Many of the mass media out doors magazines are carrying articles that portray this as a conservative witchhunt meant to discredit "good envirnmentalists" for the sake of pollutors and exploiters, i.e. anyone against the leftist envirnmental agenda. Outside and similar magazines, read by active young men and women, misportray this event and its context.
Those that have defended these biologists have unwittingly underminded the lynx research even further. One of the methods of this "defending the biologists" has been to support their position that there is something inadequate about the National Lynx Detection Protocol that requires these low level employees to test the system.
The Detection Protocol was designed by lynx expert McKelvey to, among other things, be sure that the lynx would not be over or under detected. When these biologists and their supporters bad mouth the Protocol for underdetecting, they are also implying that that overdetection is likely. Or that the Protocol is flawed.
McKelvey did a newspaper interview(which I can't find now) in which he blasted these biolgists and their supporters because of the damage they are doing. McKelvey's testimony at the Congressional Hearings, in which he tries to defend the Protocol, is here