Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

The Case of the Missing Canadian Lynx
newsmax.com ^ | Jan. 28, 2002 | Diane Alden

Posted on 02/06/2002 5:25:36 PM PST by Tailgunner Joe

A good detective story usually begins with a bang, a murder, a body, an interesting character or a dark and stormy night.

But great mystery stories are as much about character and motivation as they are about intrigue and whodunit. Great detectives are observers; they don't pass up the details, dichotomies and small inconsistencies that lead to solving the mystery. They also see and incorporate patterns of behavior in solving that mystery.

In the end, the ultimate answer is usually a complex of simplicity. But it is only simple once all the parts of the mystery and puzzle are put together and analyzed. Extraordinary mystery writers like P.D. James, Agatha Christie and Dick Francis incorporate their sense of the time, the place and the culture into solving the mystery itself.

All of these elements are important in solving "The Case of the Missing Canadian Lynx."

The Washington Times broke the story, Fox News Cable covered it, and recently Kim Strassel of the Wall Street Journal added her considerable journalistic skills in relating this most recent and obvious case of government abuse.

The Times article reports:

"The admission that employees of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Forest Service and Washington state falsified data confirmed what many rural Westerners believe: Agencies are doctoring species and habitat studies to stop logging, ranching and mining on the federal government's vast land holdings. The lynx survey, which is being investigated by several federal agencies, would have been used to establish land-use rules in 16 states and 57 national forests."

Strassel maintains:

"The lynx scandal underscores everything that's wrong with Fish and Wildlife and the Forest Service. It shows how the agencies succumbed to a Clinton-era culture that puts ideology ahead of science. It demonstrates the undue influence environmental groups hold over the departments. It also shows how vaguely written laws like the Endangered Species Act can be used to further political agendas, even in the complete absence of hard science."

Furthermore, in 1998 the Forest Service contracted with a member of the Wildlife Conservation Society to do a lynx survey in Oregon and Washington. The contractor reported that lynx hair had been found in both states, which was surprising. No one thought lynx were in the areas listed. That information led to the determination that the lynx was threatened.

Another survey in 1999 found that the employees of the Forest Service considered the results of the survey to be valid. But because a whistle-blower came forward, the hair in the 1999 and 2000 surveys was found to be from "bobcats or coyotes."

California Republican and rural advocate Rep. Richard Pombo defines the case as

"[The] latest revelation, that officials from the U.S. Forest Service, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife planted false evidence of a Canadian Lynx on three occasions in our national forests, received a typical response from the agencies. Instead of terminating the employees, the individuals were given counseling and placed right back on the job to carry on with their environmental activism. Pombo recounts the case of Donald Fife. Fife was a professional scientist specializing in environmental mining and engineering geology, who learned from a former U.S. Forest Service official that plants listed under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) had been secretly placed on his property in an attempt to close about 30,000 acres of the highest mineral-valued land in Southern California." Exposing the Pattern

We see a pattern developing. The facts in the case of the missing lynx include a documented previous instance of abuse of power by the Forest Service. In both cases the facts are indisputable. But the facts don't tell the entire story.

At the moment, the most obvious and prime suspect in the abuse of federal power is the Clinton administration. That administration seemed to institutionalize the notion that the ends justify the means.

The cultural and political atmosphere in that administration made things worse across the federal landscape. From the Department of Justice to the Department of the Interior, scandal erupted at every turn and bureaucrats and bureaucracies were politicized beyond the norm.

In the case of the politicization and corruption of green bureaucracies in particular, Bill Clinton and his secretary of the interior, Bruce Babbitt, are the obvious suspects. But are they really the guilty parties?

It is not unusual for conservatives and Republicans to blame the Clinton administration for the dishonesty and corruption that took place during his reign in office. That is also true in the recent case of the missing Canadian Lynx. Fingers are pointed in the direction of Clinton and Babbitt.

I could spend days pointing fingers at Babbitt and Clinton. Their efforts, in addition to those of America's premier foundations – the Pew Charitable Trust, Rockefeller, Alton Jones, Turner, McArthur and Ford – and the United Nations, the international treaties America has signed, and the centrally planned economic agenda of multinational corporations and financial institutions – all of the powers that be have had a negative impact on public environmental policy.

The collusion and corruption have been a horror for rural America and for the rule of law – not to mention the Constitution.

