The charges against Corey Rossi come at a particularly inopportune time for state Department of Fish and Game commissioner Cora Campbell.
But Campbell told reporters on her way into the Board of Game meeting Friday afternoon in Anchorage that the situation will not hamper the meeting.
Campbell said Rossi’s work for the department is appreciated.
Campbell said Rossi was a staunch defender of state management rights, but otherwise did not elaborate on what those contributions were, citing a need to get back to the meeting.
Other comments were not so kind in the wake of the charges against Rossi. Jim Stratton, Regional Director for Alaska’s division of the National Parks Conservation Association.
In 2010, Rossi’s hiring was protested by a number of Fish and Game biologists, who delivered a letter to the state in 2010 saying that he did not have the scientific background to do the job. John Toppenberg, Exective Director of the Alaska Wildlife Alliance says he remembers it well.
Toppenberg says the door is now open for changes in Fish and Game management practices. Predator control issues are topping this week’s Board of Game agenda.
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APTI Reporter-Producer Ellen Lockyer started her radio career in the late 1980s, after a stint at bush Alaska weekly newspapers, the Copper Valley Views and the Cordova Times. When the Exxon Valdez ran aground in Prince William Sound, Valdez Public Radio station KCHU needed a reporter, and Ellen picked up the microphone.
Since then, she has literally traveled the length of the state, from Attu to Eagle and from Barrow to Juneau, covering Alaska stories on the ground for the AK show, Alaska News Nightly, the Alaska Morning News and for Anchorage public radio station, KSKA
elockyer (at) alaskapublic (dot) org | 907.550.8446 | About Ellen
