Here is the DENVER POST article about the lucky Robert Bray.
To observers at recent Colorado Wildlife Commission meetings, it's come to be known as "the huddle," this strategic gathering of two commissioners and two key representatives of the agricultural community.
Heads wag knowingly as the quartet - commissioners Robert Bray and Bob Shoemaker, along with T. Wright Dickinson of the Colorado Cattleman's Association and Garin Bray of the Colorado Farm Bureau - drift off to coordinate their efforts toward skimming more valuable deer and elk licenses for resale by landowners.
On the surface, there's nothing unusual about a wildlife commissioner assuming a position of advocacy on various issues. Robert Bray and Shoemaker were appointed to the 11-member policy-making body specifically as agriculturalists, reflecting an enduring political culture in which farmers and ranchers seek uncommon sway in wildlife affairs.
Nor is it remarkable to find agents of the state's primary husbandry organizations hammering the commission for a bigger slice of a license pie that grows more valuable each year. That particular exercise began more than three decades ago, and ranchers have been sharpening their pencils ever since.
What becomes increasingly disturbing is the appearance of a conflict of interest that looms larger with two recent developments. One involves two major government grants to Bray worth more than $1 million. Another is tangled in the latest hot-button debate over landowner preference.
Through the Colorado Species Conservation Program administered by the Colorado Division of Wildlife, Bray this year was awarded an allotment valued at approximately $800,000 to facilitate habitat development for the threatened Gunnison sage grouse on 900 acres of a large sheep and cattle ranch he operates near Redvale in the southwest corner of the state. Funding comes in part from a Great Outdoors Colorado grant, the rest from matching federal funds.
By all accounts, Bray's property contains prime grouse habitat suitable for inclusion in a recovery effort. It must be noted that the negotiation began long before he became a wildlife commissioner last March, but that certain elements remain unsettled. DOW officials say the exact dollar amount hasn't been determined.
Further, the deal is contingent upon Bray maintaining certain standards on the property subject to oversight by DOW. This puts the wildlife agency on shaky ground should these considerations put it at odds with a man who stands as one of its bosses. Can DOW actually hold Bray's feet to the fire if he hedges on the agreement?
Clearly, the recipient of a rich DOW grant now sits in judgment of the agency that gave it.
Things get stickier from here.
More recently, Bray, a remarkably lucky fellow, received another grant - this for $311,175 directly from Great Outdoors Colorado - for a conservation easement on a separate parcel of the ranch to ensure against future development, also for grouse protection.
This also is a process that began long before Bray was chosen for the wildlife commission in March, but the final vote of approval came just weeks ago. That's where Dickinson comes in. Owner of a large ranch in Moffat County, Dickinson is an elected county commissioner and appears often at various wildlife meetings, either as a stockman advocate or critic of the DOW.
More to the point, Dickinson also is a member of the GoCo Board of Directors; this month, he voted in favor of giving Bray more than $300,000. The two collude openly in an effort to expand the voucher system by which ranchers get off-the-top permits for the most prized deer and elk licenses.
This involves a two-part pilot program initiated in response to landowner demands. DOW proposes a test in Unit 10 by which ranchers get more elk vouchers while hosting public hunters. A second provision gives eastern Colorado landowners additional family-only tags for antelope. The "huddlers" immediately pushed to include several other West Slope units in the pilot and to expand the family tags to include deer.
Expansion of the pilot program is roundly viewed as a clever wedge to get ranchers the added vouchers they failed to obtain through a power play last fall, blunted by a sportsman uprising. A similar attempt earlier this year through a License Allocation Working Group stacked toward commercial interests also crashed, again from opposition by the hunting rank and file.
The quartet seemed to sway the commission at a November meeting in Greeley, but sentiment appeared to turn when sportsmen finally joined the debate at the December gathering.
Bray receives a substantial number of deer vouchers for sale from his ranch - DOW won't say how many - and potentially would benefit financially from any future percentage increase in vouchers. Dickinson's ranch would profit immediately and directly from Bray's proposal to expand the pilot to include units requiring five or more preference points.
Despite a familial connection and the obvious aspect of complicity, Garin Bray, Robert Bray's daughter and a representative of the Colorado Farm Bureau, was given one of the 15 seats on the LAWG and became a vocal advocate of a proposal to allow substantially more of these vouchers.
Yet when Robert Bray was asked at that Dec. 8 commission meeting about possible conflicts of interest, he bridled at the suggestion.
"I'll excuse myself from any vote that involves any conflict," Bray snapped before hurrying away.
The fact remains he already has spoken proactively and often on voucher issues that benefit himself and Dickinson, his ally and benefactor.
The question also arises why the administration would appoint a man in line to receive more than $1 million in state conservation funds and scads of money from the sale of license vouchers to a commission with oversight over some of the same programs. Or why Bray would accept.
Big game hunting has become big business in Colorado; vouchers that allow high rollers to stand first in line for hard-to-get licenses sometimes sell for five figures. The voucher system - from legislative action at a time when agricultural interests held much more political sway - bestows to landowners 15 percent of the most coveted licenses right off the top, before the rest of us can bid. These vouchers are bought and sold like stock options, traded variously among ranchers and outfitters, always to the highest bidder.
More recently, landowners began pushing for an even juicier share, a move that would push ordinary hunters farther back in line behind those with money. When it comes to hunting vouchers, greed knows no limits.
What does come as a shock is the sharp change in the tenor of the wildlife commission, heretofore a balanced group that typically made the well-being of the resource and of the average license buyer its primary concerns.
Robert Bray's voice is heard more than any other commissioner these days, always for mandates that line the pockets of stockmen. When he and Shoemaker aren't speaking, Dickinson and Garin Bray parade to the podium to drive the points home.