As an investigator, I could point a finger at the deaf and dumb American churches for making environmentalism a part of their social justice campaign. That campaign by and large does nothing for justice for the rural poor and certainly nothing for the environment, except to deify it. It is a selective justice that has nearly destroyed rural America.

I could point to environmentalists, whose cause in recent years has been co-opted by quasi-religious extremists on one hand and corporate green interests on the other. What have suffered are science, the truth, the environment, common sense, and cooperation between rural types, government and the greens.

Their cause has created a new class of poor and killed off many small communities – communities, by the way, that offer a simpler, less materialistic and cleaner alternative to urban living.

In addition, the American public has allowed itself to be flimflammed by corporate green groups with pleas for money as these monied interests use scare tactics and propaganda plus myth, which they serve up as truth.

The public has been ill served by a media that take their environmental "stories" off press releases written by billion-dollar green organizations like the Sierra Club and National Wildlife Federation.

That same press has adopted the mindset and language of the environmental true believers. That same press spins tales about a "fragile" ecosystem and "endangered" species.

Those tales are often myths based on lies and half-truths, but they are related as the gospel by CBS, the Times, the Post, CNN and National Geographic. Yet seldom has the press bothered to question the lies, the manipulation, the half truths. Never do the media test what is claimed by the special interests.

When something is truly an environmental concern, the various groups are too busy hunting down easy targets or creating the next nightmare environmental scenario. Green is big business, and the mystery is that very few members of our elite power structure have discovered how dangerous and manipulative and full of lies that green business really is.

Think Enron and think how corporate structures and bureaucracies can hide the truth. An unquestioning attitude and a lack of priorities have been the downfall of correcting real environmental abuses.

Nevertheless, what is at stake in the case of the missing Canadian Lynx is institutional credibility, not to mention lives, livelihoods and the environment of rural and urban areas.

Institutional manipulation of the system has been the instrument in the destruction of trust and cooperation between those who work the land and those who would seek to drive people off the land.

The result is that trust in government entities like the Forest Service, the BLM, and most certainly the Fish and Wildlife Service may be lost forever. For the time being, the Luddites in the environmental movement will have their way, but the environment and trust in the federal government to do a job will be the poorer for it.

Discovering the Motive

Dr. Alston Chase, environmentalist, philosopher and former lecturer at Harvard, Oxford and Princeton, wrote a seminal work on the rising tyranny of ecology: "In a Dark Wood."

Dr. Chase indicates that things began to go wrong in the Forest Service and other federal land agencies long before Bill Clinton or Bruce Babbitt came on the scene. Although the destruction of rural America accelerated under the Clinton regime, the institutional mindset and practices in the green bureaucracies changed long ago.

Chase recounts that by 1979 a Louis Harris poll showed that Forest Service employees were already more "save/conserve oriented" than the general public. The Forest Service and other federal green agencies began to be divided into two classifications, the younger "baby boomer biocentrists" and the older forest rangers at the top.

Furthermore, "the silviculture-educated foresters were bossing biologists who had spent more time in school but less time in the woods." However, as the older generation retired, the new guys moved up. With that move, Chase says, "politics outstripped science, agency and environmentalist values forged beyond what the researchers knew."

These new green kids on the federal block accepted the theories of biocentrism. Indeed, the "ecologists" rejected science and the scientific method in many instances.

Where the older scientists thought that nature is not stable or a constant but rather forever in a state of flux and chaos, the newer "ecologists" believed that stability was the norm and could be possible by creation or designation of their invention.

Thus, vast ecosystems were concocted, systems that had no boundaries, beginning or end. The ecosystems of their creation often had no real history – there had been too much chaos and change for that. Nor could they explain how an ecosystem began, what was its history and how long had it been an ecosystem.

Rather, the ecologist agenda was to conceive of some kind of restoration of a "pristine" environment. But no one knew exactly when such an environment existed, so they built a time frame that created a system before the white man came to America.

They call it pre-Columbian times, and that is the direction in which the ecologists are trying to take federal land policies. However, pristine conditions and ecosystems were created by the theorists; seldom did science have anything to do with determining how things really were.

There was no admission that the environment changes constantly, regardless of what man does or does not do. There was no admission that billions of species, eras and epochs had changed long before people were on the scene – even in America. The American Indian was held up as the "perfect" interactor with the environment, when proof indicates that was just not so.

But the true believers wanted white man's "footprint" on the land to be eradicated. That is not hyperbole, that is what is happening across the United States at this very moment.

