Les Winkler at the Southern apparently never got the directive to go easy on the Blagojevich administration. Winkler, the paper’s outdoors writer, continues to complain about the governor’s cuts to the Illinois Department of Natural Resources budget.

Winkler snagged an internal DNR memo with some explosive content.

The memo, written by Mike Conlin, Director of Resource Conservation and Wildlife at the request of IDNR Director Joel Brunsvold, addressed the critical issues and concerns for Fiscal Year 2006.

“The effects of these cutbacks will impact all (Office of Resource Conservation) programs statewide,” Conlin wrote. “The office has attempted to balance the previous reductions as much as possible to minimize the impact.

“However, the quality, timeliness and diversity of services to the public will undoubtedly suffer from additional cuts of this proportion.”

Winkler constrasts this memo to public statements by DNR spokesman Joe Bauer back in December:

“We picked positions that we thought we would best be able to absorb with other IDNR personnel… That means we would be able to carry on the duties of those laid off with other people picking up the slack, in their respective departments.”

But Winkler goes on to quote from the memo about the problems facing the department.

The memo said staff and budget reductions would affect a wide range of services including: Reduction in fish production; deer and wild turkey harvest reporting; chronic wasting disease surveillance; natural area stewardship (including eradication of invasive species); and monitoring, management and recovery of threatened and endangered species.

“The recent layoffs and proposed budget cuts seriously jeopardize ORC’s and DNR’s ability to administer and implement critical programs such as CREP (Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program); Illinois Rivers 20/20 and Farm Bill programs,” the memo stated.

And it gets worse:

“Staff levels are so low that we are being forced to think about giving up programs that bring in hundreds of thousands of federal dollars simply because we no longer have the staff to administer the program nor enough staff to implement the program,” the memo said.