Page 33 - Wyoming's Grizzly Harvest - The Story the State Wants to Bury with the Bears

Wyoming’s Grizzly Harvest these circumstances without the recommendations and input of the FWS. Nesvik, like Servheen, was at pains to emphasize that he could not comment on personnel matters, but he was prepared to say that there was no compelling reason to fire Ellsbury. “We have reviewed all the facts and are comfortable with trusting Mr. Ellsbury to continue and keep his job,” he asserted. However, the statement “all the facts” may be open to interpretation, as there were facts from the court record that Nesvik was not familiar with, including the charge that Ellsbury shot from and across the highway. “I’m not familiar with the court papers,” Nesvik then conceded, which would tend to undermine his claim that he and his colleagues at WGFD “reviewed all the facts,” being as those facts are documented in the court record. This should not necessarily come as a surprise, for as the former Chair of the IGBC’s Yellowstone Ecosystem Subcommittee, actual facts are far less important than the opinions the IGBC present as facts, from the hypothetical extrapolations of team leader Frank Van Manen’s computer models at the IGBST. “I have confidence that Mr. Ellsbury can continue to do his job in the way we have asked him to,” insisted Nesvik, which was and remains undoubtedly true. 33