Best Science Available?

The administration has no comment regarding the use of Mickey Mouse science:

Mouse frustrates endangered species policy, by John Heilprin, AP: An acrobatic mouse is threatening Bush administration efforts to give Western developers an upper hand over endangered species. The Preble's meadow jumping mouse is in fact a distinct creature, according to a U.S. Geological Survey study presented ... to senior Interior Department officials.

That finding contradicts research touted by Interior Secretary Gale Norton last February when she proposed removing the mouse from the government's endangered species list. Critics say it also undercuts the administration's claim that it uses the best science available in promoting fewer protections for imperiled wildlife.

The previous study, which was done by a biologist since hired by Norton's department, concluded there was no genetic difference between the Preble's meadow jumping mouse and the much more common Bear Lodge meadow jumping mouse. Listed by the government as a threatened species since 1998, the Preble's meadow mouse stands in the way of any project that could damage its habitat, a broad swath of Colorado and Wyoming ...

The 3-inch mouse uses its 6-inch tail, and strong hind legs to launch itself a foot and a half into the air, where it can abruptly switch directions in mid-flight. It prefers to roam by night, scurrying and jumping along streams through undisturbed grasslands. There it dines on insects, spiders, fungus, moss, willow, sunflower, grasses and seeds, hibernating each winter from mid-October to early May.

A year ago, developers welcomed the findings of biologist Rob Roy Ramey ... and the Interior Department's conclusion, based on his findings, that the Preble's meadow mouse no longer needed federal protections. Ramey was later contracted as a science adviser to the Interior Department in its attempt to reclassify several species whose endangered status is blocking developers.

The new study was conducted by Tim King, a USGS conservation geneticist based in West Virginia, and peer-reviewed by academic experts outside government. One of the reviewers, Eric Hallerman, a professor of fisheries and wildlife science at Virginia Tech, said King's study debunks Ramey's work. "It contradicts it fairly strongly," Hallerman said. ... Hallerman said Ramey's work reflects the Bush administration's intrusion of politics in its scientific research. "It seemed to me from the get-go, he wanted to find that this was not a taxonomically valid subspecies," Hallerman said.

After others raised similar doubts, Interior officials agreed to revisit Ramey's work by commissioning King's study. They had no immediate comment Wednesday. ... King said it probably would be a few more months before officials decide whether his study justifies continued federal protections for the high-flying mouse. "I would think that would be one of the options," he said.

Though I would not want the present poltical environment to tackle such a task, I could be convinced that the Endangered Species Act needs reexamination. But there is no role for shoddy or comissioned science in such a process, and no role for anything that blurs the distinction between true science in search of the truth and work designed to reach or support a predetermined conclusion.

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[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/24/national/24species.html?ex=1274587200&en=66761bd886bb808d&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

May 24, 2005

New Rule on Endangered Species in the Southwest
By FELICITY BARRINGER

WASHINGTON - The southwestern regional director of the United States Fish and Wildlife Service has instructed members of his staff to limit their use of the latest scientific studies on the genetics of endangered plants and animals when deciding how best to preserve and recover them.

At issue is what happens once a fish, animal, plant or bird is included on the federal endangered species list as being in danger of extinction and needing protection.

Dale Hall, the director of the southwestern region, in a memorandum dated Jan. 27, said that all decisions about how to return a species to robust viability must use only the genetic science in place at the time it was put on the endangered species list - in some cases the 1970's or earlier - even if there have been scientific advances in understanding the genetic makeup of a species and its subgroups in the ensuing years.

His instructions can spare states in his region the expense of extensive recovery efforts. Arizona officials responsible for the recovery of Apache trout, for example, argue that the money - $2 million to $3 million in the past five years - spent on ensuring the survival of each genetic subgroup of the trout was misdirected, since the species as a whole was on its way to recovery.

In his memorandum, Mr. Hall built upon a federal court ruling involving Oregon Coast coho salmon. The judge in that case said that because there was no basic genetic distinction between hatchery fish and their wild cousins, both had to be counted when making a determination that the fish was endangered.

In the policy discussion attached to his memorandum, Mr. Hall wrote, "genetic differences must be addressed" when a species is declared endangered. Thereafter, he said, "there can be no further subdivision of the entity because of genetics or any other factor" unless the government goes through the time-consuming process of listing the subspecies as a separate endangered species.

The regional office, in Albuquerque, covers Arizona, Oklahoma, New Mexico and Texas.

Mr. Hall's memorandum prompted dissent within the agency. Six weeks later, his counterpart at the mountain-prairie regional office, in Denver, sent a sharp rebuttal to Mr. Hall.

"Knowing if populations are genetically isolated or where gene flow is restricted can assist us in identifying recovery units that will ensure that a species will persist over time," the regional director, Ralph O. Morgenweck, wrote. "It can also ensure that unique adaptations that may be essential for future survival continue to be maintained in the species."

Mr. Hall's policy, he wrote, "could run counter to the purpose of the Endangered Species Act" and "may contradict our direction to use the best available science in endangered species decisions in some cases." ...

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/26/politics/26species.html?ex=1277438400&en=411a4408c5a0cfa3&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

June 26, 2005

Endangered Species Act Faces Broad New Challenges
By FELICITY BARRINGER

WASHINGTON - More than three decades after the Endangered Species Act gave the federal government tools and a mandate to protect animals, insects and plants threatened with extinction, the landmark law is facing the most intense efforts ever by the White House, Congress, landowners and industry to limit its reach.

More than any time in the law's 32-year history, the obligations it imposes on government and, indirectly, on landowners are being challenged in the courts, reworked in the agencies responsible for enforcing it and re-examined in Congress.

In some cases, the challenges are broad and sweeping, as when the Bush administration, in a legal battle over the best way to protect endangered salmon, declared Western dams to be as much a part of the landscape as the rivers they control. In others, the actions are deep in the realm of regulatory bureaucracy, as when a White House appointee at the Interior Department sought to influence scientific recommendations involving the sage grouse, a bird whose habitat includes areas of likely oil and gas deposits.

Some environmentalists readily concede that the law has long overemphasized the stick and provided fewer carrots for private interests than it might. But some of them also fear that the law's defects will be used as a justification for a wholesale evisceration....

[11 dogs]

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