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New USFS Categorical Exclusions

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From E&E News….

Agency to accelerate NEPA reviews for soil, water restoration

Phil Taylor, E&E reporter

Published: Tuesday, August 20, 2013

The Forest Service will soon finalize a rule designed to accelerate environmental reviews for projects that restore water and soil, including the removal of culverts or seeding of native plants.

The rule aims to restore lands and waterways that have been harmed by roads, trails, levees and culverts, as well as natural events like floods and hurricanes.

The agency plans to establish three new categorical exclusions for hydrologic, aquatic and landscape restoration activities. Categorical exclusions take about one-third less time than environmental assessments (EAs) under the National Environmental Policy Act, the agency said.

The new exclusions will apply to projects that restore uplands, wetlands, floodplains and stream banks to their natural condition. Activities could include dike, culvert and debris removal; stream bank stabilization; and road and trail decommissioning.

“This rule will help us improve the resiliency, health and diversity of our forests and grasslands,” Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell said in a statement. “We will now be able to move forward with our partners to focus more energy on action, and less on paperwork, to restore more acres in less time.”

The agency said it prepares between 2,000 and 2,500 categorical exclusions and 400 environmental assessments each year. EAs often run hundreds of pages long.

The new exclusions aim to restore water flows to natural channels and floodplains and will not exclude public input, the agency said.

The new rule, which has yet to be officially released, will not be used to decide whether the public has access to roads and trails. Those decisions typically undergo a separate NEPA review.

“The majority of issues associated with road and trail decommissioning arise from the initial decision whether to close a road or trail to public use rather than from implementing individual restoration projects,” the agency said in a draft of the rule last summer (E&ENews PM, June 12, 2012).

Still, the proposal drew intense criticism from motorized recreation enthusiasts.

“Some of the agency’s recommendations make sense, but as usual, they go too far,” said a statement last summer by Brian Hawthorne, public lands policy director for the Idaho-based BlueRibbon Coalition, a national group that promotes motorized access on public lands.

The draft rule would allow the decommissioning of non-system roads to more natural conditions, removal of unauthorized roadbeds or the placement of boulders or other impediments in front of non-system trails.

But Hawthorne said many travel planning projects that close roads are amended within one or two years after completion. “It is quite likely that routes proposed for decommissioning will be necessary additions in future recreation and travel planning,” he said at the time.

The group was not immediately available this afternoon for comment.

The Forest Service said it consulted with its own scientists, reviewed peer-reviewed research and compared several other federal agencies’ use of CEs for similar restoration activities.

The new CEs “would not individually or cumulatively have significant effects on the human environment,” it said.

The proposal garnered 367 comments.

Utah, enviros reach rare agreement on disputed wilderness roads

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From Greenwire today. Note the use of “Enviros” in the headline — this is the sort of abbreviation/shorthand I mentioned in another post, rather than a generalization. Is this use of “Enviros” offensive?

Interesting bit: “”This settlement is a positive development, but it shouldn’t be lost on anyone that the state of Utah has 29 other active lawsuits claiming more than 14,000 other dirt roads and trails — totaling more than 36,000 miles…”

 

Utah, enviros reach rare agreement on disputed wilderness roads

Phil Taylor, E&E reporter

Published: Tuesday, August 20, 2013

The Bureau of Land Management, Utah, Juab County and environmental groups have agreed to amicably resolve a handful of disputed road claims in remote mountains west of Salt Lake City, in a rare accord over who owns the rights of way over BLM lands in the state.

The groups yesterday announced a settlement designed to balance the protection of primitive lands in the Deep Creek Mountains wilderness study area with access for motorized vehicle users.

It marks the first negotiated settlement in Utah’s larger bid to obtain rights of way over more than 12,000 road segments crossing tens of thousands of miles of federal lands.

“This could be a model for settling other … lawsuits, as long as counties and the state come to the table with solid evidence to support historic public use of a route, and as long as the settlement offers protection for special areas under threat from [off-highway vehicles] and roads,” said Heidi McIntosh of Earthjustice, which represented the Sierra Club, Wilderness Society and Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance in the case.

