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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
The Bush administration is jettisoning real scientists in favor of yes men.
Nov 14, 2003 | In the final days of October, Craig Manson, assistant interior secretary for fish and wildlife and parks, dealt a "Godfather"-style blow to a team of government biologists that was about to release a final report with flow recommendations for the Missouri River -- a blow that could have a sizable ripple effect on the river itself. The report was to have argued for the need to better mimic the natural flow of the Missouri (releasing more water from hydroelectric dams in the spring and less in the summer) to prevent extinction of the river's endangered sturgeon, tern and plover populations, and to reduce the risk of future flooding.
Responding to objections from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers that the report's suggestions would economically inconvenience dam owners and the Missouri River's barge industry, Manson penned a three-paragraph memo ordering a second opinion on Missouri River management. This opinion is to be provided by a "special national team of [U.S. Fish and Wildlife] Service experts ... referred to as 'the Wise Guys' or the 'SWAT Team,' [which] has served well in other complex, high-interest consultations,'" he wrote, with nary a trace of irony to soften the mafia-boss language. The replacement biological SWAT team will reach its conclusions after a 45-day study; the original team's findings were based on more than 10 years of research and were confirmed by independent peer review as well as by the National Academy of Sciences.
Those original findings were also upheld last year by a federal court: When the Corps refused to adopt the flow-change recommendations made by the team in 2000, the environmental group American Rivers took the agency to court and won. Still, the Corps has only partially complied, and is now arguing that river conditions have changed since 2000 and that the science is unreliable: "Our [most recent] engineering studies have demonstrated that the proposed flow changes will not achieve desired biological attributes," said Paul Johnston, a spokesperson for the Corps.
Johnston argued that mating habitat for river life should be created by bulldozers, not river flows: "We can build sandbars mechanically for mating habitat that tremendous flows [as well as commercial cost] would be required to accomplish naturally." Johnston estimated that the commercial cost of implementing the scientists' recommendations would be $30 million in lost annual hydroelectric plant revenue; in addition, the barge industry would face losses resulting from shutting down operations for up to two months of the year.
But the ecological costs of not adopting the recommendations are potentially far more calamitous. "Keep in mind that these are engineers talking about biology," said Allyn Sapa, a recently retired biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service who supervised the Missouri River project for more than five years. "They don't seem to understand that right now we are pushing three species toward the brink of extinction and the current water-flow operations are violating the Endangered Species Act. It seems that the [engineers and the Bush administration] don't want to hear that. And it's hard not to think that because our findings don't match up with what they want to hear, they are putting a new team on the job who will give them what they want."
A scientist on the disbanded team who is still employed at Fish and Wildlife spoke to Muckraker on condition of anonymity: "What concerns me is not just that the officials seem to be looking for a predetermined answer [on how to manage river flow], but that the replacement 'SWAT team' scientists know almost nothing about the Missouri River -- whereas our team has worked in this river basin for years."
Equally calamitous could be the long-term political costs of jettisoning sound science to curry favor with industry, said Eric Eckl, director of media affairs for American Rivers. "This is just the latest chapter in a politically complicated book called 'War and Peace over the Missouri River.'" The central villain in this novel, said Eckl, is Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo., a strong supporter of the barge industry who seems convinced that any kind of environmental protections for the river will sabotage his state's economy. His paranoia has been swallowed whole by the Bush administration: In August, President Bush attended a fundraiser for Bond and declared that no federal agency should govern the flow of the longest river in America.
There are reasons why Bush may find Bond so convincing: While Missouri is hardly the only state with a claim on the eponymous river, which runs from Montana to the Mississippi River, it is a swing state with more electoral votes than any other in the river's path. And Bush doesn't need to worry about those other states from a campaign standpoint, as most are solidly Republican.
From a legal and scientific standpoint, however, he might well have to worry. The fish and wildlife agencies of all seven states along the river have written in support of the original team's findings. American Rivers said that if the new team reaches pro-industry conclusions, it's more than prepared to go back to court. Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., has also publicly questioned the administration's move and is teaming up with other river-basin senators to call for an investigation into the Bush administration's decision to sack the scientists. "For over 10 years, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has been saying that the science is on our side, but now the Bush administration seems to want different scientists to reach different conclusions," Daschle said in a statement. As we've seen before, this administration's M.O. is simple: If you don't like the science, change the scientist.
