Posted on 12/19/2001 9:30:09 AM PST by MadameAxe
A federal biologist yesterday denied any attempt to skew results of a survey for threatened wild lynx as outrage mounted in Congress over hair samples from captive cats sent to a lab.
The surveys are used by federal scientists looking for the presence of wild Canada lynx, a threatened species that came under federal protection in March 2000. In turn, the survey helps determine whether logging and wintertime motorized recreation should be restricted to protect the animals.
Two congressmen yesterday called for immediate termination of the seven employees involved, an investigation of the incident by the General Accounting Office and oversight hearings.
But a U.S. Forest Service employee involved in the decision to send in hair from a captive lynx said yesterday that the sample had been clearly labeled so it wouldn't be confused with samples from the survey.
Tom Kogut, a wildlife biologist in the Cowlitz Valley Ranger District of the Forest Service, said the lab and Forest Service officials were notified that hair from a captive animal had been sent to check the accuracy of the tests.
"I'm pretty upset about how this is being portrayed; it's being totally blown out of proportion," Kogut said. "This was never an attempt to falsify the survey results or put something in the forest that wasn't there."
Kogut said employees decided to check the accuracy of lab tests after two years of conflicting survey results.
The first year of the survey, samples from southern Washington and Oregon tested positive for lynx. The next year, a different lab was used and not a single sample from the same areas tested positive, Kogut said.
"You kind of scratch your head and say, 'What's going on?'
"There were indications from our regional office that there were problems with the first-year results, but there was nothing official."
The employees, who have not been identified, collected lynx hair from a chain-link fence at Northwest Trek, a wildlife park south of Puyallup near Eatonville, and sent it to the lab to see if it would be identified as lynx.
"There was no attempt to defraud,'' Kogut said. "It was perhaps bad judgment, but that was it. Our intent was honorable, and it seemed like a good idea at the time.
"We probably should have alerted more people to the fact that we were sending it in and gotten an official blessing or a sanction to do so. If we were to do it again we wouldn't, or we would do it as an official thing."
Kogut said the Forest Service employees were unaware that other employees surveying the Wenatchee National Forest had done the same thing. "What that shows me is a lot of people were concerned about the survey results," he said.
"It's just really unfortunate this has taken on a life it never deserved."
Some in Congress don't think so.
U.S. Reps. Scott McInnis, R-Colo., and Jim Hansen, R-Utah, plan oversight hearings before the House's Forests and Forest Health Subcommittee early next year.
"These offenses minimally amount to professional malfeasance of the highest order. ... Ultimately, the credibility of the lynx survey is now hanging by a thread," the two wrote in a letter to Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman and Interior Secretary Gale Norton.
McInnis is chairman of the Forests and Forest Health Subcommittee, and Hansen is chairman of the House Committee on Resources.
An outside investigator hired by the Forest Service in February concluded in June that three employees at the Gifford Pinchot National Forest in Southwest Washington were involved. Investigators also learned that two U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service employees and two state Department of Fish and Wildlife employees working in the Wenatchee National Forest sent in hair from captive cats.
None of the samples was included in regional survey results or the national lynx survey. All the remaining samples were determined to be legitimate, and the Forest Service is standing by the validity of the surveys, which began in 1998.
Not surprised after eight years of the sexual deviant in charge...exPOTUS42
Not surprised after eight years of the sexual deviant in charge...exPOTUS42
Nice try at changing the subject loser...
And where did the sample come from in the first place?
Who decided to include superfluous samples?
We need more names.
How clintonian.
"If we were to do it again we wouldn't, or we would do it as an official thing."
He didn't enjoy it and he didn't inhale -- sound familiar?
I can't decide whether to attribute this incident to evil or mere incompetence. It's quite a coincidence that this happened in more than one district though.
1) We can see the influence of 8 years of Clintonism here on our govt employees. Basically, their response to being caught is to lie and self-righteously maintain that even if they DID lie, it was for a noble (read: liberal) cause.
2) My copy of the Constitution must have some pages missing...I can't find anywhere where it states that the federal govt should be conducting "lynx surveys".
If this is the case, then the person who initiated a needless investigation should be fired. How dare this person waste tax dollars challenging a survey whose results have been handled with absolute scientific integrity. Perhaps the accused employees will sue the government and we can pay some more.
Your copy must not include all those invisible penumbras they've been adding for the last hundred or more years. It's to promote the "general welfare", dontcha know...
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