The slate's chief big-game biologist is facing allegations that insider information may have allowed key Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife employees to gain an unfair advantage in winning restricted and highly prized hunting tags. The internal agency investigation follows a four-week investigation by the Oregon State Police and the Multnomah County district attorney's office in Portland, where the Department of Fish and Wildlife has its headquarters.

"This was real troublesome to us," District Attorney Michael Schrunk said. "I grew up hunting and fishing in Oregon, and everyone wants the system to be on the up and up."

Gov. John Kitzhaber already has summoned the department's director, Jim Greer, and Susan Foster, chairwoman of the Fish and Wildlife Commission, to Salem on Friday to discuss the matter. "I am extremely disappointed that such an investigation...should become necessary," Kitzhaber wrote in a letter to Greer. "Agency employees administering a program must be held to very high standards when they are also applicants in the program. It is not enough to know that information is available to the public. It is imperative that the public actually receive the information." The fish and wildlife inquiry involves at least five of the department's employees in the agency's wildlife division, which manages big-game hunting, as well as some field wildlife biologists and Daniel K. Edwards, who is responsible for overseeing big-game hunting. The employees may have used internal information to win tags in the drawing for 1998 hunts and also to gain preferred status for 1999 seasons. The information --- mostly compiled by field biologists --- is technically public, but few citizens know how to access the material and use it.

Ed. note: In Oregon, State Police are doing

an investigation of the tampering with the big-game tag draw.

In Nevada, there was no investigation when a state audit said that our tag draw-was so badly managed that the evidence wouldn't allow them to determine the amount of abuse or illegal acts that may have been committed. Additionally, the governor of Oregon became involved unlike Bob Miller who chose to protect former administrator Willie Molini from prosecution of his many unacceptable acts. Had there been prosecution, Willie would have been relieved of his duties many years before he decided to retire. The passage of SB211 gains even more significance when viewed in the light of the above hanky-panky in Oregon. We don't need NDOW's hands in the big-game tag anymore.

Reprinted from Associated Press