Robert Hight is out as DFG Director

[EL CAZADOR]

Got this from the refuge forums:


Robert Hight has left CA DFG. Here's an email that was sent to DFG employees tonight.


"Today is my last day serving as Director of DFG. Sonke Mastrup will be acting Director until further notice. I would like to personally thank you for all your hard work and dedication in preserving California's wildlife and natural resources. Working with you has been my pleasure. We have faced many difficult challenges, and I have been repeatedly impressed by your ability to rise to the occasion with great zeal. I am proud to be able to tell others I have worked with the greatest staff I have ever known.

Thank you again for all your hard work and dedication. I am sure DFG will continue to move in a positive direction. I hope our paths will cross again in the future. Best of luck to each and everyone of you."

 

[spectr17]

Schwarzenegger to appoint successor; Mastrup interim

By Ed Zieralski, San Diego UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

November 7, 2003

Rather than wait for Gov.-elect Arnold Schwarzenegger to terminate him, state Department of Fish and Game Director Robert C. Hight terminated himself Wednesday.

An appointee of recalled Gov. Gray Davis, Hight, who replaced Jacqueline E. Schafer as the director in 1999, told fellow DFG employees in an interoffice memo yesterday that he was out as director. Hight said the interim director will be Sonke Mastrup, the department's deputy director of wildlife and inland fisheries.

A 14-year DFG veteran, Mastrup, 45, is looked upon as an excellent and popular choice as interim director. He ascended the ranks as a respected wildlife biologist and is the department's authority on the state's deer herds. Mastrup was named deputy director of wildlife and inland fisheries in July 2001. He has a solid background in game management, and insiders say he knows the inner workings of the department.

Hight, an attorney, on Wednesday was appointed by Davis to the Sacramento Superior Court. Hight will earn $139,784, about $15,000 more than he made as fish and game director.

Hight's 3½-year tenure as director was unremarkable. It likely will go down as the least productive period the department has had in decades.

There still are pike in Lake Davis, but Hight visited the area and helped soothe the department's relationship with the community. The pike problem will be inherited by Hight's successor.

Severe budget cuts played a role in the DFG's lack of productivity over the last 1½ years of Hight's term. The chaos surrounding the Marine Life Protection Act, passed by the Legislature, could be traced to a lack of funding. Hight can be credited with ordering the marine reserves plan scrapped and telling his department to start over and get more public input.

Among the names being mentioned as a possible permanent fish and game director are Michael Flores of Sacramento and Mike Chrisman of Visalia, both members of the state Fish and Game Commission; Jack Edwards, the deputy chief of the enforcement program, and Ryan Broddrick, a former chief deputy director of the DFG now working for Ducks Unlimited.

Schwarzenegger also must appoint a replacement for state resources secretary Mary Nichols, whose ties to the environmental community made her unpopular with the state's fishing and hunting interests. The new resources secretary will have a say in who the new fish and game director will be.

Insiders say one combination being mentioned is Chrisman as resources secretary and Broddrick as director.

End article

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<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div>

Department of Fish and Game Director Robert C. Hight terminated himself Wednesday.[/b]

If only the rest of the backlsliders in Sacramento had the guts to do the same.