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Posted on 01/14/2002 7:45:54 AM PST by Aleutian Longliner
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http://www.fis.com/fis/worldnews/worldnews.asp?l=e&country=&monthyear=&day=&id=638&ndb=1
Dr Jeffrey Koenings, director of the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife. (Photo:WDFW)
Furore over scientists' 'bio-fraud' raises eyebrows in fisheries
UNITED STATES
Monday, January 14, 2002, 20:20 (GMT + 9)
In some quarters, the planted lynx hair has been viewed as evidence of intentional tampering with data by scientists in order to expand areas of protected habitat, where many human activities and industries could be banned. Two scientists working for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife have been implicated, although there is still dispute over what their objective was. But the incident drew keen interest among natural resource industries, including fisheries.
As evidence of similar problems crops up elsewhere, fishing industry representatives and critics of the environmental movement say that similar problems may have tainted studies that drive regulation of fisheries, particularly where they interact with marine mammals and other "charismatic megafauna."
At the Virginia-based National Wilderness Institute, which bills itself as a "voice of reason on the environment" and concentrates especially on endangered species issues, policy director Jim Streeter said so-called whistle-blowers have started pointing to questionable study practices by government officials around the country.
Within days of the so-called lynx "bio-fraud" surfacing, another effort came to light - this time allegedly involving an attempt by a Washington State official to obtain grizzly bear hair which could have compromised a 3,600-square mile habitat study.
Reps. Richard W. Pombo and John E. Peterson, newly-elected as chairperson and and communications chairperson for the House Western caucus, this week wrote to the Washington Times outlining other instances of what they term "disregard for rural America" by federal officials' distortions. The duo, who support the firing of the biologists as "the only credible alternative" if they did circumvent properly laid-down procedures, said they see it all as part of a pattern of environmental activism prevailing over the rule of law and the best interest of families and communities in the United States.
Earlier this month the National Association of Home Builders was reported as having uncovered a memorandum from an acting Northwest Regional Administrator for the National Marine Fisheries Service that apparently admitted that NMFS' critical habitat designations for West Coast salmonids are baseless and "without an analysis of how much habitat an ESU (Evolutionary Significant Unit) needs".
All of this, said Streeter, poses a serious threat to the credibility of agencies working with the ESA, which could lead to major impacts on various programmes, including commercial fishermen's harvests, as agencies and individual officials pursue their own particular environmental agendas.
That point was echoed by Brent Paine, executive director of the United Catcher Boats a non-profit trade organisation representing North Pacific trawlers and processors. Paine drew a comparison with the way that NMFS handled the Steller sea lion issue in the Bering Sea. He said the agency sought to circumvent the public in a process apparently driven by one official and aimed at pushing through a Biological Opinion that concluded, controversially, that the pollock trawl fishery was jeopardising sea lion populations in the area by out-competing the mammals for prey species. The document was widely viewed in the industry as a power grab by a few officials within NMFS who sought to pin the plight of the sea lions on trawlers, despite evidence to the contrary.
Paine said the opinion ignored inconvenient feeding-pattern data collected by NMFS over some 10 years, among other information. Congress intervened, and the BiOp was eventually overturned, partly on the grounds that the agency worked up it behind closed doors and failed to follow required public-consultation procedures. The document also sought to impose extremely costly fishing closures in areas where the restrictions were considered to have little chance of helping sea lions.
When NMFS was sent back to do the work again, commercial fisheries supporters dug up and produced the ignored scientific data from the NMFS laboratory in Seattle, showing that the fleet was not working the same area as the sea lions when they were feeding. The agency was forced to prepare another BiOp, which imposed less burdensome restrictions and found no jeopardy.
Jerry Schill, president of the North Carolina Fisheries Association, found the "bio-fraud" incident in Washington State interesting enough to circulate news of it to contacts in the industry. He said the news has been severely damaging to various government agencies' credibility, especially in the western part of the United States.
Schill noted that the new round of "bio-fraud" controversy again relates to the Endangered Species Act. He added that he believes recent events support the contention that there are those both in government and in outside it whose philosophy goes well beyond just protecting the environment and crosses into a zeal to halt industry and undermine capitalism and corporate America, by the use of bio-fraud if necessary.
He said eco-terrorism and bio-fraud will undoubtedly form a part of the discussion at an upcoming meeting in Washington DC in May aimed at addressing the Marine Mammal Protection Act and the ESA.
Streeter said as a former government employee he suspects that government officials going as far as planting evidence is very rare. But he also said there's no doubt there are government officials on what he called their own "holy crusade" from within agencies. There have been examples of agencies refusing to accept the implications of scientific data from studies they have commissioned - instead skirting the truth in reports and putting forward flawed conclusions and recommendations to fit with their own goals and objectives, he said.
