An insider at Oregon’s Department of Fish and Wildlife has been named the agency’s next leader.

Debbie Colbert was unanimously chosen in a vote late Friday afternoon by the state Fish and Wildlife Commission.

Colbert is a deputy director at the agency, leading its fish and wildlife programs, and has spent much of her career working in natural resources in the state.

She’ll replace Curt Melcher, who’s been director since 2015. He retired in April after four decades at the agency.

“Debbie Colbert brings the breadth of experience needed to lead this agency forward,” Gov. Tina Kotek said in a written statement Friday. “She is known for collaboration and taking challenges head on to improve critical fish and wildlife habitats in Oregon.”

Colbert is the first woman to lead ODFW, but in another key way represents a continuation of tradition: the Fish and Wildlife Commission has a long history of appointing agency staff, and of renewing their four-year terms.

Colbert was up against Kaitlin Lovell, a scientist and attorney who manages the Fish and Wildlife Division at Portland’s Bureau of Environmental Services, and who was the preferred pick of the Center for Biological Diversity.

“For too long the department has concentrated its resources on hunting and fishing, neglecting animals that aren’t of interest as targets. With the extinction crisis and climate breakdown getting worse every day, that won’t fly anymore,” the nonprofit advocacy group wrote in an email a day before the Fish and Wildlife Commission met to vote on ODFW’s next leader.

The Center for Biological Diversity said it endorsed Lovell as an outsider with a track record of conservation.

Colbert emphasized her own commitment to conservation during an hourslong meeting in which she and Lovell responded to questions submitted by ODFW staff Friday, ahead of the commission’s vote.

“I will continue to bring a sense of urgency on delivering results in the face of growing complexity and challenges,” Colbert said in an opening statement to the commission. “I am also very committed to positioning the agency so it engages all Oregonians. Our tent extends to everyone who wants to protect and enhance fish, wildlife and their habitats.”

Before joining ODFW, Colbert worked for the Oregon Water Resources Department. She holds a Ph.D. in interdisciplinary oceanography and was a 2022 National Conservation Leadership Fellow.

ODFW runs fish hatcheries, issues fishing and hunting licenses, and protects and restores habitat for northwest fish and animal species. The agency employs 1,200 people in 33 offices across the state.

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PORTLAND, Ore. (KPTV) – FOX 12 Investigates has obtained data showing that state investigators rule abuse and neglect allegations from foster children as “unfounded” in nearly all cases.

Through a public records request, the FOX 12 Investigates team learned that from 2019-2023, there were 2,415 Oregon Department of Human Services (ODHS) investigations into alleged abuse and neglect by foster parents towards their foster children. Of all those investigations, over 88% of those allegations were determined to be unfounded, and just about 12% founded.

In emotional stories from former foster youth who FOX 12 spoke with, all say this trend does not surprise them.

Oregon state senator, Sara Gelser Blouin (D-Corvallis), who also chairs the Senate Human Services Committee, has worked on child welfare legislation for years, specifically trying to improve the quality of foster care in Oregon. FOX 12 Investigates presented our findings to the senator showing that even after a thorough audit of ODHS and the foster care system in 2018, abuse and neglect allegations by children in foster care went unfounded nearly all the time.

“There has been tremendous resistance from the agency and providers to look at, whether it’s abuse data or licensing data, through a lens of curiosity, to find out how do we make these services better,” said Gelser Blouin.

The senator has helped pass legislation in the past designed to improve how ODHS to conduct abuse and neglect investigations within the foster care system. Gelser Blouin says despite changes she pushed for, there are still gray areas in these investigations.

“Just because something is unfounded doesn’t mean that the child was not accurate in what they reported,” she said. “It could be that there was conflicting information and therefore they couldn’t come to a substantiated finding.”

Gelser Blouin says abuse and neglect investigations specifically look for evidence needed to prove an allegedly abusive foster parent broke the law.

“The question isn’t was the child mis-treated? Was the child harmed? Is the child uncomfortable? The question is: did this person that’s alleged to have committed the abuse do something that is a violation of what is explicitly written in the statute?”

In response to FOX 12′s reporting on the ODHS data on abuse and neglect investigations in foster care, an ODHS spokesperson sent the following statement:

“The data provided to KPTV is not troubling – instead, it shows that the vast majority of resource (foster) parents in Oregon provide safe and supportive homes to children experiencing foster care. In Oregon, cases of abuse by foster parents are rare…

We feel empathy and compassion for the traumas experienced by children in foster care, and ODHS is committed to listening and responding to the concerns they have…

Oregon has made significant progress since the 2018 Secretary of State audit…. including in child safety, resource (foster) parent recruitment and support, and using data to improve outcomes for children.”

The FOX 12 Investigates team also shared our findings with Hannah Royal, another former foster youth. In the past, Royal has testified on behalf of the organization, Oregon Foster Youth Connection, in front of Oregon state lawmakers in Salem with the hopes of improving the quality of foster care. She says foster children’s complaints leading to unfounded investigations is nothing new.

“I think that there’s a stigma against foster youth for being like just untruthful people in general,” said Royal. “And so the fact that so many of them went unfounded doesn’t really surprise me.”

Royal feels a critical solution is improving the staffing of DHS case workers, who are supposed to be assigned to each foster child and check in with them regularly. Royal also feels more guidance is needed for foster children on recognizing what abuse looks like.

“I think the biggest trend is, a lot of them don’t even feel comfortable reporting that sort of abuse or like, they’re not even sure what is the line between the normal treatment of (a) parent to child, and where’s the line of that actual abuse and neglect.”

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