Best Science May Be Available, But Will It Be Used In Recovery Plan?

ENVIRONMENT 

By Rob Manning

Portland, OR  December 19, 2007 8:49 a.m.

Federal officials announced Tuesday that they’re naming Portland scientist, Stephen Courtney, to lead the scientific review of the federal effort to save the northern spotted owl.

Environmentalists wasted no time in heaping skepticism on what they consider an effort to salvage the credibility of the plan.

The idea is that the outside panel will provide transparency amid accusations of undue political influence from the Bush Administration on science.  But as Rob Manning reports, environmentalists are concerned about what happens after the independent group finishes its work.

Part of what any recovery plan does is  help answer the question of whether it’s OK to cut trees or build roads near an endangered species.

Environmentalists, like Steve Pedery with Oregon Wild, say the Clinton-era Northwest Forest Plan prioritized  protecting forests for  spotted owls.

Steve Pedery: “This owl recovery plan is a step in the direction of eroding that and essentially saying ‘in some cases, we’re going to go back to logging old-growth forests, because maybe the owls and the salmon don’t need them so much anyway’.”

Pedery says the weaker recovery plan would allow far more logging on Bureau of Land Management forests, in the southern coast range, where spotted owls tend to live.

Meanwhile, members of Congress have been leaning ever harder on the Department of Interior to come clean about political influence on science. The spotted owl plan is just one example.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service indicated almost two months ago it was going to bring in an outside contractor as one of several steps to help restore confidence in  its widely criticized owl recovery plan.

Joan Jewett is with U.S. Fish and Wildlife.

Joan Jewett: “In some cases, there were criticisms of the recovery plan, in some cases, there were conflicting views of what the science says. And we’re hoping that this panel of independent scientists can sort through all of that and come to some consensus on what is the best available science, as we know it, for the ecology of the northern spotted owl.”

Portland-based scientist, Stephen Courtney, will be the man responsible for choosing the science review panel. Courtney says he’s been given a free hand to select the members and investigate the plan’s scientific basis.

Stephen Courtney: “The work we’ll do will be to evaluate the merits of all the science that was used in the draft recovery plan and we’ll evaluate any of the other information we have, too. And on that basis we’ll write a report for the Fish and Wildlife Service.”

Courtney says the panel members will go over all the critiques and unfavorable peer reviews as well. Environmentalists who have been watching the U.S. Department of Interior closely say they’re not worried about Courtney.

Dominic Della Salla: “The problem isn’t with the choice of the particular firm or scientist involved in this process. It’s whether or not the science will see the light of day within this administration.”

Dominic Della Salla is an Ashland-based ecologist who worked on the recovery plan in the early stages. He testified to Congress that top officials at the Interior department pressed his committee for options allowing more logging.

Dominic Della Salla: “It seems like it’s the continuation of back-door politics cloaked in science.”

Here’s why he thinks that: between February and April, the independent panel’s findings will go through two more steps inside the Interior Department.

First, government and academic scientists will draw recommendations from the independent panel’s findings.

Then a group of scientists from the Interior department, Bureau of Land Management, and the Forest Service will write the final recovery plan. But while those other two steps are going on, the independent panel’s findings will remain secret.

Dominic Della Salla: “Here you have a document being produced by a science team, organized by Courtney, that’ll come up with a report in February. The public will not have access to that report. And then you’ve got a government team that will intervene and determine what to do with that information, and if there’s any kind of manipulation of information that’s inconsistent with the government’s position in favor of old-growth logging, the public will never see that.” 

Joan Jewett with U.S. Fish and Wildlife says that the goal of the multi-step process is to get a better plan.

Joan Jewett: “We have taken these extra steps to ensure that we are going to have the best plan that we can. And I think that this group of independent scientists we’re very hopeful will be able to resolve some of these questions and uncertainties.”

Jewett says the findings from Courtney’s panel will be made public eventually – but not until after the draft recovery plan becomes final, in April.

Environmentalists say that may be too late, since unlike other government actions, a recovery plan is not easy to fight in court, once it’s become “final.”

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© 2007 OPB