Posted on 12/19/2001 4:18:27 AM PST by brityank
Wilderness Institute Calls Federal Action Against
Sierra Times 12.19.01
Scientific Fraud By ESA OfficialsThat Washington Times Story is getting legs. More groups are letting their voices be known. The National Wilderness Institute Tuesday called on Congress and the Bush Administration to investigate possible improper conduct by federal endangered species officials who reportedly falsified evidence in an effort to show that lynx were present in the Gifford Pinchot and Wenatchee National Forests in Washington state. The planted evidence was exposed when laboratory tests revealed that the fur samples officials claimed were found in the forest actually came from captive lynx.
When an endangered species is present, regulatory agencies have greatly expanded authority to restrict land management options, recreational and commercial activities in the area.
"The practice of planting bogus evidence shows how politicized and unscientific the application of the endangered species program can be, said Rob Gordon, Director of the National Wilderness Institute. "If these allegations are true, we need to know how many were in on it and remove them from government service. These charges may call into question the scientific integrity of the whole body of work done by those associated with the bogus evidence," said Gordon.
According to NWI Director Rob Gordon, "Federal behavior in this case stands in stark contrast to the government's conduct in Washington, DC where NWI has had to go to court to try to halt the midnight dumping of tons of toxic sludge by a federal agency through a national park and onto the spawning beds of the endangered shortnose sturgeon."
Federal officials have refused to stop the discharges because trucking the sludge to a landfill could increase the cost to local water users and would increase truck traffic in an affluent and influential neighborhood. The discharges are flushed into the Potomac River from a water treatment facility run by the Army Corps of Engineers. It provides low cost water to the Capital area and is the only entity in the Chesapeake watershed that has a permit to discharge unlimited amounts of aluminum, iron and total suspended solids.
"There is a clear double standard when the government may have planted fake information it can use to shut down the economy of a rural community out west while in its own backyard it finds it too burdensome to have several trucks a day haul the sediment through an affluent neighborhood inhabited by government officials and influential Washingtonians," Gordon said.
In Washington, two Reps - House Resources Chairman James V. Hansen (R-UT) and Forest and Forest Health Subcommittee Chairman Scott McInnis (R-CO) called for a thorough review of the government's three-year inventory of the threatened Canada lynx after learning that five federal employees and two Washington State employees planted false evidence of lynx presence in two national forests on Tuesday.
Hansen and McInnis questioned the validity of the inventory in light of the hoax and called for the prompt dismissal of involved employees in a joint letter to Agriculture Secretary Anne M. Veneman and Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton.
"The credibility of the lynx survey is now hanging by a thread," the men wrote the two cabinet members. In a Dec. 13th letter to Congress, the Forest Service asserted that the integrity of the lynx program is being maintained. But no evidence was offered to support that claim, Reps. Hansen and McInnis noted in their letter. They urged the two departments to provide proof of the program's integrity in light of the discovered hoax.
"This lynx survey impacts 16 states and 57 national forests," Hansen said. "Getting this survey wrong could have broad and profound impact on the management of millions of acres of federal land. That, in turn, impacts local economies and people's livelihoods.
"Planting false evidence of lynx presence would limit the use of natural resources in forests wrongly believed to be lynx habitat," Hansen said. "It would limit people's access to those forests. It would virtually destroy recreational opportunities there. That, in turn, could be devastating to nearby local economies that rely on business from tourists and recreationists. This hoax, if it hadn't been discovered, could have wrecked some people's way of life. These involved employees should be promptly fired and the entire national inventory reviewed for proven accuracy."
The hoax took place last fall, in the waning months of the Clinton Administration. Five federal employees and two Washington State employees have admitted to planting three separate samples of Canadian lynx hair on rubbing posts in the Gifford Pinchot and Wenatchee National Forests. The rubbing posts were being used to identify the presence of the cat. The employees claimed they were conducting their own test of the reliability of the federal inventory.
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If caught or captured, the Institute will disavow any connection ... This tape will self-destruct in five ...
What they are really afraid of is that all the federal grant money showered on students and scientists will dry up.
Does this mean that I can no longer stomp around the swamps in my 'Big-Foot' boots?
If you haven't seen it, dandelion found a lot of info in that first thread showing how entrenched the watermelon orgs are in the bureaucracy. Thank you, dandelion.
Off to work, darnit!
These "scientists" who totally flout scientific methodology in favor of some secret agenda deserve to be censured by the scientific community.
I want their NAMES released. If this had been a pharmaceutical case, for example, names would be named. A stink would be made. Where is the loud noise we should be hearing from the scientific community, which should be outraged by this behaviour??
I also very much want to know if either of these two participated in the spotted owl fiasco, that caused so much heartache and pain to so many people.
CC, The scientific commune-ity is much like the historical commune-ity that gave a highly covetted award to the guy who wrote a book about the "myth" that early U.S. of A. residents had access to firearms. The best liars win awards. I MUST add the "educational" commune-ity to this list. Absolute failures turn up at new school systems, and are lauded grandly by their "peers". Blown-out failed retreads. Orwell must have been prophetic. Peace and love, George.
From the beginning, they were well organized and well funded.
We had hoped to start a seperate movement, which is still around, BTW, which is based on the premises mentioned above. Sadly, the city-based armchair-environmentalists gained in popularity, and their cause was taken up by the Third Way movement. Conservationists were kicked out in favor of these "Preservationists".
We thought that truth and good science would prevail. We were very naive.
Now when an enviro-wacko ruins a study, wastes tens of thousands of $$$ on junk studies which ruin thousands of lives, they are "counceled" and "removed from the project".
Very sad. We all wind up paying the price, and not just in $$$
We need to kknow their educational backgrounds, their professional and 'activist' associations, if any, and whether they have published any papers on the environment.
The Federal Gov't is now protecting their identities. I hope---and I believe---that interested parties will soon go to court to get these people identified. The public has a right to know who they are.
This is my work. Ha Ha. Merry Christmas my friend.
There is an alternative to civic management of the environment.
I am afraid I don't know that much about environmental issues out West. Outside of the federal government itself, do you know of any private interests (land developers, utilities, etc) that could actually benefit from shutting down local rural communities?
Take a read on this thread from three months ago. This attitude among the envcirals and the bureaucracy is endemic across the country. Check out my bookmark file too; much more than just this.
Note: Drink coffee first!
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