Terri Patraw: A Story That Mirrors Mine
RENO (AP) — A former professional hunter for the U.S. government claims in a whistleblower complaint that he was fired in retaliation for reporting co-workers who illegally shot two mountain lions from an airplane in northeast Nevada.
“This is a blatant case of reprisal,” said Christine Erickson, the staff counsel for the Washington D.C.-based watchdog group for government workers.
Strader of Wells said he reported the incident to his district supervisor in the fall of 2007.
Strader said his supervisor reacted angrily and accused him of making up the story. He said he was told later that aerial gunning crews also had shot three other mountain lions in northeast Nevada.
Violation of the federal Airborne Hunting Act is punishable by up to a year in prison and a $5,000 fine.
“We shouldn’t go around as government employees committing felonies in government airplanes,” Strader told the AP.
But if shooting the lions was a bad deal, the cover-up is worse, Strader told AP.
“It’s the old cliche — kill the messenger. They are bending over backward to make me the bad guy.”
The Whistleblower Protection Act forbids discharging a federal employee for disclosing crimes or other waste, fraud or abuse, Erickson said. She said an employer who breaks the law could be fired.
Strader said the men who killed the mountain lions were his friends.
“I thought I would just put a bug in (the supervisor’s) ear to tell these guys not to let it happen again — to put a stop to it,” he said.
He took his concern to state officials in October 2008 and then to the federal agency’s regional office in Denver in December 2008. He said an investigator there asked him if he realized how serious his allegations were, that the two men involved could lose their jobs and that the aerial gunning program in Nevada could be jeopardized.
When no action was taken, he said he reported the incident in February 2009 to an FBI agent, who Strader said referred the case to the USDA’s Office of Inspector General.
Strader said before he complained he got along fine with his supervisors, who he said had put him in charge of a seminar on how to track coyotes at the agency’s annual conference earlier in the year.
“And a few months after that, they can’t get me out of the door fast enough,” he said. “It’s obvious why.”
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