Today in the back country of the U.S. the Forest Service closes roads so that man cannot access the forest for even minimal use. They are digging 10-foot-deep pits so that even horses can't access those roads. They destroy old homesteads, and even the modern-day American Indian is finding that the Forest Service and the BLM do not respect their habitations and imprints on the land.

Ask the Timbasha of Death Valley or the Dann sisters of Nevada, or the Hispanic loggers in New Mexico how little concern the government has for their history and their modern-day livelihood.

Dr. Hegel and the Red Herring

During the radical and extreme 1960s, it wasn't just music or culture that changed drastically. Clinging to the leftist causes of the "me" generation was the "me too" environmental movement.

A favorite instrument of collectivists and socialists, including people like Herbert Marcuse and Antonio Gramsci, environmentalism was the socially acceptable wedge that would be used to bring down capitalism as well as our belief in individual rights and private property, which developed out of the Great Awakening and the Enlightment.

What became important were not individuals but rather "the one," the "whole," the collective. In addition, at this time humanity was looked upon as a cancer that could do no good to the environment. Part of the intent of population control is to break man's legs so he can't leave a footprint.

In the era of the '70s, according to Dr. Chase, at least half of the Forest Service and green bureaucrats and bureaucracies had allegiances to the cause of "biocentrism." That is as much a philosophical belief system as it is a pseudo-science. It has the language, but often lacks the data and the scientific method.

It did, however, offer some kind of zeitgeist to accomplish a politicized agenda. Chase documents how government "scientists" who have taken "biocentrism" as the gospel now hold allegiances and animosities toward those who seek to make use of the land in extractive industries or food production.

The institutional culture is one of preservation rather than conservation. It is now more about aesthetics and promoting little if any human interaction with the environment. The ultimate goal is to return to a state "before the white man came."

The new true green believers, in Chase's words, "confused philosophy with science and fact and value. ... [I]t embraced new values based on systems ecology, which from the beginning was less a preservation science than a program for social control. ... [I]t viewed the exercise of individual liberty as a threat."

Part of the mystery in the long cultural and historical road to the case of the missing Canadian lynx is congressional response. Since the '60s Congress has responded badly to what was perceived as man abusing the environment.

A flood of legislation resulted. Poorly thought out, just as with LBJ's War on Poverty, the laws did more damage than good. Just as the War on Poverty destroyed the black family, environmental laws have destroyed the rural poor.

It was during the idealistic, albeit unscientific, '60s and '70s that cultural Marxism found its way into the system and plenty of really terrible ideas were carved into stone. They include the Wilderness Act of 1964, the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act of 1967 and the Endangered Species Act of 1969.

Eventually, these laws would lead to FLPMA, the Federal Land Planning Management Act of 1976. Out of FLPMA came the era of increasing hostility by the federal government to man's use and enjoyment of the environment.

After FLPMA, federal land managers began to sweep through the Intermountain West in a quest to change practices and rescind promises made to rural workers, stakeholders, communities and families in a previous era.

But there was no balance in this new shift in policy. Instead, statist values became the order of the day whether or not they made sense. These values were not better values – they merely replaced the old ones. In so doing, there was no attempt at accommodation between old and new values, regardless of lip service paid to cooperation.

It was the fatal combination of environmental groups gone left, with redesigning the language and taking the ephemeral language of "biocentrism" and ecology and creating a set of unscientific values, which did not leave any room for compromise.

Because of that fact, lives were destroyed, and misunderstanding about man's place in the environment was never fully understood by either side in the debate.

This influx of green theorists manifested in the late '70s. That was the real beginning of federal claims on water rights in the West and on huge chunks of states like Alaska.

Democrat Jimmy Carter assigned hundreds of millions of acres to Wilderness status In Alaska. Bill Clinton was the next president to do the same. In Alaska, much of the state was left for an elite few to hunt or fish or bird-watch. Precious little was left for the people of Alaska to use for economic or personal reasons. The tax base suffered, and Alaska became a colony of D.C.

That attitude continues today in places like Nevada, the Klamath Basin, and anywhere water or beautiful vistas exist. The debate over drilling in the ANWR is not about science or what is good for Caribou, but rather about a political and philosophical agenda gone awry.

Another tactic by the new complex of federal agencies and corporate green groups was to abrogate private property and its value by a draconian implementation of the Endangered Species Act.

What began as an idea with good intentions eventually led down the path to extremism, government control, and misuse and abuse of the environment and the rural poor. Increasingly strict controls on recreational uses are being implemented each year as more lands are denied to the public.

