The Green Matrix, Part 2: They Blinded Us With Science

I don't think any story on any issue has been as frustrating to me as the investigation into the manipulation of data in "the case of the missing Canadian lynx."

It is frustrating because the dots are all there but the investigating agencies of the federal government – U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Forest Service, Interior Department, Office of the Inspector General, Government Accounting Office, up to and including the Department of Justice – just can't put it all together.

The dots connect to a bigger scandal that involves how the federal green agencies like Fish and Wildlife Service, Forest Service and BLM have been conducting business since the '70s.

The lynx hoax did not happen in a vacuum. Blaming some puny federal bureaucrats who fudged a study while ignoring the larger institutional problem is bogus.

The problem is not that federal "scientists" cooked the data on one aspect of listing the lynx as endangered in a specific "ecosystem," but rather that the entire premise of "ecosystem" is accepted as "science" in the first place.

We have a problem with the federal scientists, but we have an even bigger problem with whether or not they are in fact conducting anything approaching reputable and credible "science."

The more serious problem, however, is that over the years agencies have been co-opted by those with a much larger agenda in mind. It is not just about listing one species and shutting down one or two forests for public use, i.e., "managing federal lands."

As the greens say, "Think globally and act locally." That mantra is at the core and heart of U.S. environmental policy.

It is fair to say that in the Forest Service and Fish and Wildlife Service "science" got dumped years ago. It was a process that began in the '70s but received official imprimatur under Bill Clinton in 1993.

At that time, philosophy replaced "science." Conservation biology became the "science," and "ecosystem management" and "precautionary principle" the tools. The end game was to reconnect "ecosystems" from the Yukon to Mexico.

Probably not one doggone thing I have just written will matter to the federales investigating the lynx case. Most of them see only one small part of the picture; only a few of them see the big picture.

The House subcommittee meeting in March to look into the lynx case will hit a brick wall.

Investigating bodies and the committees only want to know whether or not federal and state scientists broke the law or cooked the books. They want to find out if this deserves some sort of punishment beyond the bonuses given to those biologists involved in the lynx study and the slap on the wrist that their agencies used as disciplinary action.

The feds, all of them, will run away from the fact that at its heart the fudging of data on the lynx study is the latest consequence of the implementation of very flawed laws known as the Endangered Species and Wilderness Acts.

According to the most recent article in the Washington Times, "The findings of a separate investigation by the General Accounting Office will be released at a March 7th congressional hearing. The investigation was requested by Republican Reps. James V. Hansen of Utah, House Resources chairman, and Scott McInnis of Colorado, Resources forest and forest health subcommittee chairman.

" 'I look forward to hearing the GAO's testimony next week, where they've investigated all three of the agencies involved. Certainly, there are parts of the IG's investigation that are very alarming,' " Mr. McInnis said.

The Times article by Audrey Hudson also states: "Interior investigators conducted more than 20 interviews and reviewed 'countless documents' in their inquiry, which was limited to the behavior of employees in their agency. " 'Examples of bad judgment ranged from unauthorized sample submissions by field biologists to the failure of regional and headquarters managers to recognize the significance of the incident and to execute timely and appropriate responses,' " Mr. Devaney said.

Personally, I think the specific scientists involved were just doing what they have been doing for decades and that is to use science in service to an agenda.

Therefore, the falsification or manipulation of data by federal and state conservation biologists in the recent "case of the missing Canadian lynx" should not be a big surprise.

In an article for the Seattle Times on Feb. 27, 2002, forestry and scientific consultant Brian Boyle used the term "biofraud" to describe what transpired in the lynx case, and the term applies to many other cases as well.

He wrote: "It's a case where scientists who are supposed to be committed to the rules of science are willing to violate them when facts contradict what they want to happen, like the 1998 contract survey purported to find the lynx in several forests. (Conducted by Dr. John Weaver for the Forest Service. Bobcat and housecat hair was sent to the lab and was listed by Weaver as lynx hair. That study was contaminated and he withdrew it.)"