Utah and Juab filed the lawsuit in federal district court in Salt Lake City in 2005 under an obscure 1866 mining law known as R.S. 2477.

Until its repeal in 1976, R.S. 2477 allowed homesteaders, miners and ranchers almost unrestricted rights to build roads and trails across federal lands. If the state or county can prove the roads were sufficiently used or maintained before 1976, R.S. 2477 rights of way can be retroactively granted.

In the Deep Creek case, three rights of way were granted to Juab, which agreed to maintain them for “responsible use” limited mostly to their current width, environmentalists said.

In return, the county said it would relinquish one R.S. 2477 claim and half of two others, impose off-highway vehicle restrictions and waive all future claims in the wilderness study area and in lands proposed for wilderness designation in House and Senate legislation from Rep. Rush Holt (D-N.J.) and Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) to designate more than 9 million acres of wilderness in Utah.

The settlement must be approved by U.S. District Judge Tena Campbell.

Utah Gov. Gary Herbert (R) said he is hopeful that the Juab settlement can be replicated in some of the other lawsuits filed in 2012 in 22 of Utah’s 29 counties.

The settlement requires BLM to unlock a gate on Granite Canyon Road and remove fallen trees and any other obstacles blocking access to Camp Ethel, Utah said. The state or county may repair the roads, but they are prohibited from paving, improving or widening them.

“This settlement is a great first step and we hope this will serve as a template on how to resolve other public road lawsuits involving similar types of road claims,” said Utah Attorney General John Swallow in a statement. “It also demonstrates that the state and counties will take preservation issues into account when resolving road claims.”

Juab Commission Chairman Chad Winn said the routes were once used to reach “beautiful camping areas and historic sites in our county.” The date for opening the roads has not been determined.

Stephen Bloch, SUWA’s legal director, was more circumspect, noting that the settlement is just one in what he has called a “tsunami of litigation” that threatens the state’s national parks, monuments and best remaining backcountry.

“This settlement is a positive development, but it shouldn’t be lost on anyone that the state of Utah has 29 other active lawsuits claiming more than 14,000 other dirt roads and trails — totaling more than 36,000 miles — as R.S. 2477 ‘highways,'” he said in a statement.

The settlement follows a federal district judge’s decision in March to award Utah’s Kane County rights of way over 12 of the 15 R.S. 2477 claims it had filed, including four that traverse the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument and one that enters a wilderness study area (Greenwire, March 25).

That case has been appealed by both Kane County and the Interior Department to the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Without more settlements, Utah’s R.S. 2477 lawsuits could easily last decades and could dramatically change how federal lands in the state are managed.

Big Bad Wolves Kill 176 Sheep, Eat 1

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Billie Siddoway, whose brother, J.C. Siddoway, runs sheep near Fogg Hill, posted this warning about the wolf kill Saturday at the trailheads of Pole Canyon and Fourth of July trails.

 

Posted: Monday, August 19, 2013 10:25 am | Updated: 4:38 pm, Mon Aug 19, 2013.

Ken Levy/TVN Staff | 0 comments

U.S. Forest Service officials are asking people to stay out of an area where a large sheep kill was reported over the weekend.

Jay Pence, Teton Basin District ranger, said the sheep kill could attract a lot of people hoping to see predators coming to feed on the carcasses.

Ranchers and others are trying to deal with the situation, and visitors can hamper their activities.

“There are a lot more fun things to look at than dead sheep,” said Pence.

Idaho Wildlife Services confirmed Monday that 176 sheep were killed during a wolf attack near Fogg Hill and the Pole Canyon area early Saturday morning.

The animals belonged to the Siddoway Sheep Company and were grazing in the area about six miles south of Victor, according to a release from Siddoway. The attack, they said, occurred around 1 a.m.

Todd Grimm, director of the Wildlife Services Program, said his office confirmed the depredation Sunday. Many of the animals died from suffocation, since some apparently fell in front of the rest, resulting in a large pile-up.