There was no rational system developed. Priorities were skewed in favor of the wish list of environmentalists. Scattered and incompetent efforts at improving federal lands prevailed and became the rule.

Federal agencies spent most of the time in court fighting off green demands and paying billions in court case judgments brought by green groups. That left less money to make improvements on the land in federal hands.

On the other hand, more green 'scientists' were bringing their agenda with them as they moved up the ranks of the federal agencies and cooperated with activist environmental groups in numerous court cases.

Solution to Saving Species Is No Mystery

At this point in time, little has been "saved" by the government or green efforts – and that includes species.

The salvation of most species came about from the cooperation of rural people with private individuals and groups such as Ducks Unlimited and the Elk Foundation. It was the rural ag producer who maintained water resources and kept the lands that brought wildlife back.

The greens, however, are not happy with that. Many believe that is not a "natural" condition, and they criticize the improvement the rurals have made. If that is not a Luddite attitude, nothing is. There was absolutely no concern for the impact of such attitudes on rural areas and their people as the destruction of rural America continued.

What was created out of all this was a branch of government almost separate from the legislative, executive and judicial. That other branch is represented by the Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and other lesser subgroups.

They receive funding from the government, but they increase their budgets from green activism. In a quid pro quo, the federal agencies and the greens have set up a marriage of convenience punctuated by court battles that really are not battles at all but rather a way for green institutions to line their own pockets and a further attempt to remove people from rural America.

The casualties are the environment, the rural poor and the rule of law. The late President Dwight David Eisenhower warned of the military-industrial complex. He could not have foreseen the foundation-multinational corporation-green machine-federal bureaucracy complex that now controls much of what happens to the citizens, economy and health of the land mass of the United States.


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Front Page News; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: enviralists; green; michaeldobbs
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first 1-2021-35 next last

1 posted on 02/06/2002 5:25:36 PM PST by Tailgunner Joe
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | View Replies]

To: Tailgunner Joe
What a good expose on the environmental religion that has penetrated the Fish and Wildlife Service!

We should look to Conserve, not "preserve." There was no bell jar that surrounded the land before the White Man came, and it's only a society with technology and free capital that allows us to spend the money to maintain the wilderness, not from some governmental fraud planting fake fur from endangered species to cause even more restrictions on the government land.

Excellent article!

2 posted on 02/06/2002 6:11:11 PM PST by Big Dan
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

bump
3 posted on 02/06/2002 6:34:37 PM PST by sarasmom
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: Tailgunner Joe; *landgrab; *Green; *Enviralists; farmfriend; marsh2; dixiechick2000; Helen...
Good find, TJ:

The public has been ill served by a media that take their environmental "stories" off press releases written by billion-dollar green organizations like the Sierra Club and National Wildlife Federation.

That same press has adopted the mindset and language of the environmental true believers. That same press spins tales about a "fragile" ecosystem and "endangered" species.

Those tales are often myths based on lies and half-truths, but they are related as the gospel by CBS, the Times, the Post, CNN and National Geographic. Yet seldom has the press bothered to question the lies, the manipulation, the half truths. Never do the media test what is claimed by the special interests.

When something is truly an environmental concern, the various groups are too busy hunting down easy targets or creating the next nightmare environmental scenario. Green is big business, and the mystery is that very few members of our elite power structure have discovered how dangerous and manipulative and full of lies that green business really is.

Diane Alden really pulls the last few years all together in this article. There also needs to be an investigation of these various 'Charitable Trusts' and the damage they do with their funding.

4 posted on 02/06/2002 6:42:51 PM PST by brityank
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Big Dan
Great post...makes ENRON look small. Two years ago the demarat Gov.of Oregon wanted to destroy three dams on the Snake river to "save the salmon". This year we had a record salmon run, best since 1936. When asked how that could happen, he said that most of the returning fish were hatchery raisied. Now a federal judge with a brain has ruled that there is NO difference between wild and hatchery salmon and all the fish must be counted to determine if a species is endangered. The wockos are going nuts.
5 posted on 02/06/2002 6:51:34 PM PST by bybybill
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: brityank
There also needs to be an investigation of these various 'Charitable Trusts' and the damage they do with their funding.

Ron Arnold is the guy for that one. You'll get all the bile you any choir could ever wish for.

