Wildlife Decisions to be Revised
By Janet Wilson, Los Angeles Times
November 28, 2007

Federal wildlife regulators will revise seven controversial decisions on endangered species and critical habitat made by an Interior Department political appointee who quit in the spring amid charges of improper meddling in scientific decisions.

California's arroyo toad and red-legged frog could regain protection that federal biologists determined was crucial to their survival, according to a letter the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service sent Friday to House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Nick J. Rahall II (D-W.Va.). Rahall released the letter publicly Tuesday.

Former Deputy Assistant Interior Secretary Julie MacDonald, a civil engineer from California with no formal training in natural sciences, routinely questioned and sometimes overruled recommendations by biologists and other field staffers, according to documents, interviews and a review by the department's inspector general. The review outlined instances in which MacDonald advocated altering scientific conclusions in ways that led to reduced protection for imperiled species and that favored developers and agricultural businesses. And she was rebuked for providing internal documents to lobbyists.

She could not be reached for comment.

MacDonald "should never have been allowed near the endangered species program," Rahall said in a statement Tuesday. "This announcement is the latest illustration of the depth of incompetence at the highest levels of management within the Interior Department and breadth of this administration's penchant for torpedoing science."

The congressman held hearings on MacDonald's oversight of endangered species programs during her tenure.

MacDonald, who owns a Sacramento-area ranch with her husband, took a particular interest in California, forcing sweeping cutbacks in proposed habitat protection in the state, according to Interior Department staff.

Under her direction, proposed habitat protection for the endangered arroyo toad, a tiny amphibian that once inhabited many Southern California creek regions, was slashed by 93%. Similarly, the protected area proposed for the threatened California red-legged frog was reduced from 4.1 million acres to 450,000 acres.

Those species are among seven identified by federal regulators in the letter to Rahall as possibly needing further protection.

Fish and Wildlife Service spokeswoman Valerie Fellows said decisions on whether to add back habitat could be made within a year. She said that the agency was short on funds and staff but "these species are a top priority."

Senior regional staffers and field biologists, who know the endangered species best, determined which of MacDonald's decisions needed reevaluation, Fellows said.

Kieran Suckling, policy director for the Center for Biological Diversity, said the Fish and Wildlife Service action was "nothing more than cynical damage control."

The federal agency is under court order to revise past actions pertaining to five of the seven species, Suckling said, and there has been extensive media coverage on the other two. "They're not giving anything up. . . . They're desperately trying to contain a public scandal rather than investigate the depths of corruption at Interior."

His group, which has successfully sued the Interior Department and the Fish and Wildlife Service over endangered or threatened species, filed suit in half a dozen federal district courts last week seeking to overturn other decisions made or influenced by MacDonald.

In all, the group has filed notice of intent to sue to gain broader protections for 55 species.

Fellows said she could not comment on active litigation but noted that agency staffers had reviewed all 55 decisions that MacDonald made during her tenure and had determined that her other actions were legal. Interior spokesman Hugh Vickery noted that although officials had concluded there were problems with MacDonald's work, she was legally entitled to make policy decisions on endangered species.

Jamie Rappaport Clark, head of the Fish and Wildlife Service under President Clinton, countered that political appointees are not supposed to pressure subordinates who are career scientists to change their findings. MacDonald regularly did that, investigators found.

"In my 20 years of government service . . . I've never seen anything like it," she said.

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Endangered Species Questions Expand
By Michael Milstein, The Oregonian
December 01, 2007

The Interior Department's inspector general will expand an investigation into the alleged political manipulation of decisions on 18 endangered species, including the northern spotted owl, marbled murrelet and bull trout.

In a letter Friday to Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., who requested the investigation, Inspector General Earl Devaney said he will look into whether "improper political influence" by department officials led to reduced protections for those key Northwest species and others.

The administration scaled back federal safeguards for some of those species after legal agreements with the timber industry, which sees the safeguards as obstacles to logging.

For example, Bush officials in 2004 overruled federal scientists, determining that marbled murrelets in the Northwest did not need protection under the Endangered Species Act because plenty of the seabirds remain in Canada and Alaska.

Wyden said Friday that he supports sound logging and forest management, but that wildlife protections "have to be based on sensible science, not sleazy politics."