“This was a rather unique situation,” said Grimm. “Most of the time they don’t pile up like this, but the wolves got them running.”

Only one animal seems to have been eaten in the attack, according to the Siddoway release.

“The sheep are not fenced,” said Billie Siddoway, in an email interview. “They move every few days to a new pasture within a designated area. The sheep are herded and monitored by two full-time herders, four herding dogs and at least four guard dogs.”

Grimm said there is already a “control action” in the area. Since July 3, 12 wolves have been lethally trapped, including nine pups. The goal is to take them all, he said.

“We expect that bears and other scavengers will soon locate the kill site,” said Billie Siddoway.

See the Teton Valley News Aug. 22 for the complete story.

Wolf vs. Bicyclist

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Since wolves have been the subject of so much discussion here, I thought you-all might enjoy this item from High Country News:

ALASKA

William “Mac” Hollan, 35, of Sandpoint, Idaho, was riding his bike ahead of two friends on the Alaska Highway, halfway through an epic 2,750-mile trip to Prudhoe Bay, when the unthinkable happened. A wolf emerged from the trees and started nipping “at the bike’s rear packs the way it would bite the hamstrings of a fleeing moose in the drawn-out ordeal of subduing large prey,” reports Rich Landers in the Spokane Spokesman-Review.” Hollan sped up, and whenever the wolf got close, he blasted it with bear spray. But the wolf loped ever closer even as the drivers of four different vehicles gawked but did not stop. When he realized a hill lay dead ahead, Hollan later said, “It was a surreal moment to realize that I was prey” and that there was no way he could beat his pursuer to the top of the incline. As Hollan got ready to jump off and use his bike as a shield, a Hummer suddenly pulled over. “I saw the panicked look on the biker’s face — as though he was about to be eaten,” said driver Melanie Klassen. Another vehicle also pulled up, and as the wolf leaped on Hollan’s bike, pulling at the shredded remains of his tent bag, Hollan jumped into the front passenger seat of Becky Woltjer’s recreational vehicle, shaking and cussing uncontrollably, he recalled. Meanwhile, Klassen yelled at the wolf and beaned it with a water bottle, but it didn’t retreat until other cars stopped and people began throwing rocks. An Environment Yukon spokeswoman called the incident “a new one for us,” although a similar incident happened June 8 in British Columbia, when a wolf gave chase to a motorcyclist. And you thought the Tour de France was exciting.

 

Wildfire Economics: Should the Public be Involved in Determining Damages?

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Cascade Complex Fire at night. Picture taken August 8th, 2007, near Warm Lake, Valley County, Idaho. Photo by US Forest Service, provided courtesy of the Yellow Pine Times. Photographer unknown.

I worked with John Marker, a semi-regular contributor to this blog, and several others in putting together a pre-fire and post-fire analytical tool nearly five years ago. It was widely distributed and presented (and generally well received) to several key agencies and organizations through three fire seasons, but has gone nowhere: http://www.wildfire-economics.org/Checklist/index.html

Our intent was to develop a tool (“the one-pager”) so that local residents, landowners, and newspaper reporters could also be involved in gathering and interpreting data related to short-term and long-term costs of wildfires. By attaching their own values to the analysis it was thought that more realistic and widespread understanding of these events could take place over time and geographical location — both individually and collectively.

Our group formed a non-profit to build the mostly-completed informational website (http://www.wildfire-economics.org/) and to help develop this concept on a practical basis. We made two or three determined attempts to test this approach on and before specific fires at that time, but there was “no funding” available — even from the American Heart and Lung Association! People seemed more concerned with diesel exhausts and smoke-flavored wine grapes in California than in doing anything practical about considering actual wildfire damages to the environment, to their local communities, and to public health.

Now might be a better time for reconsidering this proposal, at least on a trial basis. People have seemingly been catching onto the “natural fire return interval” myth and other agency rationales for this unprecedented spate of catastrophic wildfires, and seem to finally begin questioning the “science” behind federal wildfire management policies the past quarter century (since 1987).

