We’ve seen news items about Bush appointees politicizing their agencies. And we’ve seen items about Bush appointees being wholly unqualified for their jobs. And we’ve seen items about Bush appointees doing special favors for wealthy corporate benefactors, at the expense of the public’s interests. And we’ve seen items about Bush appointees undermining quality science.
But here’s a story that helpfully ties all of these elements together in one tidy and offensive package.
A senior Bush political appointee at the Interior Department has repeatedly altered scientific field reports to minimize protections for imperiled species and disclosed confidential information to private groups seeking to affect policy decisions, the department’s inspector general concluded.
The investigator’s report on Julie A. MacDonald, deputy assistant secretary for fish and wildlife and parks — which was triggered by an anonymous complaint from a Fish and Wildlife Service employee and expanded in October after a Washington Post article about MacDonald — said she frequently sought to reshape the agency’s scientific reports in an effort to ease the impact of agency decisions on private landowners.
Inspector General Earl E. Devaney referred the case to Interior’s top officials for “potential administrative action,” according to the document, which was reported yesterday in the New York Times.
The closer one looks at this story, the more comical it becomes.
MacDonald was appointed to a high-ranking position at Interior, where she oversees policy decisions on endangered species, despite not having any educational background in natural sciences. But that didn’t stop her from repeatedly instructing Fish and Wildlife scientists to change their recommendations on identifying “critical habitats,” despite her lack of expertise.
How would she substitute her judgment for those of actual scientists and experts? According to the inspector general’s report, she’d create her own reality.
At one point, according to Fish and Wildlife Service Director H. Dale Hall, MacDonald tangled with field personnel over designating habitat for the endangered Southwestern willow flycatcher, a bird whose range is from Arizona to New Mexico and Southern California. When scientists wrote that the bird had a “nesting range” of 2.1 miles, MacDonald told field personnel to change the number to 1.8 miles. Hall, a wildlife biologist who told the IG he had had a “running battle” with MacDonald, said she did not want the range to extend to California because her husband had a family ranch there.
In another incident described in the report, MacDonald argued with Hall over the Kootenai River sturgeon, a fish in Montana and Idaho that needs a certain level of river flow in order to spawn. Field biologists determined that the sturgeon’s needed flow level ranged between 2.3 and 5.9 cubic feet per second, but MacDonald instructed them to cite only the 5.9 figure, which would have aided dam operators. After Hall demanded she put the request in writing, the report noted, “she ultimately relented and they kept the 2.3 to 5.9 range.”
Just as troubling, MacDonald twice sent internal EPA documents — one involving water quality management — to individuals whose e-mail addresses ended in “chevrontexaco.com.”
Best of all, MacDonald might have gotten away with all of this, but her employees ended up hating her. According to a WaPo article from October, she not only overruled scientists’ conclusions, she “mocked rank-and-file employees’ recommendations.” The inspector general’s report added that MacDonald “yelled and cursed at” several Fish and Wildlife officials.
I can’t wait to see what the “potential administrative action” might be, though if recent history is any guide, MacDonald will soon be up for a promotion and Presidential Medal of Freedom.
