Report Says Interior Official Overrode Work of Scientists

[YankeyMCC]

Source: NY Times

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WASHINGTON, March 28 — A top-ranking official overseeing the Fish and Wildlife Service at the Interior Department rode roughshod over agency scientists, and decisions made on her watch may not survive court challenges, investigators within the Interior Department have found.
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In recent years, agency lawyers reported, 75 percent of the Western offices’ findings on endangered-species status reviews and critical-habitat determinations were sent to Washington without any assurance from career lawyers and biologists that they were valid. Court challenges from both industry and environmentalists are a regular occurrence at the fish and wildlife agency. Making decisions that are vulnerable increases the risk that time-consuming, labor-intensive scientific and regulatory work must be redone.

The report, citing a lawyer in the Sacramento office, noted that Ms. MacDonald lobbied for a decision to combine three different populations of the California tiger salamander into one, thus excluding it from the endangered-species list, and making the decision legally vulnerable. A federal district judge overturned it in 2005., saying the decision was made “without even a semblance of agency reasoning.”
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The inspector general also found that Ms. MacDonald had sent internal government documents by e-mail to a lawyer for the Pacific Legal Foundation — a property-rights group that frequently challenges endangered-species decisions.

She twice sent internal Environmental Protection Agency documents — one involving water quality management — to individuals whose e-mail addresses ended in “chevrontexaco.com,” the report said.
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Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/29/washington/29environ.html

[pinniped]

1. Another day, another scandal coming to light involving these inept fucks.

This should put the scandal count at over 1000.

A federal district judge overturned it in 2005., saying the decision was made “without even a semblance of agency reasoning.”