This issue is not going away anytime soon, despite political posturing and the claims of some environmental organizations. It is not a “climate change” issue anymore than it is a “natural process” issue. It is a resource management issue, as shown convincingly by the photographs of Derek Weidensee in this blog, and by the research findings of several forest and fire scientists and historians, including my own.

Unfortunately, the media has only lately begun realizing the flimsiness of the claims of the “natural fire” proponents and much of the public has continued to remain ignorant or misinformed on these issues as a result. Now might be a good time to begin substituting personal observations for past agency and media pronouncements and to begin taking the active management approaches needed to bring these predictable events under control.

There is no real reason to continue down this wasteful and destructive — and largely self-inflicted — path too much longer. Maybe the “one-pager” can begin to serve its intended purpose of helping to bring informed and afflicted citizens to the table.

 

Otter on Owls: Federal plan to save spotted owls is flawed, costly

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Published: August 17, 2013 

Idaho Governor Butch Otter weighed in to today’s Idaho Statesman with the following editorial on spotted owls. I like the analogies between wolves, people, and owls that he presents. The editorial can be found here: http://www.idahostatesman.com/2013/08/17/2710562/federal-plan-to-save-spotted-owls.html

 
By GOV. BUTCH OTTER

Consider Neanderthals. They were shorter, slower and less mobile than their cousins, modern humans. As a result, Neanderthals’ range stayed small and restricted over time while smarter, more adaptable humans spread across the globe. Eventually, the competition was too much for them and Neanderthals died out.

Now consider the northern spotted owl. It’s smaller, less aggressive and more specialized in its diet and habitat than its cousin, the barred owl. As a result, the spotted owl’s range stayed small and restricted over time while the barred owl spread from the East Coast to the Pacific. The competition was too much for the spotted owl, but they didn’t quite die out.

Instead, man intervened.

In 1990, the federal government tried to save the spotted owl by listing it as a “threatened species” and by shutting down logging on vast swaths of Northwest old-growth forests, destroying an industry and the communities it supported. Since that didn’t work, wildlife experts now want to try killing thousands of those bigger, stronger, more adaptable barred owls.

Clearly the Neanderthals could have used some federal experts and Endangered Species Act protections.

Meanwhile, John James Audubon and Charles Darwin are rolling over in their graves.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service recently announced plans to spend about $3 million to kill 3,603 barred owls in four areas of Oregon, Washington and northern California over the next four years. That works out to almost $833 for each dead barred owl.

Back in 1994, when the Northwest Forest Plan was launched to protect about 20 million acres of federal land from logging in defense of spotted owls, we all were assured that habitat was the key to their survival. We were told that abandoning an economy and a culture that had supported generations of people would pay off with the salvation of an “indicator species” and, by extension, a unique and irreplaceable ecosystem.

It sounded a lot like what’s by now become shop-worn shorthand for the insanity of war: “It became necessary to destroy the town to save it.”

As it turned out, that federally protected old-growth habitat did nothing for the spotted owl population, which has continued to decline. That’s a lot more than unfortunate for the timber towns and the families who used to live there. But now the Fish and Wildlife Service has identified the real culprit, and has it in its sights.

A final decision is expected this month on whether to “experiment” with the systematic killing of barred owls, which now outnumber spotted owls by as many as five to one in some locations.

We soon may have armed federal experts roaming through our forests, calling and then killing thousands of one type of owl to save another. You might recognize these folks as the same ones who “reintroduced” wolves to Idaho, and now they’re desperately trying to salvage what a misguided but powerful government policy has failed to achieve for decades.

What could possibly go wrong with that?

Like most federal programs, it figures to be LOPSOD — long on promises, short on delivery. But if it winds up working better than shutting down our forests did, which is a very low bar to clear, should we then start saving a place on the endangered species list for barred owls next?

Butch Otter is the governor of Idaho.