Boyle was in charge of Washington forestry for 12 years as commissioner of Public Lands. In 1993-94 he did a national study of the Forest Service and states in the Times:

"We engaged over 600 Forest Service employees … we found significant disconnects between the 'ologists,' as they are known throughout the Forest Service, and other agency employees … wildlife and fish biologists feel driven to act as change agents … ologists stood out … they define results in terms of their own specialty and lack a clear commitment to the agency's mission."

Furthermore, "… it shouldn't be a surprise to anyone in state and federal agencies that this happened. This problem has been brewing ever since the wildlife and fish people were 'forced' on the Forest Service by Congress in the mid-1970s. The lynx issue dispels any myth that agencies are using their science resources for the public good."

As I investigated the lynx case and many others as well, I found that there is massive fudging, falsification and manipulation of data. It is routine to change names and dates on maps to reflect favorably on the federal agency and its agenda.

It includes intimidation and threats to whistle-blowers and rurals who buck the system, commonplace to pay off radical green groups by giving them federal grants. No one notices as "scientists" with a philosophical and political agenda call the shots.

Meanwhile, billion-dollar tax exempt foundations lobby for legislation or pay to get guys like Bill Clinton to write up executive orders they prefer.

Who cares? It is part of the system, all part of the big "game." It is also part of the agenda to achieve the end game. So scientists "testing" the competence of a lab in the lynx study is small potatoes compared to the rest of it.

Mistrust of federal scientists and their agencies have been problematical since before the recent lynx flap. Politicized and philosophically driven "science" heavy on agenda and low on science is a huge part of the problem.

It comes out of the radicalization of the environmental movement in the '60s and '70s. Worse than that, and what Brian Boyle is really saying in the Seattle Times, activists have kidnapped federal land management policy and the science that goes with it.

A colleague, John Lankford, calls it "greennapping" and that is exactly what has happened.

Part of the problem and one of the dots in the matrix is that the 1968 Endangered Species Act ESA) has been taken far beyond its original intention. This has taken place primarily because of the courts being inundated by green activists listing petitions for thousands of species.

Having jurists making life-and-death scientific decisions based mostly on the testimony of agenda-driven greens means the ESA is a very spooky and dangerous law.

Courts are just one more group playing fast and loose with the fate of people and species. The law is desperately in need of reform, as is the entire system.

Along with the courts, Congress refuses to reform the ESA, fearing the wrath of the powerful environmental lobby and the sympathetic elite media that toe the green line.

Many of them know that the ESA has been "greennapped" far beyond the original intention of the law. Add the big money that runs the engine of the green juggernaut and there is a dangerous and noxious mix.

Of course, many "reputable" groups like The Nature Conservancy make it much easier for the various elements of the green matrix to hold power. I stick by my claim that The Nature Conservancy is a stalking horse for federal government.

Included in the mix are international organizations and treaties hell-bent on internationalizing American land management and ending all but nominal private property ownership. What you have is really "the green matrix."

Science rarely has anything to do with most listings. Merely fingering "scientists" involved in the lynx scam would be pointless. To be fair and balanced, Congress and the administration would have to bust the agencies up and fire 90 percent of federal "ologists" or retrain them.

Then Congress would have to take decisions on listings out of the hands of the courts and their implementation out of the agenda-driven Fish and Wildlife Service, Forest Service and BLM by reforming the flawed Endangered Species Act.

A listing under the ESA means hell to pay for entire economies and ways of life, usually the rural way. But it also impacts suburban areas from Maine to Florida.

The federal agencies that administer the ESA are the Fish and Wildlife Service and the Forest Service. The fates of entire areas of the country as well as the lives and livelihoods and freedoms of millions, not to mention the fate of critters in some of their failed experiments, hang on their decisions regarding listing of species (www.aldenchronicles.com).

In the listing of the spotted owl, for instance, logging has dropped 89 percent, costing countless jobs.

