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Funding Questions Arise Over Padre Island's Sea Turtle Program

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Since the program began at Padre Island in 1978, more than 180,000 hatchlings have been released into the Gulf of Mexico/Rebecca Latson

A new controversy has erupted over Padre Island National Seashore's sea turtle program/Rebecca Latson file

Padre Island National Seashore officials are being accused of being disingenuous in their announcement of $300,000 arriving to help strengthen the seashore's renowned sea turtle research program, a program whose management and direction have been shrouded in controversy for more than a year.

When the seashore last week announced the $300,000 in funding to underwrite two research projects involving the highly endangered Kemp's ridley sea turtles, Padre Island Superintendent Eric Brunnemann said it was his "sincere hope that the funding we are announcing today, along with our efforts to increase seasonal staffing in place of overtime, will reassure the public that we have every intention of strengthening our sea turtle program moving forward.”   

What wasn't mentioned was that the superintendent in 2020 had taken $300,000 away from the program because it was for research involving Green sea turtles, not Kemp's ridley turtles, or that two-thirds of the $300,000 actually had been lined up to be awarded to a U.S. Geological Survey researcher for Fiscal 2021, which started October 1, 2020, but was delayed due to accounting problems in the National Park Service's Intermountain Regional Office in Denver, or that none of the $300,000 was actually going to the seashore or the Park Service.

"IMR had a major over-budget of its FY20 allocation under the [U.S. Geological Survey/National Park Service Natural Resource Preservation Program] -- math errors up and down the chain," David L. Vana-Miller, the region's resource stewardship program manager wrote to parks in the region in an October 4, 2019, email provided the Traveler by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility. "I have had to scramble over the last couple of months trying to get already funded projects in FY20 to move funds to FY21 to make up for the overage. I was successful; however, there are NO FY20 funds available for new projects -- all of yours."

What the seashore did do was paint the $200,000 for the USGS research and another $100,000 going to a researcher in Florida for a 2023 project as money that would strengthen Padre Island's Sea Turtle Science and Recovery Program. 

Kelly Taylor, the seashore's chief of interpretation and education as well as its public information officer, said that was indeed the case.

"This recent funding strengthens the STSR program because it shows commitment to furthering the science and understanding of Kemp's ridley sea turtles," Taylor told the Traveler in an email last week. "Think of it as dividing and conquering; Dr. Shaver and the STSR team cannot do it all. Dr. Shaver wrote and submitted [in-kind] funding for both projects because she recognized that the STSR does not have the capacity or manpower to complete all of the work that needs to be done around the Kemp's ridley sea turtle; she did not write these projects with the expectation that the project funds would be given to the STSR program."

Nevertheless, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility charged in a statement set to be released Tuesday morning at 10 a.m. Eastern that the Park Service "issued a blatantly deceptive public statement" by promoting the $300,000 as new funding for the seashore's turtle program. PEER also noted that the Park Service has blocked Dr. Donna Shaver, who grew the STSR program to its global stature, from talking to the media, and has also cut $100,000 from the program's park funding.

“The level of official duplicity at Padre Island Seashore is astonishing,” Pacific PEER Director Jeff Ruch said in the release. “Giving this false impression suggests that the park knows its real actions are indefensible.”

But Taylor stressed that the sea turtle program can't handle by itself all the research that is needed to understand the biology of the Kemp's ridley species.

"For example, if the USGS-Natural Resource Preservation Program project had not been approved, it is possible that data and tissue samples that Dr. Shaver's team have collected over the years may never be analyzed," she wrote. "But by funding a project that lets another scientist analyze the data and tissue samples, they can use those data to determine survival rates and resource us patterns of Kemp's ridley. That will likely provide valuable information that otherwise might not have been discovered simply because Dr. Shaver and/or her staff do not have the time to do the analysis themselves.

"Likewise, the Fibropapillomatosis research project [by the Florida researcher set to begin in 2023] is being conducted by a veterinarian who specializes in epidemiology and infectious diseases of marine mammals and turtles," the spokesperson continued. "Dr. Shaver is not an epidemiologist or a veterinarian, nor does she have an epidemiologist or veterinarian on her staff, so it does not make any sense to provide 'in-house' funding to do this research. However, Dr. Shaver, Padre Island National Seashore, and the regional office recognize the value of this research and recognize that it is critical to further understanding the biology of Kemp's ridley sea turtles."

While Taylor pointed out the limitations of Shaver's program, and the value of this outside research, the Park Service back in 2020 canceled $300,000 in grants the program had been scheduled to receive in Fiscal 2021 to track Green sea turtles. At the time, Brunnemann maintained that there was no "NPS biological or environmental justification" for Shaver to be studying species other than Kemp's ridley.

Yet Padre Island 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. While the Park Service review said the Padre Island staff should ignore all but Kemp's ridley turtles with its work, that appears to run counter to the agreement the Park Service signed with Shaver in 2003 when it recruited her to run the program. Under that agreement, Shaver was given authority to "supervise all sea turtle work," not just that focused on Kemp's ridley turtles. 

