There are a growing number of people showing an interest in protecting our public forests and wildlands. This was brought home by the large attendance at Umpqua Watersheds’ annual banquet. No longer is becoming a member of an environmental organization considered “fringe.” Instead, mainstream America, recreationists, as well as hunters and fishermen, are finding membership in conservation organizations, such as Umpqua Watersheds, a staple in protecting what they love most. The UW Banquet was amply fitted with good food and good food for thought and action.

The evening’s speaker was Dominick DellaSala, pre-eminent forest biologist and conservationist. DellaSala served as a member of the federal northern spotted owl recovery team. He knows firsthand about scientific reports being twisted by the policy arms of the agencies for political purposes. A short time after the draft recovery plan for the northern spotted owl was submitted, the recovery team of scientists was notified that an Oversight Committee in Washington, D.C., had rejected the draft and were directing the team to change the plan. They wanted to downplay the owl’s survival on its old growth forest habitat. When DellaSala commented, that “We’re going to stop the bastards,” during his speech at the UW Banquet, he was speaking about the multiple offenses by the current administration in thwarting, distorting and suppressing science.

There is a wealth of examples of scientists’ reports being muffled by our government. Julie MacDonald, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Interior, resigned after an Inspector General’s investigation found she had altered scientific conclusions to accommodate the demands of timber industry lobbyists. She was caught meddling in scientific reports on marbled murrelets, (a threatened Northwest seabird). The Bush administration has been trying to remove the little coastal bird from Endangered Species Act protections but failed to prove that the species able to survive without its large, old growth coastal forest. Julie MacDonald was also involved in the spotted owl recovery draft rewrite. She is one of several agency policy makers who doctored scientific reports in order to log public lands protected as critical habitat for endangered wildlife.

There are numerous examples of the Bush administration’s doing just that — rewriting scientific reports to fit a political outcome. When the Bureau of Land Management released its Western Oregon Plan Revision, which would remove BLM lands from the Northwest Forest Plan’s protection of the northern spotted owl, DellaSala was one of several scientists to observe the absence of scientific proof that eliminating the owl’s habitat would allow it to thrive.

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention Director Julie Gerbering’s October 2007 report on how climate change would affect human health was edited by White House staff, eliminating whole sections on climate-related health consequences. In December of 2007, the House Oversight Committee released a report, which detailed the White House’s manipulation of climate change science. Former federal employees admitted to the Oversight Committee that they were forced to “fix the facts to fit White House policy.” Not only was this an act of suppressing scientific reports, but included distortions of scientific data as well.

When documents were released that revealed Vice President Dick Cheney’s involvement in overriding scientific reports on the low flows and poor water quality in the Klamath River, it may have come as no surprise. Dick Cheney helped instead, to craft a plan for continuing irrigation in the Klamath Basin that short-shrifted water for fish, which led to the huge 2002 fish kill.

And the latest in the news is Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey, arraigned in court for side-stepping the law in order to use a fire retardant that contains high quantities of ammonium phosphate, a fertilizer that kills fish. Mark Rey ignored scientific evidence that proved the flame retardant is lethal in the aquatic habitat and the U. S. Forest Service, under his direction, stalled in implementing studies to answer those serious scientific allegations.

Is it science or politics, when from scientific reports we see a rise in the numbers of species approaching extinction while the corresponding numbers of species actually listed for protection is at an all-time low. The average number of species listed under the Clinton administration was 65; Bush Sr. 59; Reagan 32; and under current President Bush, 9.

So when DellaSalla spoke about Umpqua Watersheds’ ongoing work in protecting the wild native forests of the Umpqua, necessary habitat for a number of plants and animals species, he was speaking not only as an expert forest biologist, but as an expert in the frustrating arena of best science taking a back seat to special interest politics. He echoes our knowledge that while some would profit, we, the world of humanity, would be all the poorer if these species were to go extinct.



<i>Susan Applegate lives in Yoncalla on her family ranch. She has long been involved in conservation efforts, is a member of Umpqua Watersheds located in Roseburg, and a board member of Oregon Wild, a conservation organization whose main office is in Portland, OR.</i>