6 posted on 02/06/2002 6:56:38 PM PST by Carry_Okie
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 4 | View Replies]

To: Tailgunner Joe

The casualties are the environment, the rural poor and the rule of law. The late President Dwight David Eisenhower warned of the military-industrial complex. He could not have foreseen the foundation-multinational corporation-green machine-federal bureaucracy complex that now controls much of what happens to the citizens, economy and health of the land mass of the United States.

Good article. It was politicians, bureaucrats and colluding green-businesses that created a problem that need not exists in the first place.

7 posted on 02/06/2002 6:58:15 PM PST by Zon
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: brityank
Thanks for the flag.
8 posted on 02/06/2002 7:12:05 PM PST by farmfriend
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 4 | View Replies]

To: brityank
Thanks for the heads up!
9 posted on 02/06/2002 7:15:20 PM PST by Alamo-Girl
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 4 | View Replies]

To: Carry_Okie
Looks like a site to spend some time digging through; thanks. (I think)

Americans are unaware of just how "symphonically" their environmental opinions have been molded by big-money foundations that tell green groups what to do and how to do it, all with the help of bureaucrats providing federal grants and insider policy manipulation.

This "iron triangle" of:

wealthy foundations,
grant-driven environmental groups,
and zealous bureaucrats
  • cuts off natural resource extraction from America's federal lands, ending the supply of timber, minerals, food, and fiber you use every day.
  • calls the gradual removal of resource workers from rural lands "transition," envisioning gentrification with upscale retirees,  modem gypsies and rat-race refugees in a boutique economy.
  • destroys the lives and jobs of rural resource workers, whose cries of anguish and anger are called "incivility" by the rich and powerful who are destroying them.
  • tightens their regulatory grip on private property so you can't use what you own—and you can't get compensation for what you lose.
  • increases the size of big government by taking more land for "nature preserves" even though government already owns nearly half the nation.
  • widens the rural-urban prosperity gap. While cities enjoy a booming economy, rural communities suffer severe economic pain caused by the "iron triangle" through bans on logging, mining, ranching, farming, and all forms of natural resource extraction.
  • perverts the media you rely on, rearranging your mind, making sure you believe what they want you to believe and crushing all opposing views.
  • dismantles industrial civilization piece by piece. 

This website follows the money and the power and the harm and takes you along.


10 posted on 02/06/2002 7:17:25 PM PST by brityank
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 6 | View Replies]

To: Tailgunner Joe
Bump
11 posted on 02/06/2002 7:58:47 PM PST by Iconoclast2
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: brityank
When you get done getting all rialed up, try thinking what you would do about it. System heal thyself? No way. It is intrinsically corruptable. Hope for Republicans? What kind of strategy has that been? They gave us the ESA! So... What?

That's what's wrong with guys like Ron. They don't know and DON'T care to fix it because they make a good buck rousing rabble. That just isn't going to cut it.

Total laissez faire leads to a "come and get me" mentality, governed by those with the money to fend off civil accountability. It didn't work either, which is what got us regulation in the first place. That's what is unique in what you have in my approach. It's an intrinsically stable system design by virtue of its elegant checks and balances. Yes, it's a lot of work to understand, in part because though it is simple, it is capable of manifesting the full complexity appropriate to the task at hand. All I can tell you is that it's worth the effort.

12 posted on 02/06/2002 8:07:12 PM PST by Carry_Okie
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 10 | View Replies]

To: Tailgunner Joe
When the masses are in cities then CONTROL OF THE POPULATION WILL BE SIMPLIFIED!

I think what they have not taken into consideration is all the Vets that will resist with firearms. They are guiding us to a civil war!

13 posted on 02/06/2002 8:33:01 PM PST by B4Ranch
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: brityank
"The lynx scandal underscores everything that's wrong with Fish and Wildlife and the Forest Service. It shows how the agencies succumbed to a Clinton-era culture that puts ideology ahead of science. It demonstrates the undue influence environmental groups hold over the departments. It also shows how vaguely written laws like the Endangered Species Act can be used to further political agendas, even in the complete absence of hard science."

I wish the alleged "watchdog press" would give one-half the "TV face time" to this as they did Enron or Condit or Global Warming, or.... well, you name their favorite cause celebre'--

I wish I had a flatbed scanner handy- I have an old article by Walter Williams in my scrapbook of newsclippings detailing how the "Eco" movement has become the refuge of leftist & Marxist wannabes....