Read more here: http://www.idahostatesman.com/2013/08/17/2710562/federal-plan-to-save-spotted-owls.html#storylink=cpy

NY Times on Wolf Delisting

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A Times’ editorial today:

 

Editorial

Wolves Under Review

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Published: August 15, 2013

In June, the Fish and Wildlife Service prematurely proposed to end federal protection for gray wolves in the lower 48 states in the belief that wolves had fully recovered from near eradication in the early 20th century. This was politics masquerading as science. The Fish and Wildlife Service would love to shed the responsibility of protecting large carnivores, like the wolf and the grizzly bear, and hunters and ranchers throughout the Rocky Mountains would love to see wolves eradicated all over again.

By law, a decision like this one — to remove an animal from the endangered species list — requires a peer review: an impartial examination of wolf numbers, population dynamics and the consequences of proposed actions. But science and politics have gotten tangled up again. The private contractor, a consulting firm called AMEC, which was hired to run the review, removed three scientists from the review panel. Each of the scientists had signed a May 21 letter to Sally Jewell, the interior secretary, criticizing the plan to turn wolf management over to the states.

In the peer-review process, there is only the illusion of independence, for the simple reason that the Fish and Wildlife Service controls the appointment of panelists. The agency would like to pretend that these panelists were removed for their lack of impartiality. In fact, they failed to measure up to the agency’s anti-wolf bias. The Fish and Wildlife Service is now busy covering its tracks. It postponed evaluation of the delisting plan because, it says, the identities of the panelists, which were supposed to be hidden from agency officials, had been discovered.

If wolves can’t get a fair hearing at the federal level, what chance do they have at the state level? The answer is, very little. Scientists have already noted a 7 percent decline in Rocky Mountain wolves since they were delisted, and hunts authorized, in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming.

Wolves arouse passions that seem to preclude any effort to treat them the way they should be treated: as part of a natural, healthy ecosystem. That is how the Clinton administration understood wolves when it reintroduced them to the region in the mid-1990s, and it’s how they should be understood now.

UPDATE: Interior halts selection of scientists for peer review of wolf delisting proposal

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An update from Greenwire:

 

Interior halts selection of scientists for peer review of wolf delisting proposal

Phil Taylor, E&E reporter

Published: Monday, August 12, 2013

The Interior Department is putting the brakes on a scientific peer review of its proposal to remove Endangered Species Act protections for wolves after discovering it had improper knowledge of the scientists who would be participating in the review.

The Fish and Wildlife Service was able to deduce which scientists its contractor AMEC was proposing to review the delisting proposal, a fact that runs afoul of the agency’s peer review standards, an FWS spokesman said.

The peer review selection process has been put on hold pending further review, said the spokesman, Gavin Shire.

“We’ve decided that [it] doesn’t meet the standard for independent peer review selections,” he said.

The decision is likely to come as a relief to wolf advocates who had criticized the agency for suggesting that AMEC exclude from the peer review three scientists who had signed a May 21 letter raising scientific objections to a leaked wolf delisting proposal (Greenwire, Aug. 8).

Today, one of those three scientists said the agency was wrong to recommend he be excluded from the peer review team.

John Vucetich, a professor at Michigan Technological University who has conducted extensive research on wolves at Isle Royale National Park in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, said his past criticism of the agency’s delisting proposal should not disqualify him from the peer review team.

Vucetich, Roland Kays of North Carolina State University and Robert Wayne of the University of California, Los Angeles, were among 16 scientists who signed the letter. AMEC proposed that all three be included in the peer review.

But Fish and Wildlife in a recent email to the firm — which had been selected to lead the peer review — said signatories to that letter would not be appropriate for the peer review, though it is not entirely clear why. The agency has not provided a copy of that email.

“Everyone who signed that letter was qualified and knowledgeable,” Vucetich said in an interview with E&ENews PM today. “People should be more concerned with the qualifications of a person rather than their final judgment.”

The opinions expressed in the May 21 letter are exactly what’s expected of peer reviewers, Vucetich added.