More than that, the baseline data and field research done in various studies has been found to be very "spotty" and NMFS is among agencies which have chosen to introduce species and sub-species definitions of their own to achieve their own ends, rather than using standard, more widely-accepted biological definitions, said Streeter.
He called the agency's use of ESUs to try to delineate saltwater fish populations is "a further refinement of that," a practice which he noted the US Fish and Wildlife Service does not accept in looking after freshwater species.
Streeter said the issue of government agencies and individual officials pursuing directions unilaterally, as highlighted by the lynx-hair incident in Washington, clearly has nationwide implications and is far from being resolved. The incident is to be looked into in a General Accounting Office audit, inspector-general investigations in the Departments of Agriculture and the Interior, and in House and Senate hearings.
"If this incident proves true, we absolutely have to go back and revisit any federal study of endangered species that biologists from the Washington Division(sic) of Fish and Wildlife participated in," Rep. James V. Hansen, Utah Republican and chairperson of the House Resources Committee, is quoted as saying. He has expressed concern about the potential cost in jobs and access to resources due to improper scientific practices.
Streeter said there could be an innocent explanation for what happened with the two instances in Washington State, since full details have not yet emerged, but he remains skeptical. He acknowledged that in the case of the planting of the lynx hair on rubbing posts in the study in the Gifford and Wenatchee National Forests, the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife has said it was done by two department biologists - possibly involving five other federal Forest and Fish and Wildlife Service officials - in order to test the questioned reliability of associated laboratory tests.
He said that he would have expected there to be study protocols and procedures in place to ensure that, if that kind of cross-check was necessary, it was done only with approval from senior officials and in such a way as to ensure that the study and others were not potentially compromised. He compared the explanation to people robbing a bank and saying afterwards that they did so to test the bank's security.
Dr Jeffrey Koenings, director of the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, has issued an apology over the lynx-hair incident, saying that he was angry and dismayed that two department biologists had been involved in what he called "a breach of proper scientific protocol while involved in a continuing multi-year joint lynx study". Koenings said the two department biologists have now been "barred from further research work," and he and three other top scientific officials for WDFW said the department must now work hard to re-establish its public credibility.
By Quentin Dodd
FIS North America
I have long suspected these "studies" that always seem to restrict, deny, and otherwise compromise citizens rights to travel on and use natural resources. I was somewhat surprised to pick up a fishing magazine recently and see an editorial to the effect of, "Holy Moses, Guys! These 'outlaw all types of fishing' groups are dead serious!" My surprise was at their surprise; you would think being "in the business" they would have taken these extremist groups seriously a long time ago....
On the global-warming issue, a scientist who supports the usual greenhouse-gas theories will receive generous funding and warm approval from his university colleagues. A scientist who questions global warming will get the cold shoulder from his colleagues and have his funding pulled. The same is true of many other areas where science touches on society and hotly debated political issues. Abortion is an obvious case, homosexuality is another.
For ninety days.
The listing of "Southern coho" was a fraud. The design of the ESU boundaries and the supporting citations of "data" for listing West Coast Steelhead as "Threatened" was a fraud.
I have the data.
Besides the eco terrorists who hate America/Americans, who else in the enviral business would benefit from Eco Fraud?
The salary of the National Wildlife Federation top executive, Mr. Mark Van Putten, was nearly a quarter of a million dollars last year. This represents a 17 percent raise over his salary the year before. Think about that the next time you contemplate your 3 percent cost of living adjustment.
If you were among those who sent in a $25 contribution to this group, do you realize it took over 10,000 of you contributing in order just to pay his salary?
The salary of the World Wildlife Fund president, Kathryn Fuller, was $241,000. The salary of the National Audubon Society president, John Flicker, was $240,000. The salary of the Natural Resources Defense Council director, John Adams, was $239,000. The salary of the Wilderness Society president was $204,000. The salary of the Defenders of Wildlife president and CEO was $201,000. Earth Justice Legal Defense Fund president, Buck Parker, was $157,000. And the Sierra Club's Carl Pope's salary was $138,000 in 1998 and listed as $199,577 in 1999, nearly a 50 percent raise. The list goes on.
Now, folks, think about it. How many of those $25 contributions does it take you as you did like I did as a young college student, send a few bucks there because you believe in what they are doing just to pay these salaries? Where are these missionary zealots who had a great idea back in the 1960s and thought we were going too far? Where are these people that were in there doing the thing because it had the burning in their heart to do it, not because it was a big business? Unfortunately, you can see new environmentalism has grown into a big growth industry.
As we can see above, Eco Fraud could be really important to these left wing envirals making some great 6 figure salaries defending the hairless lynx in our forests! Someone keeps stealing their hair, the poor critters!
I will provide the link to read where these comments came from and why they were made in a followup reply on this thread!
I don't know, If they do I will be suprised.
Suprise me!!!
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