Stop me if you’ve heard this one… independent experts, preparing objective analyses for the federal government, use sound science and evidence to write an accurate report on a problem that requires attention. The Bush administration finds the results politically inconvenient, so they “touch up” the report to make it say what they want it to say.
Sound familiar? It’s happened again.
The Bush administration altered critical portions of a scientific analysis of the environmental impact of cattle grazing on public lands before announcing Thursday that it would relax regulations limiting grazing on those lands, according to scientists involved in the study.
A government biologist and a hydrologist, who both retired this year from the Bureau of Land Management, said their conclusions that the proposed new rules might adversely affect water quality and wildlife, including endangered species, were excised and replaced with language justifying less stringent regulations favored by cattle ranchers.
Grazing regulations, which affect 160 million acres of public land in the Western U.S., set the conditions under which ranchers may use that land, and guide government managers in determining how many cattle may graze, where and for how long without harming natural resources.
The original draft of the environmental analysis warned that the new rules would have a “significant adverse impact” on wildlife, but that phrase was removed. The bureau now concludes that the grazing regulations are “beneficial to animals.”
Eliminated from the final draft was another conclusion that read: “The Proposed Action will have a slow, long-term adverse impact on wildlife and biological diversity in general.” Also removed was language saying how a number of the rule changes could adversely affect endangered species.
“This is a whitewash. They took all of our science and reversed it 180 degrees,” said Erick Campbell, a former BLM state biologist in Nevada and a 30-year bureau employee who retired this year. He was the author of sections of the report pertaining to the effect on wildlife and threatened and endangered species. “They rewrote everything,” Campbell said in an interview this week. “It’s a crime.”
Well, it should be.
Is it me, or are we starting to notice a pattern here? Bush’s scientists find evidence of global warming, so Bush’s spin doctors edit it out. Bush’s G-8 partners create a plan to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and set stricter environmental standards for World Bank-funded power projects, and Bush’s political team edits that too. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers prepares an annual report that included a chapter on Iraq, but Bush’s political team decides it interfered with the “feel good” tone of the document, so it’s edited out. Bush’s administrator for the U.S. Agency for International Development says in 2003 that American taxpayers would not have to pay more than $1.7 billion to reconstruct Iraq, and the transcript is mysteriously edited out of existence from the agency’s web site.
The Bush gang may not have a knack for effective governing, but when it comes to creative editing, they’re unstoppable.