“If you pass judgment but don’t offer any reasons or if you pass judgment and simply aren’t qualified to, that’s inappropriate,” he said in a separate interview with the California Wolf Center that was posted to YouTube. “I and several others passed judgment, but we passed judgment after becoming familiar with the materials and based on our qualified knowledge of the topic. I don’t think that’s advocacy.”

Vucetich said FWS easily knew that he was among the scientists AMEC was proposing to take part in the review.

The firm had submitted the resumes of the scientists it was proposing for the review with the names removed. However, any reasonable observer could have identified Vucetich’s resume given that his name is cited about 100 times in the resume for the publications he has helped author, Vucetich said.

Wayne’s resume would have also been readily apparent, Vucetich said.

“It’s simply a lie,” he said, to suggest the agency didn’t know who was on the peer review list.

Vucetich was also picked to participate in the peer review by Atkins Global, another environmental consulting firm, which bid for the FWS contract but lost.

The agency’s handling of the peer review last week drew complaints from critics who argued it was trying to stifle scientific dissent.

“It seems like reviewers are being cherry-picked,” said Dan Thornhill, a scientist for Defenders of Wildlife who holds a Ph.D. in ecology from the University of Georgia and has been involved in peer reviews for more than 15 years. “It’s not like a jury. You really want things to be vetted by the best and brightest scientists.”

Defenders and other environmental groups have opposed the delisting proposal, arguing that wolves should be allowed to occupy more of their former habitat in the southern Rocky Mountains, the Pacific Northwest and the Northeast.

Vucetich said the Endangered Species Act suggests that to be recovered, a species has to be “somewhat well distributed throughout its former range.” Currently, wolves occupy about 15 percent of their former range, he said.

The FWS solicitation for the peer review sought experts with backgrounds in wolf ecology who are sufficiently independent from FWS and who have not been engaged in advocacy.

“Peer reviewers will be advised that they are not to provide advice on policy,” the FWS solicitation stated. “Rather, they should focus their review on identifying and characterizing scientific uncertainties.”

FWS said it did not order the removal of any particular scientists from the peer review panel, though it did send an email to AMEC raising concerns over whether the signatories to the letter would be sufficiently independent and objective.

“Objective and credible peer review is critical to the success of threatened and endangered species recovery and delisting efforts,” agency spokesman Chris Tollefson said last week. “For this reason, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service takes every step possible to work with our independent peer review contractors to ensure that selected scientific experts have not prejudged the proposals they will review.”

The FWS delisting decision was hailed by Western states, livestock groups and hunters who agreed with the agency that wolves are no longer in danger of extinction after being nearly eradicated from the lower 48 states (Greenwire, June 7).

More than 6,000 wolves roam the western Great Lakes states and Wyoming, Montana and Idaho, up from nearly zero when they were listed in the 1970s.

Five Big Trees Cut!

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From the title of this AP article in The Oregonian today, you’d probably think that a huge swath of old-growth had been leveled and hauled off to mills:

“Federal agency disputes logging old growth trees that support threatened sea bird”

Turns out that the dispute concerns 5 trees in a campground — one of them a snag — that were cut because they posed a hazard to campers.

http://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest-news/index.ssf/2013/08/federal_agency_disputes_loggin.html

I wish the AP had been a bit more objective, perhaps by adding statistics about deaths and injuries from hazard trees, and the fact that the USFS regularly removes them. They might have mentioned the woman who was killed earlier this summer in Yosemite:

http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Tree-kills-staffer-at-camp-near-Yosemite-4645333.php

Or the woman killed in Conn. in May:

http://www.kptv.com/story/22436844/woman-killed-by-falling-tree-limb-identified

Greenwire: Interior excludes scientists critical of wolf delisting from peer review

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From Greenwire today:

(Subscription) http://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2013/08/08/stories/1059985797

ENDANGERED SPECIES:

Interior excludes scientists critical of wolf delisting from peer review

Phil Taylor, E&E reporter

Published: Thursday, August 8, 2013

The Interior Department has effectively blocked three scientists from participating in an independent peer review of its proposal to remove Endangered Species Act protections for wolves after the scientists signed a May 21 letter criticizing the delisting plan.

