The truth about the Lynx study
Neil Jones
neil at nwjones.demon.co.uk
Tue Apr 9 10:38:02 EDT 2002
The false story about this Lynx study has been posted here a few times.
There are several motives that people may have had. Some on this list are
just plain opposed to all conservation measures in principle. Others naively
believe what they are told. Others may have an interest in conservation but
put their commercial interests ahead of conservation ones.
It is not only relevant here because it debunks misinformation. In the big
picture it has relevance to creatures like the Miami Blue. The Lynx story was
started by people who do not care for the preservation of nature and
_actively_ oppose it. Likewise on this list there are those who _actively_
oppose the conservation of creatures like the Miami Blue . There are those
who profess to want to conserve it but naively distrubute or support
propaganda against this aim and there are people who put their commercial
interests before the Miami Blue and are prepared to potentially sacrifice it
for these commercial interests.
This article may be summed up in one sentence
"There is no evidence whatsoever to support either a conspiracy or a
cover-up. "
-- OUTSIDE magazine, April, 2002
Dispatches: Investigation
Debunking Lynxgate
As lawmakers accuse seven government biologists of fraud, the truth is
drowned out by the headlines
By Daniel Glick
"THE ONLY THING we were doing was trying to get to the truth," says
Mitch Wainwright, a 46-year-old Forest Service wildlife biologist based
in Amboy, Washington. Instead he got an unwanted starring role in the
most bizarre environmental flap of recent memory: Lynxgate.
Details of "the great biofraud," as the The Washington Times has dubbed
the affair, first emerged just before Christmas. Wainwright and six
other state and federal wildlife scientists in Washington State
allegedly "planted" clumps of wild lynx fur in the Gifford Pinchot and
Wenatchee national forests. The intent, say their accusers, was to
trigger the protections that are imposed when a threatened species like
the Canada lynx is found living in a new area, namely closure of the
forest to recreationists and loggers.
For their roles in a green conspiracy that seemed worthy of Oliver
Stone, Wainwright and five colleagues were reassigned to other
programs-one other retired-and were told to keep their mouths shut.
Wainwright was very reluctant to speak to Outside, fearing not only for
his job but also for the future of all endangered-species programs in
the United States.
Why? Because industry groups, pundits, and conservative lawmakers-led by
Republican House Committee on Resources chairman James Hansen of Utah
and Scott McInnis of Colorado, the Republican who chairs the
subcommittee that oversees national forests-are using the lynx
controversy to launch wide-ranging attacks on endangered-species
policies past, present, and future. "There is so much fear out there
about how [the Endangered Species Act] works," says McInnis spokesman
Blain Rethmeier. Then again, at least some of the fear has been inspired
by McInnis himself. Last year, after four wilderness firefighters
perished in a blaze in Washington State, he charged that Forest Service
officials may have been culpable by delaying a decision allowing a
helicopter to scoop water from a river containing threatened fish. The
charge was later proven false.
What emerges is not a scientific scandal but a case study in
media-amplified demagoguery.
It's all pretty rousing stuff, but the real untold story is that the
great lynx biofraud is baloney. Outside interviewed 25 scientists,
investigators, and policy makers familiar with the incident, and
reviewed all the relevant reports. What emerges is not a scientific
scandal but a case study in media-amplified demagoguery. There is no
evidence whatsoever to support either a conspiracy or a cover-up. The
scientists didn't "plant" lynx fur in the forests. They didn't plot to
invoke the Endangered Species Act through falsified data. And even if
they had, it wouldn't have worked, because any evidence of lynx would
have to be confirmed with further research before new management
decisions could be made.
Lynxgate's selectively told tale of environmental skullduggery has so
angered some biologists that they've started using the M word. "It's
McCarthy politics all over again," says Elliott Norse, a founder of the
Society for Conservation Biology, an Arlington, Virginia-based group
that encourages biodiversity research. "It's the stupidest thing I've
ever heard."
To understand this fracas and why it has staying power, it helps to know
a little bit about the threatened Canada lynx, a cousin to the bobcat
found in Canada, the Rockies, and across a northern swath of the United
States. The cat first landed at the center of controversy in 1998, when
ecoterrorists cited the need to protect its habitat as justification for
burning down $12
million worth of facilities at the Vail ski resort. But our story begins
the following year, in 1999, when an interagency team of American
biologists began a three-year, 16-state survey to determine where in the
nation the cat still roamed, and where it didn't. The team's primary
scientific tool is a simple rubbing post, wrapped in carpet, laced with
attractant scent, studded
with small tacks, and placed in the woods. Drawn by the odor, critters
brush against the tacks and leave behind hairs, which are then collected
and sent to the Carnivore Conservation Genetics Laboratory in Missoula,
Montana. If a submitted sample turns out to be lynx, that means the cat
exists in the woods where it was collected.
