Official surveys

[Mark Walker]

Michael Gochfeld wrote:

> Some anti-environmentalists in U.S. Congress (ca 1995) tried 
> to prevent 
> the USFWS and USGS wildlife people from using ANY data collected by 
> amateurs or volunteers. I don't know whether that extended to 
> any data 
> collected by scientists outside the agency. 

I find this rather odd (beyond the obvious).  Taken out of context, I can't
find a correlation between depressing collecting data from amateurs and
anti-environmentalism.

Have patience - I'm a bit slow...  Perhaps the issue here is that
anti-environmentalists don't want amateurs providing new evidence of
impacted species that might demand additional environmental impact studies
and/or other obstacles/delays to new development?

If so, I find it funny that anti-environmentalists have figured out the
value/significance of collecting data from amateurs - while many
environmentalists haven't.  

Well, O.K. - it isn't really all that funny.

Mark Walker
Oceanside, CA

>