What I’ve
heard lately about the National Wildlife Federation, the nonprofit
environmental group I used to work for, makes me sad.
They’ve got
an energetic, new leader, Collin O’Mara, who took over just last year. He
inherited an organization in deep trouble, adrift from years of bungled
direction and management. NWF’s former CEO, Larry Schweiger, had focused
virtually all the group’s energy on fighting global warming and it hadn’t paid
off – politically or business-wise.
As evidence
of how bad Schweiger left things, O’Mara had to deal with an $8 million budget
deficit and fire 50 of NWF’s most experienced (and expensive) staff. NWF’s
endowment is down to $54 million; I recall it being twice that. O’Mara is
selling NWF’s suburban-DC headquarters building. (I directed its $20 million construction
in 2001.)And in the Nation’s Capital, NWF’s presence, formerly symbolized by its older headquarters – a formidable building just up 16th Street from the White House, that once bustled with environmental experts and lobbyists – has shrunk to a few staff sharing offices elsewhere.
While it’s understandable that O’Mara had to take drastic actions to save NWF from ruin, a recent summary of his changes reads to me like NWF’s obituary (Greenwire, March 3, 2015). In it, O’Mara says he is going to return NWF to its roots – the “hook-and-bullet base.” He has shifted NWF’s resources to local issues of more immediate concern to hunters and anglers.
If dramatically
downsizing its presence on national wildlife issues seems an odd thing
for the National Wildlife Federation to do, then you have to understand
NWF’s odd governance system. Managing NWF is complicated immensely by its
organizational roots, which go back to the 1930s, that are predominately local
and state-based hunting and fishing clubs. Their representatives – one
affiliate from each state – set NWF’s conservation policies and elect its Board
of Directors.
It may have
looked surprising that this affiliate-controlled Board turned for its new CEO to
an outsider – O’Mara came from running the state of Delaware’s natural
resources agency. But really, not so surprising, given NWF’s dismal experience
with his predecessor, Larry Schweiger, who was the quintessential NWF insider who
always boasted that NWF was his family. It makes sense that the Board this time
went with someone from outside the “family.”
One thing
the two men appear to have in common, however, is a conservative streak, which
seems bound to translate into too much tolerance of the Republican-driven
political agenda that leaves no room for inconvenient science or environmental
protection. Schweiger is an outspoken evangelical Christian. O’Mara, an
activist Republican who formerly worked for a conservative, upstate-New York
congressman.
O’Mara says
he’s going to mobilize NWF as “America’s conservation field army” in order to
right partisan gridlock on conservation issues. Good luck fulfilling that tired
refrain.
His
predecessor, Schweiger, also glorified NWF’s hook-and-bullet affiliates as the
“army of folks” responsible for “the future of wildlife for this world.” And
the highest priority of NWF’s previous CEO, Mark Van Putten, was creating an
army of citizen activists to save the world.
Despite
their miserable failures, now comes O’Mara saying he’s going to rely on NWF’s
hook-and-bullet base to build his “army.” That seems to me like trying to fight
a real war with recruits from the American Legion. Perhaps good guys in their
day, but unfortunately on the wrong end of the actuarial tables.
Not unlike
me, I admit. My days of trying to come up with answers for NWF’s complex woes
are long past. I spelled out my sorry record in that effort last year in my
memoir, Life with Big Green (ebook available
on barnesandnoble.com and ibooks). As
for O’Mara, we’ve never even met and I wish him nothing but success.
In fact, NWF’s
move toward dramatically-reduced capacity and expectations may be inevitable
and the best it can hope for, particularly given NWF’s peculiar governance
structure. Besides, with the gridlock in Washington, DC, why waste time there?
Focusing on local and state wildlife issues just might make more sense. And,
O’Mara says he’s going to build up NWF’s environmental education programs for
kids. Who can argue with that? NWF’s Ranger
Rick magazine, for example, is its most-recognizable asset with ordinary
people, most of who never heard of the National Wildlife Federation.
One former
NWF colleague opined that O’Mara’s direction: “may be a path to survival… The
transformation may find NWF in a niche where it can thrive even if it is at a
more modest scale.”
I think he’s
probably right. But having once devoted more than a decade working at NWF,
another decade working for its Michigan state affiliate, plus several years
writing newspaper stories about environmental issues, I find that prognosis
very sad. The Nation’s wildlife deserves better. 
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