The greens are not happy with that success, however. They are spreading the green terror into all areas of the United States. At the moment they are after ranchers who have permits to run cows on federal lands.

And they have moved on to listing species in the Southeastern United States, into Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia and Florida as the juggernaut rolls along. They are actively looking for species to list in order to end logging on private and state land in those areas.

The most recent high-profile case was the shut-off of water to farmers in the Klamath basin. In that case the federal scientists – as Brian Boyle calls them, the "ologists" – listed the trash sucker fish as endangered.

That sucker fish was supposed to need lots of water, which would otherwise go to the farmers. Just recently, however, the National Academy of Science advised that particular listing and the shut-off of water were probably totally unnecessary.

Now the federal "ologists" and their green buddies, along with some oddball opportunists in the Klamath area, are scurrying to come up with a way to get around the NAS report.

You can count on it. One hopes the Department of Interior Secretary Gale Norton will head them off at the pass. The dilemma is that they will be around after she has left office. You can count on that as well.

There is another fish fry happening at the moment – the case of the "endangered" coho salmon." This is one more in a string of cases as science serves an agenda, especially in the Pacific Northwest.

In the case of the salmon, federales and the greens are seeking to blow up dams, like the Condit. They do not want dams to impede the progress of the salmon upstream.

By blowing up dams the feds and greens will thereby be "repairing" fragmented "ecosystems" as man proves once again he is "a cancer on the land." Crafty and audacious humanity having the gall to build dams in the first place.

Meanwhile, in 2000, federal "ologists" killed thousands of salmon because they were hatchery salmon that had escaped into the rivers and streams of the Pacific Northwest. Thus, our godlike federal scientists decided that only "natural" fish should occupy "their" waterways.

Because the poor critters were not "wild," thousands and thousands of them were clubbed to death by the "ologists."

There is no mention made of cross-breeding of wild and unnatural salmon and which could be which and how you could tell the difference. Without DNA testing, who would know one from the other besides the godlike federal scientists?

What a country. As they move to blow up dams so "wild" salmon can live, the people impacted by such actions are considered "collateral damage" and thousands of fish and animals die because of bad decisions made by people who are nothing more than politicized bureaucrats linked to a green agenda.

Real scientists don't kill things to build an "ecosystem" or create "wild" conditions by killing animals to suit their weird science agenda. But playing games and playing god is what agenda-driven "scientists" do best. The fudging of the lynx study data was only one tiny dot, a rather unimportant dot, in the big green picture.

Check out what they did in the case of the reintroduction of the Colorado lynx at www.aldenchronicles.com. In addition, there is a complete rundown of the spotted owl listing and the adoption of "biocentrism" and "ecosystem management" in Dr. Robert G. Lee's book "Broken Land, Broken Trust" and in Dr. Alston Chase's book "In a Dark Wood."

I followed your link.... the only investigation I have done on the broader subject is here:

Scams, Scalawags, and an all-too-gullible Public...famous frauds sold to America

I meant to do a follow-up on the dam' thing, but that was about the time my wife's health started falling apart, various crisises erupted, and so on, and I never got back to it.

I strongly believe a fraudulent element is present in nearly all the "manufactured to order 'issuses'" that seem to plague modern America.

Why, thank you! I regard that "Scams, Scalawags...etc." as a subset of these:

DUBOB 9-- even *more* tales from the Dark Underbelly of the Beast.....

....FReeper Mike4Frredom called it "underknowledge"- things people know, at some level, but just won't discuss.

DDT is a good example- the "media" regards it as a Good Thing that it was banned- end of story. Yet the reason for banning it- thinning eggshells, and vague fears about harm to human health- was not repeatable in later tests. Meanwhile, each year a million or so humans die from insect-born diseases- preventable deaths. Where's the outrage?

If guns were implicated in so many fatalities, it would be on TV every hour of every day until we "Did Somthing About it!"

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