From the WSJ Opinion Archives
SCENE & HEARD
The Missing Lynx
The latest Clinton scandal has fur flying in Washington.
Fur is flying in Washington, and it's about time.
In December, a scandal broke over a high-profile survey to count threatened Canada lynx. Seven employees from the Fish and Wildlife Service, the Forest Service and a state agency submitted hair samples from captive lynx and tried to pass them off as wild. When caught, the employees claimed they were testing the DNA identification process. Another explanation is that they were falsely attempting to establish the presence of lynx in places where they aren't, potentially blocking national forests to human use.
Washington is in an uproar. Rep. Scott McInnis (R., Colo.) has scheduled hearings, while several agencies are investigating how far the bio-fraud extended.
Let's hope they dig deep. If they do, they might finally understand what Western and rural landowners have known for ages: These departments can no longer be trusted to make fair or competent decisions about our nation's resources.
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.
When the species act was passed in 1973, it was a bipartisan effort to save animals truly on the brink of extinction. The law charged the government with making decisions over which species to list, using the "best scientific and commercial information" available. But environmental groups with an antidevelopment agenda quickly realized how easy it was to exploit the law. Getting an animal or plant listed meant putting large areas of rural America off limits to industries they hated.
Environmental groups knew early on that getting the lynx listed would prove a gold mine. While many animals are limited to small geographic areas, the lynx had been spotted in some 22 states, and they're so elusive they could be anywhere. A federal listing could potentially bar millions of acres of land from use, including logging, skiing, road-building, trapping.
Environmental groups faced one major obstacle: scientific proof. The best information said the Canada lynx was just that--Canadian. In fact, Canada has such a thriving population it still allows trapping. Scientists say lynx sightings below the border are the result of cats wandering down from Canada; some northern states might have small populations straddling the border. As late as 1994, Fish and Wildlife declined to list the species, citing a "lack of residency of lynx populations."
By 1997 things had changed. For one, the Clinton administration was filling the agencies with activists. Jamie Rappaport Clark, who ultimately became director of Fish and Wildlife, is recently famous as the first signature on a petition opposing "Big Oil's exploitation" of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. There was also Michael Dombeck, who crafted the infamous roadless policy as the Forest Service head. Both Ms. Clark and Mr. Dombeck have gone on to work for the left-wing, activist National Wildlife Federation.
So it surprised few when, in the face of established science, Fish and Wildlife released a 1997 report saying "new information" indicated the U.S. had its own "distinct population" of lynx. The report detailed how humans were destroying the cat's habitat. Environmental groups seized on this to sue for a listing.
Still, the agency had a problem. Fish and Wildlife admitted it had no idea where lynx were or how many existed. Most of its records were spotty and dated; some were based on local sightings, some on records 100 years old. The agencies began several survey projects.
In 1998, the Forest Service contracted with John Weaver, who worked for an environmental group, the Wildlife Conservation Society, to do a lynx survey in Oregon and Washington. In early 1999 he reported findings of lynx hair in both states, a surprise given no one thought lynx were in the areas he listed. His information was ultimately included in the agency's determination to list the lynx as threatened.
In 1999, the agencies went further, teaming up on the National Interagency Lynx Survey, a three-year project to identify lynx across the U.S. It was then that Mr. Weaver's findings became an issue. According to a report by an outside investigator for the Forest Service, employees working on the interagency survey in Oregon and Washington "considered the results of the Weaver survey to be valid" and were disturbed when they didn't turn up evidence of lynx themselves.
And so in the 1999 and 2000 survey seasons, the employees turned in fake samples to the lab labeled as wild lynx. They were caught. Worse, in 2001 (a year after Fish and Wildlife finally listed the lynx) it came out that Mr. Weaver's findings were wrong; the samples he'd found were from bobcats or coyotes.
The Lynx Seven claim they worried the lab wasn't correctly identifying lynx and the submissions had been a test. But the survey specifically didn't allow such tests. Moreover, the reason the story came out was because one employee, the day before he retired, blew the whistle. A supervisor quoted in the report even suggested one employee was "trying to hide the fact he sent in a control sample." Still, none of the scientists were fired; they were sent to counseling and given different jobs.
What's needed is a thorough housecleaning. The Bush administration must start by clearing away the worst perpetrators of junk science. According to Jim Beers, a 30-year veteran of Fish and Wildlife, one of many pushed into early retirement: "In recent years the agency eliminated all the real requirements, pushed out people that didn't fit the antihunting, antifishing, anti-land-management profile. They've got to get back to science."
In the interim, perhaps the services should be forced to submit their studies to peer review--by outside and representative panels. Given that Fish and Wildlife and the Forest Service are destroying private landowner's livelihoods, it should be incumbent upon them to get their science right. The lynx scandal shows that at the moment, they can't.
Ms. Strassel is an editorial page writer for The Wall Street Journal. Her column appears on alternate Thursdays.
