I think they deserve that, too. All things considered, it's been a very rewarding year and definitely the highlight of my career.