The problem was that in previous lynx studies, biologists had complained
that the lab's results were screwy. In one case, technicians reported
that submitted hair samples came from feral house cats-though the fur in
question was taken from the middle of a wilderness. (The lab says it has
clear protocols in place to correctly identify samples.) So in 1999, and
again in
2000, several biologists working on the survey on behalf of the U.S.
Forest Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife, and the Washington State
Department of Fish and Wildlife independently decided to test the men
and women in white coats by sending them hairs from a captive lynx. One
biologist even sent in hairs plucked from "Harry"-a stuffed bobcat that
he keeps in his office.
In September 2000, somebody at the Forest Service sounded an alarm about
the use of these "unauthorized" control samples. A departmental criminal
investigation cleared the biologists of any wrongdoing, but a second
report, prepared by a Portland, Oregon, private investigation firm and
completed last June, notes that the biologists claim to have done
everything aboveboard, except for a small detail: The national lynx
study doesn't authorize using control samples, whether they're taken
from Harry or a captive lynx. The scientists shrugged, and the whole
thing landed in a binder on a shelf.
In mid-December, someone tipped off The Washington Times, and the paper
subsequently ran with news that "wildlife biologists planted false
evidence of a rare cat species in two national forests." Other papers
followed suit with bombastic editorials, and the fur really began to
fly. Congressman Hansen called for a top-to-bottom federal review of the
lynx survey. The scandal, he warned, threatened the very economy of
rural America. "This hoax, if it hadn't been discovered," Hansen said,
"could have wrecked some people's way of life."
Mitch Wainwright and the other alleged conspirators, whose names were
blacked out of the private investigator's report, could do nothing but
sit tight as a maelstrom began to rage around them. Interior Secretary
Gale Norton and Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman, who oversee Fish and
Wildlife and the Forest Service respectively, each put their Office of
Inspector General on the case. A congressional hearing was scheduled for
February 28.
But while Wainwright declined to discuss specifics, citing the
investigation, he flatly denies the conspiracy charges.
"There was no collusion," he says, "no agenda."
The strangest thing about the so-called planted fur samples is the
assumption that saws and snowmobiles will fall silent wherever lynx are
discovered. In fact, there are virtually no cases in which the presence
of lynx has changed management policies. Lynx certainly didn't stop the
Forest Service from approving the Vail ski area's planned expansion into
what Colorado state biologists considered prime lynx habitat on the
White River National Forest.
When presented with this fact, Marnie Funk, a spokeswoman for Hansen's
committee, would only refer back to the private investigator's findings.
"There is clearly no smoking gun in that report," she allows. "But there
are unanswered questions." She declined to elaborate, citing the pending
congressional investigation, except to add that the biologists' use of
unauthorized control samples was "a questionable way to conduct a
study."
Wainwright acknowledges that he erred by not following the chain of
command. "We did things wrong," he says, citing their failure to clear
the control samples with the head of the lynx program. (The biologists'
immediate supervisors were aware of the control samples.) The small
point is well taken, but the bigger picture here should give pause to
anyone concerned over how easily politics trumps science inside the
Beltway.
"Anything endangered-species related is now being called into question,"
says Eric Wingerter, national field director for Public Employees for
Environmental Responsibility, a green-tilted group that includes federal
land managers. And the conservative press rushed to provide those
critics with a soapbox: "The tendency of true believers," sniffed an
opinion piece in The Weekly Standard, "is to defend any means to their
end. "Indeed, post-Lynxgate, some lawmakers have called for a review of
an unrelated federal grizzly-bear research program, while others are
rehashing dubious stories that federal biologists faked data that
touched off the spotted-owl wars of the eighties. "The people with the
agenda aren't the biologists," says Wingerter. "And the biologists are
scared to death."
For his part, Forest Service scientist Mitch Wainwright, who is now
working on timber-sale evaluations, does plead guilty-"of naïveté." But
as for charges that he and his colleagues were engaged in a crusade, he
is emphatic. "Nothing," he says, "could be further from the truth."
http://outside.away.com/outside/news/lynxgate_1.adp
--
Neil Jones- Neil at nwjones.demon.co.uk http://www.butterflyguy.com/
NOTE NEW WEB ADDRESS
"At some point I had to stand up and be counted. Who speaks for the
butterflies?" Andrew Lees - The quotation on his memorial at Crymlyn Bog
National Nature Reserve
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