Devaney agreed to start his investigation immediately after Wyden made the request in a letter sent Friday. That's a sign Devaney is primed to dig deeper into the activities of Julie MacDonald, a former deputy assistant secretary of fish, wildlife and parks who was found to have bullied biologists and altered scientific findings.

MacDonald resigned in May after a report by Devaney's office said she leaked government information to industry groups trying to undercut Endangered Species Act protections. She quit the day Wyden demanded that Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne address her behavior.

The episode added to a string of misconduct by Interior Department officials, including some convicted of crimes in connection with the Jack Abramoff bribery scandal.

"It has been one example after another of improper political influence and, in some cases, out and out corruption," said Wyden, who heads the Senate Subcommittee on Public Lands and Forests.

In his letter to Devaney, who works independently of the Interior Department leadership, Wyden said he "has reason to believe," based on documents and other evidence, that MacDonald improperly influenced decisions on many species and interfered with scientific findings in the 2004 conclusion affecting marbled murrelets.

Wyden pushed Kempthorne, a former Senate colleague, to look more thoroughly into those decisions. Wyden blocked the appointment of MacDonald's replacement, demanding that Kempthorne first take corrective action. But Senate leaders pushed the appointment through when Wyden was out of town for the birth of his twins.

Kempthorne did ask his officials to review MacDonald's activities but focused his request too narrowly, Wyden said. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service ultimately reviewed only eight decisions, largely involving species more obscure than the spotted owl and marbled murrelet, which are central in debates over Northwest logging.

Wyden criticized that review as cursory and unreliable and said it was "regrettable" Kempthorne had not done more.

The General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, is looking into the Interior Department's choice of which decisions it reviewed, Wyden noted in his letter to Devaney.

Protections for the spotted owl and murrelet led to dramatic cutbacks in federal land logging through the 1990s and adoption of the 1994 Northwest Forest Plan, which set aside millions of acres of the Northwest as older forest reserves.

Interior Department spokesman Hugh Vickery said Friday that Kempthorne depended on career federal biologists, including Fish and Wildlife Service Director Dale Hall, to decide which actions MacDonald may have mishandled: "We went with what they said."

Fish and Wildlife officials said earlier this week that they would reconsider seven of those actions.

"Obviously the inspector general is independent of us and can determine for himself what to investigate," Vickery said. He said was not aware of any policy or organizational changes within the Interior Department to prevent misconduct such as MacDonald's.

Dominick Della Sala, an Ashland forest ecologist who served on a federal panel that developed a recovery plan for the northern spotted owl, said political appointees told the panel to come up with an option that eliminated fixed forest reserves.

Political manipulation may run "a lot deeper than what they're looking at," he said, "and I don't think it stops with Julie MacDonald."

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New look at Species
By Jerd Smith, Rocky Mountain News
November 28, 2007

Political pressure in Washington, D.C., tainted decisions regarding protection of seven threatened species, including Colorado's Preble's meadow jumping mouse, the white-tailed prairie dog and the habitat of the Canada lynx, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has determined.

Each of the species will receive new reviews to determine whether they should have more or less protection.

"It means we have a lot of work in front of us," said Tom Blickensderfer, endangered species program director for the Colorado Department of Natural Resources.

Rulings on the species came under scrutiny last spring after a U.S. Interior Department inspector general concluded that agency scientists were pressured to alter their findings by Julie MacDonald, then a deputy assistant secretary overseeing the Fish and Wildlife Service.

MacDonald resigned her position last May after she was rebuked by the Interior Department for her actions.

She was instrumental in early decisions not to protect the Preble's meadow jumping mouse and the white-tailed prairie dog, among others.

In a letter sent to U.S. Rep. Nick Rahall, D-W.Va., chairman of the Committee on Natural Resources, Kenneth Stansell, acting director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said his agency would review several actions:

* The decision not to list the white-tailed prairie dog as endangered. The agency says it will possibly reconsider this decision in late 2009 or early 2010.

* The decision not to complete studies on new habitat protection for the Canada lynx. The agency will complete a new rule on habitat by August.

* The decision to begin delisting the Preble's meadow jumping mouse.

The agency is slated to make a decision in June on a proposed rule that protects the mouse in Colorado but not in Wyoming.

"I think they will have to withdraw all of those decisions and reconsider them," Blickensderfer said. "I don't know yet if they will absolutely reverse them or if they will reconsider them after they've gathered public comment."

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