"The STRM Division would work exclusively on sea turtles (sic) projects and publications, full-time, year-round," it stated. "Projects and programs would include all sea turtle monitoring, research, management, conservation, restoration, protection, and technical assistance-type of duties associated with sea turtle projects at Padre Island. This integrated program would also include an extensive public education component, state and federal agency partnership component, media contact component, and an outreach component."

The seeming turnabout to ignore Green sea turtles raises a troubling question about the Park Service's scientific integrity, maintains Ruch.

"To me, this raises kind of larger questions about what's the role of science in the Park Service? Does scientific work by the Park Service extend beyond park boundaries?" he wondered, pointing out that Shaver was involved a year ago in responding to a mass stranding of thousands of Green sea turtles along the Texas Gulf Coast caused by unseasonably cold weather. "The idea of a globally significant research center appears to be kind of anathema in today's Park Service."

The new funding controversy is just the latest since the 2020 Park Service report claimed the program Shaver had built was too large to remain sustainable. Within 3-5 years, the review added without any detail, the program would be unsustainable. As a result, the report recommended that it should be tightly reined in.

The fallout from that review, which anticipated a 30 percent funding reduction for the program, led Shaver to file formal accusations with the agency that Brunnemann harassed her verbally and left her out of key sea turtle meetings in hopes she'd quit the agency.

At PEER, Ruch said Monday evening that while Shaver technically remains in charge of the Sea Turtle Science and Recovery Program, she has been sidelined by the park superintendent.

"The superintendent would be delighted if Donna resigned. I think he's not making it pleasant for her to stay. She's being subjected to kind of the death of 1,000 cuts," he said during a phone call. "For the most part, all these daily indignities sort of are not considered personnel actions. Removing her from interagency coordination positions or things like that are not typically the sort of things that end up" challenged before the federal government's Merit Systems Protection Board, which was set up to protect employees from unjust discipline.

Shaver's management of the turtle program has been "hobbled," Ruch added a minute later. "The latest thing is the incident management of [turtle] strandings is now subject to an interdisciplinary committee of all the different divisions within the park, which to the extent you consider Donna the expert, it means that she can be out-voted by non-experts."

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Comments

Back in 2017, I had the privilege of photographing a Kemp's ridley hatchling release and interviewing Dr. Donna Shaver. She's the expert in her field and has put her heart, soul, and smarts into this sea turtle program. I find this information quite troubling, to put it mildly.


See: Kemp's Ridley Sea Turtle - Texas Fauna Project

Kemp's Ridley Sea Turtle | Texas Fauna Project


Thank you for revealing the truth. It is one thing for Eric Brunnemann to harass and belittle a dedicated employee, such as Donna. Still, it is another way for a Padre Island National Seashore superintendent to mislead our South Texas community intentionally. On November 17, 2021, the Nueces County Commissioner Court held a special meeting and invited Eric and Donna, hoping that he would explain any misconceptions. Unfortunately, he declined and prohibited Donna from attending as an NPS employee. Donna continues to work in a toxic work atmosphere because of repeated harassment by Eric Brunnemann.

 

Kurt and Jeff, thank you again; we volunteers appreciate your efforts to correct wrongdoings of the NPS. I hope that Michael Reynolds reads your article; he should do the right thing and revoke the bias and deceiving Review.

 


Thank You for continuing to follow up on what is going on at PINS.  Speaking about the NPS, It is one thing to be open, honest, and transparent to the public.  But, making a statement to the public that is misleading is just plain wrong.  It makes me wonder what other truths are being hidden.  Why are these officials acting the way they are?  I hope more truths come out, and very soon.  The five species of endangered sea turtles depend on it.  Let the work continue!!!


We blocked a comment to this story because of its gratuitous language and unsubstantiated allegations. While we hope to hear from all sides on this matter, comments need to be constructive and not imply character assassination.


I have posted several comments about the Sea Turtle Science and Recovery program and Dr. Donna J. Shaver on CTURTLE LISTSERV, during December 2021 and January 2022.  It is an internationa forum covering sea turtle research and conservation.

I applaud Kurt Repanshek and National Parks Traveler for accurately covering this important topic.


For those who are interested, the following major sources cover in detail the history of planning and implementation of Mexico-U.S. efforts to restore the Kemp's ridley nesting colony on Padre Island National Seashore, Texas:

Pamela Phillips (illustrated by Janie Lowe). 1989. The Great Ridley Rescue. Mountain Press Publishing Company, Missoula, Montana, 180 pages.

Caillouet, C.W., Jr., D.J. Shaver and A.M. Landry, Jr. 2015. Kemp's Ridley Sea Turtle (Lepidochelys kempii) Head-Start and Reintroduction to Padre Island National Seashore, Texas. Herpetological Conservation and Biology 10(Symposium):309-377. (online, open access journal)

Shaver, D.J. and C.W. Caillouet, Jr. 2015. Reintroduction of Kemp's Ridley (Lepidochelys kempii) Sea Turtle to Padre Island National Seashore, Texas and its Connection to Head-starting. Herpetological Conservation and Biology 10(Symposium): 378-435.

 


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