Interference Tainted Endangered Species Rulings
By the Associated Press
December 16, 2008

WASHINGTON - A high-ranking Interior Department official tainted nearly every decision made on the protection of endangered species over five years, a new inspector general report finds, concluding she exerted improper political interference on many more rulings than previously thought.

Julie MacDonald, a former deputy assistant secretary overseeing the Fish and Wildlife Service, did pervasive harm to the department's morale and integrity and may have risked the well-being of species with her agenda, Interior Inspector General Earl Devaney said in his report out Monday.

The Interior Department last year reversed seven rulings that denied endangered species increased protection, after an investigation found that MacDonald had applied political pressure in those cases. The new report looked at nearly two dozen other endangered species decisions not examined in the earlier report. It found MacDonald directly interfered with at least 13 decisions and indirectly affected at least two more.

MacDonald, a civil engineer with no formal training in natural sciences, resigned in May 2007. Department employees reported that they used her name as a verb - encountering political interference from senior managers was called "getting MacDonalded."

Devaney said "MacDonald's zeal to advance her agenda has caused considerable harm to the integrity of the ESA program and to the morale and reputation" of the Fish and Wildlife Service, as well as potential harm to animals under the Endangered Species Act.

"Her heavy-handedness has cast doubt on nearly every ESA decision issued during her tenure," from 2002 until 2007, the report said. MacDonald was deputy assistant secretary from 2004 to 2007 and a senior adviser in the department for two years before that.

MacDonald did not return telephone messages left for her in Washington and California on Monday. In a letter to Devaney refusing to be interviewed for his second report, she said that he showed "breathtaking arrogance" in conducting his previous investigation.

She resigned weeks after the report by Devaney last year found that she broke federal rules and should face punishment for leaking information about endangered species to private groups. That report also said MacDonald censored science and mistreated staff.

The new investigation reaffirmed those findings and said MacDonald's influence was even more far-reaching. It also faulted her boss, former Assistant Secretary Craig Manson, as well as several other high-ranking Interior officials, including Randal Bowman, a special assistant to Manson, and Thomas Graf, a department lawyer.

Manson, who left office in 2005, told The Associated Press in the spring that he took an active role in the endangered species program and his actions were "perfectly proper."

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., who requested the investigation, said Devaney "makes it crystal clear how one person's contempt for the public trust can infect an entire agency."

Rep. Nick Rahall, D-W.Va., said the findings "paint a picture of something akin to a secret society residing within the Interior Department that was colluding to undermine the protection of endangered wildlife and covering for one another's misdeeds."

Interior Department spokesman Shane Wolfe said officials had just received the 147-page report late Monday and were reviewing it.

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Bush Official Twisted Species Data
By Michael Milstein, The Oregonian
December 15, 2008

A disgraced Bush administration appointee known for twisting science and altering key endangered species decisions interfered with far more findings than earlier revealed, according to a federal probe released Monday.

The investigation, requested by Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., showed that Julie MacDonald, former assistant secretary of Fish, Wildlife and Parks, manipulated decisions involving about a dozen additional species. In the Northwest, they included the northern spotted owl, marbled murrelet and bull trout.

"MacDonald's overreaching, and the actions of those who enabled and assisted her, have caused the unnecessary expenditure of hundreds of thousands of dollars to re-issue decisions and litigation costs to defend decisions" that turned out to be illegal, said the report from the Interior Department's inspector general.

MacDonald resigned from her job last year when Wyden said he would block another Bush administration appointment until the Interior Department reviewed her activities. The Interior Department reversed seven species rulings after it found MacDonald had improperly interfered.

Wyden asked the inspector general to examine MacDonald's involvement with nearly 20 more species.

Wyden said Monday that Congress must take steps to prevent similar meddling by political appointees in the future.

The latest report describes how MacDonald created a culture of fear within the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, bullying biologists until they were afraid for their jobs and then weakening species protections.

MacDonald refused to cooperate with the investigation by Interior Inspector General Earl Devaney.

Her intimidating tactics were so well-known within the agency, which has a regional office in Portland, that employees coined a new term to describe it: "getting MacDonalded."

"Scientists were concerned that they would be subject to MacDonald's verbal assaults and potential personnel actions," a federal official told investigators. "The concern caused them to take into consideration how to produce a project that would please MacDonald, instead of focusing on the science."

Federal officials told investigators that MacDonald spent two weeks in the Portland office looking for ways to exclude land from designation as critical habitat for the threatened bull trout. Theresa Rabot, assistant regional director for ecological services, said it was clear MacDonald was following no particular criteria but "was making it up as she went along."

The Fish and Wildlife Service "did the best job it could creating arguments supporting MacDonald's predeterminations," Rabot said.

Scott McCarthy, another Fish and Wildlife employee in Portland, said MacDonald's influence reached so widely that "biologists and regions simply started not to make recommendations based on the best available science because they knew the recommendations would be denied" by MacDonald. Eventually, "MacDonald did not even need to change or deny certain recommendations from the regions because the region became so well 'trained' not to even make such recommendations."

According to the report, "biologists were so tired of being 'yelled at,'" McCarthy's said, that "they simply acquiesced to the culture created by MacDonald and gave up the fight."

MacDonald also dictated who would sit on a team created by Fish and Wildlife to draft a controversial recovery plan for the northern spotted owl, a threatened species that dwells in large, old growth trees. The plan, which is being revised now, could influence which forests in the region are protected from logging.

MacDonald prevented any expert owl scientists from joining the panel and rejected arguments from Fish and Wildlife officials in Portland to include Native American tribes who might be affected by the plan.

Later reviews of the plan by outside scientists found that it mishandled the science surrounding spotted owls, and owl experts said it misrepresented their research, investigators found. The Fish and Wildlife Service then decided to revise the plan.

One option included in the plan was developed to accommodate a new federal logging plan for public lands in western Oregon. One biologist told investigators that at meetings related to the plan, "the most important question was, 'What do we want to harvest?' versus, 'What is best for the northern spotted owl?'"

Science Influenced

Among the federally protected species that may have been unduly influenced by Julie MacDonald, the former assistant secretary of Fish, Wildlife and Parks, or others in the Interior Department:

• Bull trout, a threatened species in the West.

• Northern spotted owl, a threatened species that favors large, old trees.

• Marbled murrelet, a threatened seabird that nests in old growth trees.

• Gulf sturgeon, a threatened species living along the Gulf of Mexico.

• Greater sage grouse, a bird living on western rangeland.

• Gunnison's prairie dog, a species in the southern Rockies.

• Northern Mexican garter snake, a species in the Southwest.

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Bush Undermines ESA Protections
Endangered Species Coalition Press Release
December 11, 2008

WASHINGTON - December 11 - Today, the Bush Administration released their final rule of a controversial plan to change how the Endangered Species Act is implemented by the federal government.

"Knowing America's love for wildlife, it's no surprise that President Bush waited until the last second to reveal his administration's true intention-disabling the Endangered Species Act," said Leda Huta, Executive Director of the Endangered Species Coalition. "Removing the Act's requirement to have trained scientists review federal projects is like taking the tires off an ambulance; it is still an ambulance, but it can't get anyone to the emergency room and offers a lot less protection."

This midnight rule change enables government agencies to decide for themselves when a proposed project or plan would negatively impact an endangered species and codifies the administration's desire to ignore the impacts of global warming on the nation's wildlife, fish and plants.

"These rules will be a lasting reminder of all of the disdain for science and political trumping of expertise that have characterized the Bush Administration's efforts to dismantle fundamental environmental laws. When it comes to protecting wildlife, we should listen to the scientists who spend their lives studying these animals. If they say global warming is the biggest threat to polar bears, then we should do what it takes to eliminate that threat," said Sierra Club Deputy Director Bruce Hamilton.

Currently, when a federal agency considers new projects, such as highways, oil leases, timber sales or water diversions, they are required to consult with the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) or National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) about impacts that their projects might have on endangered or threatened species. The expert scientists in these two agencies can then help council how a project may move forward with the least possible impact on vulnerable species. The new rule would allow a project to proceed without any input from the wildlife agencies, if the government agency in charge of the decision determines for itself that no harm will be done to a listed species.

"Wildlife and marine biologists form the pillars of scientific integrity that support the Endangered Species Act. Knocking them out of the decision-making process will erode the foundation of this bedrock law and make it significantly harder to protect endangered species," said John Kostyack, Executive Director of Wildlife and Global Warming for the National Wildlife Federation.

Concerns raised by the Congressional Research Service, the Attorney General of California, scientists, environmental lawyers and others indicate the proposed regulations may violate the Endangered Species Act, allow federal actions to proceed that would harm endangered species and create more work for federal agencies. According to the Department of the Interior, the agency received approximately 300,000 public comments, with only one percent supporting the changes. The agency provided only one week for the comments to be processed in their attempt to finalize these changes before the Obama administration begins.

"It is wrong for the Bush administration to try to deny protections for our most endangered wildlife as the administration wraps up its final days in office," said Susan Holmes of Earthjustice. "And to push these regulations through during the holidays is particularly disturbing."

The rule also expressly ties agency scientists' hands when it comes to protecting wildlife from global warming.

"That Bush and Cheney would purposely consign America's wildlife to extinction due to this Administration's ideological hostility toward the reality of global warming not only flies in the face of science, but also represents one of the greatest political abominations in history. These illegal endangered species regulations are yet another sorry chapter in the obsequious love affair the Bush Interior Department possesses with the old school oil, gas and coal industries," said William J. Snape, III, Senior Counsel, Center for Biological Diversity.

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Report Finds Meddling in Interior Dept
By Charlie Savage, The New York Times
December 15, 2008

WASHINGTON — The inspector general of the Interior Department has found that agency officials often interfered with scientific work in order to limit protections for species at risk of becoming extinct, reviving attention to years of disputes over the Bush administration’s science policies.

In a report delivered to Congress on Monday, the inspector general, Earl E. Devaney, found serious flaws in the process that led to 15 decisions related to policies on endangered species.

The report suggested that at least some of those decisions might need to be revisited under the Obama administration.

Among the more significant decisions was one reducing the number of streams that would be designated as critical habitat for the endangered bull trout and protected from commercial use. That rule is already the subject of a lawsuit by environmentalists.

“The results of this investigation paint a picture of something akin to a secret society residing within the Interior Department that was colluding to undermine the protection of endangered wildlife and covering for one another’s misdeeds,” said the chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, Representative Nick J. Rahall II, Democrat of West Virginia.

Most of the problematic decisions involved Julie A. MacDonald, a former deputy assistant secretary for fish and wildlife and parks, who oversaw endangered-species issues and frequently clashed with scientists. The report does not accuse Ms. MacDonald of doing anything illegal, but criticizes her conduct severely.

“MacDonald’s zeal to advance her agenda has caused considerable harm to the integrity” of the Endangered Species Act programs “and to the morale and the reputation” of the Fish and Wildlife Service, “as well as potential harm to individual species,” Mr. Devaney said in a cover letter to his report.

Efforts to reach Ms. MacDonald by telephone on Monday were unsuccessful. She resigned in May 2007 after an earlier inspector general report found that she had run roughshod over agency scientists and violated federal rules by giving internal documents to industry lobbyists.

After her resignation, the Fish and Wildlife Service began a review of eight agency decisions that regional officials said Ms. MacDonald might have manipulated to reach a result that was not supported by scientific evidence. The review is still going on.

But Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon and chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Public Lands and Forests, asked the inspector general to cast a wider net in reviewing Ms. MacDonald’s work and that of several close colleagues.

Of the 20 matters examined in the new report, the report found that Ms. MacDonald was involved in 13, and that in 15 “the integrity of the process was potentially jeopardized” by her or by several colleagues at the department.

“This report makes it crystal clear how one person’s contempt for the public trust can infect an entire agency,” Mr. Wyden said. “Ms. MacDonald’s narrow focus on her own agenda not only endangered the Endangered Species Act, it opened the door for countless land-use decisions and developments that would have never otherwise been considered.”

Mr. Devaney also criticized several of Ms. MacDonald’s colleagues at the agency who, he said, aided and abetted “her attempts to interfere with the science” and “the unwritten policy to exclude as many areas as practicable from critical habitat determinations.”

Spokesmen for the Interior Department and the wildlife service declined to comment, saying they had not yet read the report.

But the service’s spokesman, Chris Tollefson, noted that when previous reports about Ms. MacDonald came out, the agency had made “clear that scientific integrity was very important to the agency and that where there is evidence that improper conduct interfered with a decision, we were committed to going back and revisiting it.”

Francesca Grifo, director of the scientific integrity program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, a nonprofit advocacy group, portrayed Ms. MacDonald’s case as a symbol of a broader pattern of manipulation of science under the Bush administration.

“Over and over again, in agency after agency,” Ms. Grifo said, “we’ve seen where special interests bump up against scientific determinations, the science is set aside.”

The wildlife service report is likely to function as a road map for the Obama administration as it reviews the Bush administration’s decisions on whether to add species to the endangered list or to protect habitat.

In some cases, however, the decision has already been changed by a judge or the agency itself. In others, agency scientists prevailed despite efforts at interference, the report said.

The report also recommended new rules to limit the discretion wildlife service officials have on endangered species.

Under current law, such officials have wide latitude over their decisions. The report said administrations of both parties had exploited that vacuum to maximize their own power to impose their policy preferences.

Under that “enormous policy void,” Mr. Devaney wrote, officials are free to make decisions with “a wholesale lack of consistency, a process built on guess-work, and decisions that could not pass legal muster.”

As a result, he said, much of what the agency does ends up in court, requiring expensive litigation and effectively creating a system in which lawsuits drive the regulatory process.

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