14 posted on 02/07/2002 12:48:02 AM PST by backhoe
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 4 | View Replies]

To: Tailgunner Joe; all
TJ, great find!

The only way that communists, socialists, fascists and watermelon enviralists can be successful is to have total control over the media!

These vile/lying people who hate America/Americans no longer have total control over the media as per this story!

The Wall Street Journal and other media outlets, last year started printing the truth about these lying enviral Nazis.

Last but not least, the power of Free Republic is become a real PIA for the envirals as per their failure to Rural Cleanse the farmers/ranchers and othes from the Klamath Basin last year.

A plea to all who hate these vile enviralists, to please post any good news that you may have. Also, please post any attempt these vile enviralists at more Rural Cleansing of America.

15 posted on 02/07/2002 7:06:59 AM PST by Grampa Dave
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: bybybill
I have been convinced from the beginning that destroying dams and reducing water flow over existing dams was nothing less than collusion between the greens and the power companies to raise rates. We had the cheapest electricity in the country. This situation didn't suit either the power companies or the Greens, so they engineered a power shortage.
16 posted on 02/07/2002 7:46:38 AM PST by Eva
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 5 | View Replies]

To: Tailgunner Joe
Thanks for posting this. The author sums up the whole environmental agenda from the beginning and exposes it as nothing but a fraudlent political agenda.

I have been waiting for someone to ask our limosine liberals why they are more concerned about saving the desolate invironment of the ANWR than they are the beautiful beaches of Long Island or Nantucket, where huge multi-million dollar homes are springing up like toadstools on the once pristine beaches.

17 posted on 02/07/2002 7:53:15 AM PST by Eva
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Tailgunner Joe
Stop Rural Cleansing bump.
18 posted on 02/07/2002 8:13:47 AM PST by headsonpikes
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Tailgunner Joe
BTTT
19 posted on 02/07/2002 9:02:21 AM PST by hattend
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Tailgunner Joe
There's a lot of good stuff in the article. The problem is, the FWS employees were found not to have falsified anything.

LYNX BIOLOGISTS DID NOT PLANT FALSE EVIDENCE

WASHINGTON, DC, January 22, 2002 (ENS) - Forest Service employees who tested a lab's performance using planted lynx hairs did not do so with the intent to skew data, the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) has concluded.

In December 2001, the "Washington Times" ran a story about lynx biologists in Washington state. The story implied that a number of biologists employed by the USFS, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, had conspired to defraud the public by planting lynx hairs as part of a habitat survey.

The survey was attempting to assess the current range of the lynx, which is classified as threatened under the federal Endangered Species Act.

The USFS and other experts have now determined that the biologists did not plant lynx hairs in the field, but did send samples that were not collected in the field to a laboratory. The laboratory was supposed to determine what species the hair samples came from.

According to the USFS, the control samples were submitted to test the accuracy of the lab. A number of biologists familiar with the survey had expressed concern that the lab was not set up to handle hundreds of hair samples without contamination, making errors and false positives possible.

The biologists did not try to hide the fact that they had submitted control samples. In each situation, the scientists noted in their station or field notes that so called "blind control samples" had been sent to the labs.

None of the control samples were used in any official surveys, where they might have led to the conclusion that more lynx were living in the habitat then were actually present.

Before agency scientists could respond, a number of politicians began demanding hearings, investigations and even termination of the scientists involved. A press release from Republican Representatives Scott McInnis of Colorado and James Hansen of Utah claimed, incorrectly, that the biologists had admitted to planting hair samples in the field, and called for their dismissal.

On Monday, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) notified the Secretaries of Agriculture and Interior that calls to fire or reassign the federal scientists violate the Hatch Act, which prohibits the Secretaries from acting on those recommendations.

The Hatch Act, which guards against on the job partisan activities by federal workers, forbids members of Congress or their staff from making recommendations to agency leaders concerning any civil service personnel action, a term defined to include discipline, termination or reassignment.

The Act provides that if an agency head receives such a communication, he or she, "shall not solicit, request, consider or accept and such recommendation or statement; and shall return any such written recommendation or statement, appropriately marked as in violation of this section, to the person or organization transmitting same."

"This is a case of right wing politicians conducting a witch-hunt against agency scientists," said PEER field director Eric Wingerter. "The question now is whether Gale Norton and Ann Veneman will follow the law protecting the merit system from political interference."

20 posted on 02/07/2002 9:14:15 AM PST by cogitator
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first 1-2021-35 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson