Posts Tagged ‘United States Fish and Wildlife Service’

Feds and Contractor Caught Conducting Covert Wild Horse Stampede

Posted: September 26, 2010 by R.T. Fitch in Horse News, Horse Slaughter, Wild Horses/Mustangs
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
181

(The News as We See It) by R.T. Fitch

Advocates Catch Feds and Dave Cattoor with their Pants Down

USFWS&BLM/Cattors covertly loading and shipping wild horses from Sheldon ~ Photo by Katie Fite

While law makers and the American public had their eyes concentrated on the much contested Silver King round up in Nevada the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) along with helicopter contractor David Cattoor where conducting an unpublished and unannounced secret wild horse gather at the Sheldon National Wildlife Refuge (Sheldon).

Plaintiff in several suits against the BLM for lack of transparency and violation of First Amendment Rights, Laura Leigh , was tipped off that there was illicit activity taking place at Sheldon as many roads were closed due to a “wild horse gather”.

On September 22, 2010 Ms. Leigh discussed this situation with wild horse advocate Leslie Peeples, who was already on the road to visit another wild horse herd, and Ms. Peeples immediately changed plans and headed to Sheldon to investigate as no such “gather” was indicated in any public records.

On the morning of Sept. 23, 2010 Ms. Peeples phoned the Lakeview office of the USFWS and when asked if a wild horse gather was being conducted she was told, “yes”.

Cattoor Truck at Sheldon ~ Photo by Leslie Peeples

Ms. Peeples headed out to Sheldon on back roads when she encountered an oncoming semi-truck with a livestock trailer being towed behind it at a reasonable speed.  Ms. Peeples intended to ask the driver where the stampede was taking place so she pulled her car over to the side of the road and stepped out into her lane of traffic to flag the driver down for information.  Upon seeing this, according to filed court documents, the truck driver aimed for the center of the road, speeded up and missed running over Ms. Peoples by only inches.

“It is my opinion based on clear observations at the time that, had I not moved out of the way, the truck would have hit me,”  stated Ms. Peeples, “As it turns out, the truck which passed by me was loaded with, what I am informed and believe to be wild horses from the Sheldon gather.”

Same Truck at Twin Peaks ~ Photo by Terry Fitch

Photos verify that said truck was owned by BLM helicopter stampede contractor, David Cattoor.  One photo was taken by Ms. Peeples at Sheldon and the other by Terry Fitch at Twin Peaks.  They both match.

Subsequently, upon heading further up the road, Ms. Peeples was barred access to public lands and told that the stampede was not published because “We like to keep things low and quiet”.  Likewise when Ms. Peeples inquired about viewing the horses at the holding facility she was told that it was on private land and that she would not be allowed.

Upon departing Sheldon and with the resumption of cell service Ms. Peeples did make contact with the USFWS Lakeview Regional Office (Lakeview Office) and spoke with a Mr. Paul Steblien who confirmed that a wild horse roundup was taking place and that 400 horses would be stampeded.  Further information relayed by Mr. Steblien indicated that the horses would be transferred to the Dufferina Refuge Headquarters and that 250 of the captured horses would forever lose their freedom while 150 would be “vasectomized” and “ovarectomized” and returned to the refuge.  Mr. Steblien did agree to escort Ms. Peeples into the gather area the following day.

Ms. Peeples then headed to the Dufferina Headquarters to further search for information regarding this secret stampede.  Unfortunately no one was available at the office so she continued down the road to locate a place to take her dog for a walk.

Horse Bones near subversive burying pit near roundup wild horse holding facility ~ Photo by Leslie Peeples

Once outside of her car she began to notice skeletal horse remains scattered on the ground, as she began to investigate and walk further away from the road the bones became more numerous  until she came upon a freshly dug pit.  Nearby was what appeared to be another pit that was freshly covered with numerous bones scattered throughout the area.

“There were horse bones scattered everywhere. I photographed what I observed…”, Peeples said.

As she headed back to her car she heard horses whinnying.  She walked towards the direction of the calls and discovered a holding facility with approximately 250 horses confined.  There was no signage indicating area restrictions.  Likewise, she witnessed parked in the area what she believed was the same truck that tried to run her over, earlier.  There were no humans at the facility.

Chopper violating FAA Safety Regulations ~ Photo by Leslie Peeples

While walking back up the hill towards her car she could hear the roar of helicopter blades which as she proceeded and crested the hill she observed the helicopter hovering just a few dozen feet above the roof of her car.  Once her physical presence was reveled the chopper pilot aggressively turned the aircraft in her direction and hovered directly over her with little more than 30 feet of safe clearance.

“At this point the helicopter was so close I could see the pilot’s face and his facial features appeared angry”, said Peeples.

As the unsettled Ms. Peeples attempted to make her way to the car the aircraft continued his aggressive actions and orbited around her at an estimated distance of only 60 feet.  Even while in the car and attempting to drive away the chopper continued to harass her until she stopped and shot another picture which, then, caused the aircraft to depart the area.

Relentless helicopter attack againest taxpaying U.S. Citzen ~ Photo by Leslie Peeples

Ms. Peeples pulled over to gather her composure and exited her vehicle for some fresh air only to have the chopper return, again, to harass her.  Once more the camera proved to be an effective weapon in deterring the marauding helicopter.

The level of harassment did not let up as soon Ms. Peeples was accosted by a USFWS Ranger and the following day her “escort” was canceled due to her unexpected presence on public land the day before.

Ms. Peeples has and will submit to the court her video and photographic documentation of the events laid out in this brief article.

 

Bio-Diversity Group Sues BLM to Stop Controversial Ruby Pipeline

Posted: July 31, 2010 by R.T. Fitch in Horse News
Tags: , , , , , , , ,
40

by R.T. Fitch

Suit Too Late for the Calico Wild Horses

HOUSTON (SFTHH) – The controversial $3 billion gas pipeline from Wyoming to Oregon faces yet another law suit, filed by the Center for Biological Diversity on Friday.  Once cited for the reason the BLM zeroed out a herd of almost 2,000 wild horses, with the death toll still ticking beyond 150 killed horses, the new suit alleges that the pipeline will cut across pristine land and harm endangered fish.

Two other environmental groups, Oregon Natural Desert Foundation and Western Watersheds Project recently abandoned their standing suits in favor of accepting $20 million from the pipeline owner, El Paso Corp.

The new suit was filed in federal court in San Francisco against both the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Noah Greenwald, endangered species coordinator for the group stated;

“The Ruby Pipeline will cross more than 1,000 rivers and streams, harming species such as the Lahontan cutthroat trout, Warner Creek sucker, Lost River sucker and Colorado pike minnow.   More broadly, we don’t understand why they had to choose to put a new pipeline through some of the most pristine lands in the West,” he said. “Why couldn’t they use an existing pipeline route?”

Greenwald continued to add that if the constructions begin the Center for Biological Diversity is prepared to seek an injunction to stop the work until the issues stated are addressed.

The BLM project manager, Mark Mackiewicz said that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission had issued a notice to proceed on Friday, the same day that the suit was filed.

“I imagine by Monday you’ll have hundreds of people out there starting to work on this,” he said.

He said the BLM and Ruby Pipeline LLC, a subsidiary of El Paso Corp., worked hard to address environmental concerns.  Various sources indicate that  El Paso spokesman Richard Wheatley declined to comment.

The Ruby Pipeline will begin at Opal in western Wyoming and cross northern Utah and Nevada before ending at Malin, Ore., near the California state line. Work on the project would begin at seven locations along the pipeline route, simultaneously.

The 42-inch-diameter pipeline will be among North America’s largest, approaching the size of the 48-inch, 800-mile-long Trans Alaska oil pipeline.

Prior documentation indicates that El Paso expects that the Ruby Pipeline will become operational in March of 2011

Related articles by Zemanta

The Legal Voice of the Amercian Equine

Enhanced by Zemanta

Bookmark and Share

Breaking News: Wild Horse Advocate Requests FBI Investigation

Posted: June 22, 2010 by R.T. Fitch in Horse News, Wild Horses/Mustangs
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
67

Press Release from the Cloud Foundation

Artist Laura Leigh with the captured Calico Horses - Photo by Elyse Gardner

Reno, NV (June 21, 2010)—Cindy MacDonald, research expert and American Herds blogger has filed a request for investigation with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) this afternoon to prevent the transport, adoption, and/or sale of non-excess Calico wild horses currently being held in BLM processing facilities. MacDonald is requesting an investigation into the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) for attempting to dispose of the Calico wild horses prior to confirming that the recent removal operations left approximately 600-900 wild horses on the range as required by law.

From December 28, 2009 to February 7, 2010, BLM reported they removed 1922 wild horses from the Calico Complex in NW Nevada during the fatal winter roundup.

MacDonald contends that, “the BLM may have removed far too many Calico horses in a massive roundup last winter and failed to return, by BLM definition, ‘non-excess’ horses.” The BLM is required to leave at least 572 wild horses on the Calico range, the low level of their arbitrarily set “appropriate management level” (AML). Only horses above that level can be considered excess. Returning the horses would save at least $3 million dollars over the next ten years alone.

Early this month, wildlife ecologist Craig Downer carried out a flyover of the Calico Complex in a fixed-wing aircraft. Downer was able to find only 31 wild horses but noted 350 privately-owned cattle grazing on the Herd Management Areas (HMAs). Downer noted that “there was a reasonable spring green-up of the landscape and the open treeless character of the terrain permitted a high degree of horse detection”. An additional ground survey by Robert Bauer resulted in finding only 9 mustangs in Nevada’s Calico Complex region.

“Two recent independent observers report the Calico herds are gone,” states MacDonald, adding “there’s a vast difference between less than 50 and 600-900 wild horses. The public needs to be sure the BLM followed the law before those horses are shipped out.”

MacDonald points out that BLM is plagued with failures to properly count free-roaming wild horses and burros even though the agency attempts to develop new protocol to remedy these errors.

“While the BLM’s numbers rarely add up, the Calico fiasco is an extreme example of this from start to finish,” states MacDonald.

Responding to public comments during last Monday’s BLM Denver workshop, the BLM announced Friday they will partner with U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for an aerial census of NW Nevada and SE Oregon. The BLM refuses to bring along The Cloud Foundation’s ‘Herd-Watch’ project director, Laura Leigh, on their census flights—continuing to demonstrate their closed-door protocol. The Foundation supports transparency and wants advocates involved in counting horses.

The BLM’s policy for massive removals through roundups, followed with stockpiling mustangs in government-contracted holding pens and mid-east pastures is not sustainable and is costing American taxpayers some $40 million per year.

“In this day and age of government budget crises, to waste the lives of these mustangs at a cost of millions of dollars to the American taxpayers is unconscionable,” statesGinger Kathrens, Director of The Cloud Foundation and Emmy Award-winning filmmaker. “We call on BLM to show an act of good faith. We ask they put an immediate moratorium on all roundups is until we can partner together to sort this all out.”

Related articles by Zemanta

Bookmark and Share

Enhanced by Zemanta

BLM to Conduct Clandestine Wild Horse Population Survey

Posted: June 19, 2010 by R.T. Fitch in Horse News, The Force of the Horse, Wild Horses/Mustangs
Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
32

“The News as We See It” by R.T. Fitch ~ author of “Straight from the Horse’s Heart“

If you want accurate numbers “Who Ya Gonna Call?” the BLM?  NOT!

Areas where alleged survey is to be conducted

The Bureau of Land Management reports that they will work with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) to conduct an aerial population survey of native wild horses on nearly four million acres of public land located in northwest Nevada and southeast Oregon.

The survey is slated to begin on June 20 and will last up to eight days, using a fixed-wing aircraft versus the deadly helicopters that the BLM is known for.

The alleged goal of the project is a late effort to improve the quality and accuracy of wild horse population counts, this comes on the heels of the botched and mismanaged Calico complex round up where the BLM captured over 2,000+ horses, many dying in the process, and claimed to have left 600 on the range.  To date, observers have visualized less than 50 horses remaining while hundreds of privately owned cattle were observed destroying the public land.

“Past population surveys and management projects by BLM and the USFWS within the survey area have shown that animals may move between a number of BLM herd management areas and across the Sheldon and Hart Mountain National Wildlife Refuges,” said BLM Nevada State Director Ron Wenker. “This joint effort will produce a base line count and distribution for the entire area as a whole. We are planning to return in the fall for a second survey, where we will see how and where the herds moved, and how that affects population counts within the individual areas.”

The flight will encompass herd management areas (HMAs) administered by the BLM Winnemucca District in Nevada; the BLM Lakeview and Burns District Offices in Oregon; the BLM Northern California District Office in California that manages some of the HMAs within Nevada, and the two wildlife refuges managed by USFWS.

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), which conducted research into improving BLM’s population counts, will assist with the population survey by modeling and analyzing the data collected on the flight and providing a population estimate with a supposed 95 percent confidence interval.  Accuracy will depend on the credentials, skill and honesty of the observer.

This survey methodology, called Simultaneous Double-Count with Sightability Bias Correction, uses two Federal employees to independently observe and record data on groups of individual horses.  There will be no independent or non-biased observers allowed due to “safety, risk and insurance reasons”.

The methodology incorporates peer-reviewed techniques that have been used for decades to estimate wildlife populations around the world but evidently the BLM has not thought to utilize this method until the news media noted their inability to count.

Although an accurate count of native wild horses needs to be taken it is doubtful that clean, accurate and honest numbers will be reported by the BLM.  Again, the alleged science and math will be massaged behind closed doors just as their operation and holding of the Calico herd is kept from public scrutiny.

If the BLM truly wished to show good faith, they would invite a trained, professional observer on this project and call an immediate halt to all round ups until an accurate census and management plan can be formulated.

But if things go as they always go with the BLM, a plane will fire up on an air field Sunday morning, two government employees with limited experience and knowledge will climb in and it will be a dark comedy of errors while they count rocks, cows, shrubs and shadows as wild horses.

At this rate, the horses will be gone in a year.

Related articles by Zemanta
Enhanced by Zemanta

Bookmark and Share

Spin Doctors Hired for the Destruction of America’s Wild Horse and Burro Herds

Posted: June 14, 2010 by R.T. Fitch in Horse News, Wild Horses/Mustangs
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
34

Press Release from The Cloud Foundation

BLM uses MMS’s PR and Public Affairs agency to facilitate Salazar’s agenda at June 14th public workshop in Denver—protest on June 15th

R.T. Fitch, Elyse Gardner and Ginger Kathrens at Pryor Mt. Round-up

Denver, CO (June 14, 2010)—The Cloud Foundation has learned that the San Francisco based public relations and public affairs firm, Kearns and West, with ties to big energy and offices across the country, has been hired to push the Salazar Plan for Wild Horses and Burros through Congress in Fall 2010—despite public outrage. Kearns and West has expertise in crisis management as well as accomplishing policy and regulatory goals. Their clients range from Mineral Management Services (MMS) and PG&E to Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). The Department of Interior (DOI) has enlisted the firm using the Institute for Environmental Conflict Resolution (ECR) as the go between. Senior mediator of Kearns and West, J. Michael Harty will facilitate an unprecedented public workshop in Denver, Colorado at the Magnolia Hotel, 818 17th Street, on June 14th followed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Public Advisory Board Meeting on June 15th. Both days will be live-streamed and viewing available on www.thecloudfoundation.org. The public and members of Congress are encouraged to watch. The public will protest on June 15th from 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. with a press conference at noon.

BLM’s recently announced and highly polished but unsubstantial, “Strategy Plan” as well as their association with PR firm Kearns and West, appears designed to manipulate the public and marginalize the opposition to the Salazar Plan for wild horses and burros. The plan calls for the purchase of Eastern and Midwestern “preserves” populated by sterilized wild horses, captured from their Western ranges.

“This is ALL about manipulating public opinion. And ramming ONE thing – Salazar’s Plan – through” states author R.T. Fitch.

The Kearns and West Salazar Plan Executive Summary states, ‘The U.S. Institute for Environmental Conflict Resolution (‘Institute’) is assisting BLM in assessing stakeholder interests and developing an effective stakeholder engagement plan for the Strategy.’ Disturbingly, BLM often does not include the public as a stakeholder in their planning documents regarding the management of wild horses and burros.

“Who is the biggest stakeholder in the discussion of the public’s land and its wild horses if not the public?” asks Terri Farley, author of the Phantom Stallion series, adding “A public agency must represent the public and utilize taxpayer dollars responsibly—not spend excessively on another private contractor.”

According to their website, Kearns and West offers their clients (in this case the BLM) ‘A compelling credible, resonant case. True, high-impact support for your position.’ Advocates support a new direction that abandons the endless, expensive cycle of roundup, removal, and warehousing. BLM must adopt a far less expensive path that is kinder to the land and the wild horses legally living there, one that contains truly transparent solutions, not a slick, taxpayer-funded PR campaign.

“By hiring a high powered PR and Public Affairs firm, it seems that BLM is aiming to extinguish the opposition rather than solve the controversy over their management of our wild herds,” explains Ginger Kathrens, Volunteer Executive Director of the Cloud Foundation. “The public by the thousands has shared their opposition to the Salazar Plan. I hope we can sit down at this public forum and seriously talk about a moratorium on roundups while we work to reinstate protections that are consistent with the intent of the 1971 Wild Horse and Burro Act.”

According to The Holmes Report, “Kearns & West recognizes the important value of collaborating both with our clients and their stakeholders. For more than 20 years, the firm has employed its unique brand of stakeholder-centric strategic communications and collaboration processes to design innovative, but pragmatic programs, achieving superior results for clients in the federal, state and local government, private and nonprofit sectors. Kearns & West works with tough issues and big ideas.”

Besides specializing in ‘accomplishing policy and regulatory goals’ Kearns and West also represents PG&E—a primary customer in the Ruby Pipeline natural gas project threatening public lands and five public herds with environmental devastation from Wyoming to Oregon. Kearns and West also represents Duke Energy, the Association of Western Governors and the US Fish and Wildlife Service, among others.

While Secretary Salazar vowed to restore the Interior Department’s ‘respect for scientific integrity’ he has failed to consider science, reason, or even the law when it comes to managing our wild herds. Kearns and West has been known to gather scientific experts and build a movement of common interest “stakeholders” to crush public outcry and true environmentalism. Wild horse advocates feel the Kearns and West prepared Salazar report for Congress will be biased in favor of big energy ties with DOI at the expense of federally protected wild horses who somehow are in the way of ‘The New Energy Frontier’.

“We hope Monday’s workshop will be a productive one rather than a demonstration of BLM’s inability to change,” concludes Kathrens.

Links of interest:

Interior Department Wild Horse Public Workshop, Livestream June 14, 8 a.m. -4 p.m. and Advisory Board Meeting June 15, 8 a.m. -5:00 p.m. http://www.thecloudfoundation.org/

Fact Sheet on Wild Herds & The Salazar Plan http://bit.ly/bfdX1y

Kearns and West http://bit.ly/deT894

CNN Report, Issues with Jane Valez-Mitchell, March 25th http://bit.ly/dvl7NE

Disappointment Valley… A Modern Day Western Trailer- excellent sample of interviews regarding the issues http://bit.ly/awFbwm

Rolling Stone: The Spill, The Scandal and the President. June 2010 http://bit.ly/d3Bjcm

Vanity Fair: A Solution to America’s Wild Horse Crisis? June 2010 http://bit.ly/a7Esyd

Wild Horses: Management or Stampede to Extinction? Reno Gazette Special http://bit.ly/stampede2ext

Ken Salazar’s “candy shop”: Denver Post Guest Commentary, June 2010 http://bit.ly/aNbLz9

‘Herd-Watch: Public Eyes for Public Horses’ http://bit.ly/9Wvh58

Roundup Schedule- updated May 2010 http://bit.ly/a0xcq7

Informative Blog: American Herds http://americanherds.blogspot.com/

Photos, video and interviews available from:

The Cloud Foundation  ~ makendra@thecloudfoundation.org

The Cloud Foundation is a 501(c)3 non-profit dedicated to the preservation and protection of wild horses and burros on our Western public lands with a focus on protecting Cloud’s herd in the Pryor Mountains of Montana.

107 S. 7th St. – Colorado Springs, CO 80905 – 719-633-3842 www.thecloudfoundation.org

Enhanced by Zemanta

Bookmark and Share

BLM and El Paso Corp Can’t Get Their Stories Straight on Controversial Pipeline

Posted: June 2, 2010 by R.T. Fitch in Horse News, Wild Horses/Mustangs
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
22

“News as We See It“  by R.T. Fitch

Even While in Bed Together the Partners Cannot Agree

Houston (SFTHH) – El Paso Corp. denies recent news stories that claim their controversial $3 Billion Ruby Pipeline is “delayed over concerns about cultural sites and endangered species.”

Richard Wheatley, media relations manager for El Paso, stated that construction on the pipeline, which will run from Opal, Wyo., to Malin, Ore., is expected to begin in late June or early July, depending up the receipt remaining of approvals.

“We are currently on track for a March 2011 in-service date,” he said.

Stories released, earlier this week, cited a Bureau of Land Management (BLM) estimate of July for issuance of the right-of-way grant. The estimate, Wheatley said, “is conservative in our view. Ruby is diligently pushing for earlier agency action and remains confident we can beat BLM’s estimate.”

The BLM is required to have biological opinions from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the historic preservation offices from each state prior to the project moving forward.  Wheatley is of the opinion that the biological opinions will be issued this week.

The BLM currently has in hand Memorandums of Agreement from Wyoming and Utah, and is waiting to receive MOAs from both Nevada and Oregon before it can issue the right-of-way grant.

On April 5, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) approved the project. Shortly after that, a motion for a rehearing was filed by Western Watersheds Projects.  Katie Fite of the WWP claims that the route crosses too many undeveloped public lands when it could be built along current highways and other developed corridors.

“Basically they’re opening up this remote and untouched area with this proposed pipeline route,” said Fite.

Captive Calico Wild Horses- Photo by Elyse Gardner

Likewise the BLM has come under fire from Environmentalists and Wild Horse Advocacy groups for using the pipeline as an excuse to capture and virtually destroy the Calico Complex herd, one of largest remaining publicly owned wild horse herds in the United States.  Almost 2,000 horses were stampeded into traps and are now held captive in feed lot conditions with the death toll nearing the 100 mark.

To date the BLM has disregarded international public outcry on the issue and Wheatley claims that the destruction of pristine public lands was already covered in FERC‘s April approval, which called relocating the pipeline to a less controversial track would be “problematic and ineffective” because it would cause even more environmental disturbance, route the pipeline through a patchwork of jurisdictions and land ownerships, cause it to come close to population centers and add 150.8 miles to the pipeline’s length.

FERC has one more week to either grant the motion or take no action on it, in which case the motion would be considered dead.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

BLM Grazing Regulations Include Doctored Environmental Analysis

Posted: May 21, 2010 by R.T. Fitch in Horse News, Wild Horses/Mustangs
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
25
The Bureau of Land Management in the United St...
Image via Wikipedia

Reported by the Union of Concerned Scientists

Another “Salazar” Agency Making Up Their Own Rules

Bureau of Land Management (BLM) officials compromised the integrity of a BLM study by removing scientific concerns about the effects newly relaxed grazing regulations would have on public lands. Millions of acres of public land in the western U. S. are protected by BLM grazing rules, which regulate when, where, and for how long cattle may graze there. 

Julie Cart of the Los Angeles Times reported that prior to relaxing Clinton-era restrictions on cattle grazing in June 2004, the BLM edited out portions of an environmental analysis calling into question the environmental sustainability of the new regulations.1 Agency scientists had studied the effects of grazing on wildlife and water quality and expressed concerns.

Cart reported that the BLM eliminated the original draft’s warning that the “the Proposed Action will have a slow, long-term adverse impact on wildlife and biological diversity in general.” Instead, the final version of the environmental analysis endorsed the new regulations, which were supported by the cattle industry, stating that the new rules would prove “beneficial to animals.”2

Erick Campbell and Bill Brookes are both recently retired scientists, each with more than 30 years experience at the BLM. Campbell, a biologist, authored the section of the BLM study on the impacts of the rule change on wildlife and endangered species, while Brookes, a hydrologist, evaluated the impact on water resources. Both characterized the edits as an attempt to suppress scientific information. Campbell termed the matter “a whitewash” and “a crime.” “They took all of our science and reversed it 180 degrees,” he said. Brookes agreed, adding “Everything I wrote was totally rewritten and watered down.”3  

The BLM argued that the changes resulted from a standard editorial process and issued a statement saying the conclusions reached by Campbell and Brookes were “based on personal opinion and unsubstantiated assertions rather than sound environmental analysis.”4 In an interview Campbell refuted those charges, saying “All the science they extracted from my narrative was peer-reviewed science. This was not gray literature…This was peer-reviewed science in major journals.”5 The concerns of Campbell and Brookes were echoed by wildlife experts at the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service and by officials at the Environmental Protection Agency.6 

1. Cart, Julie. “Land Study on Grazing Denounced.” Los Angeles Times, June 18, 2005. latimes.com requires subscription, article available from advocacy website, accessed December 5, 2006.
2. Bureau of Land Management, “Grazing Administration–Exclusive of Alaska; Final Rule,” Department of the Interior, July 12, 2006, accessed December 5, 2006.
3. Cart.
4. Bearden, Tom. “New Grazing Rules.” NewsHour with JimLehrer, August 10, 2005. Transcript online, accessed December 5, 2006.
5. Mitchell, Michele and Breslauer, Brenda. NOW with David Brancaccio, July 22, 2005.  Transcript online, accessed December 5, 2006.
6. Cart, Julie. “Federal Officials Echoed Grazing-Rule Warnings.” Los Angeles Times, July 17, 2005. latimes.com requires subscription, available online from advocacy site, accessed December 5, 2006.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Bookmark and Share

Older Entries