The move drew fire from environmentalists who argued the scientists are among the country’s leading wolf experts and were being purged from the review to stifle dissent.

Environmental groups have opposed the Fish and Wildlife Service’s June proposal to delist wolves in all of the lower 48 states except parts of Arizona and New Mexico, where protections for Mexican wolves would be expanded.

The scientists excluded from the peer review are Roland Kays of North Carolina State University, John Vucetich of Michigan Technological University and Robert Wayne of the University of California, Los Angeles.

They were among 16 scientists who signed the May 21 letter to Interior Secretary Sally Jewell arguing that the delisting rule flouts “the fundamental purpose of the Endangered Species Act to conserve endangered species and the ecosystems upon which they depend.”

“The gray wolf has barely begun to recover or is absent from significant portions of its former range where substantial suitable habitat remains,” the scientists wrote. “The Service’s draft rule fails to consider science identifying extensive suitable habitat in the Pacific Northwest, California, the southern Rocky Mountains and the Northeast.”

Those three scientists were selected to review the decision by the international engineering and project management company AMEC, which had won a contract from FWS to lead the independent peer review.

But in an email to the scientists yesterday, AMEC’s Melissa Greulich said FWS requested their removal, citing their involvement in the May 21 letter.

“I apologize for telling you that you were on the project and then having to give you this news,” she said in the email obtained by Greenwire. “I understand how frustrating it must be, but we have to go with what the service wants. I assure you that the rest of our panelists do not lean towards the other side, and we hope they make a reasonable, unbiased decision.”

Greulich did not immediately respond to a request for comment this morning.

In response, FWS said it did not order the removal of any particular scientists from the peer review panel, though it did send a letter to AMEC raising concerns over whether the signatories to the letter would be sufficiently independent and objective. The same concerns would have been raised if the scientists’ letter supported the delisting proposal, FWS said.

The ultimate decision to exclude Kays, Vucetich and Wayne from the review was AMEC’s, the agency said.

“Objective and credible peer review is critical to the success of threatened and endangered species recovery and delisting efforts,” said agency spokesman Chris Tollefson. “For this reason, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service takes every step possible to work with our independent peer review contractors to ensure that selected scientific experts have not prejudged the proposals they will review.”

The agency said the scientists’ letter itself constitutes a form of advocacy. But the agency said it had not seen the list of AMEC’s peer reviewers and won’t know those names until the review is completed in September.

The FWS solicitation for the peer review sought experts with backgrounds in wolf ecology who are sufficiently independent from FWS and who have not been engaged in advocacy.

“Peer reviewers will be advised that they are not to provide advice on policy,” the FWS solicitation stated. “Rather, they should focus their review on identifying and characterizing scientific uncertainties.”

But the scientists’ removal added fodder for the agency’s critics.

It comes as the agency faces scrutiny on Capitol Hill over revelations that FWS supervisors retaliated against three whistle-blowers who had exposed violations of the agency’s scientific integrity policy (Greenwire, Aug. 2).

“This is the first time I’ve encountered anything like this in my career,” said Dan Thornhill, a scientist for Defenders of Wildlife who holds a Ph.D. in ecology from the University of Georgia and has been involved in peer reviews for more than 15 years.

Thornhill said that the scientists’ letter hardly constitutes advocacy work and that taking a position on an issue does not indicate a conflict of interest.

“It seems like reviewers are being cherry-picked,” he said. “It’s not like a jury. You really want things to be vetted by the best and brightest scientists.”

Jeff Ruch, executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, said Fish and Wildlife’s decision could leave the panel with only experts who have never spoken publicly about wolves, either because they support the delisting or fear compromising their ability to win federal contracts.

By hand-picking the peer reviewers — or at least implying which scientists should not be on the panel — FWS is compromising the review’s independence, he said.

“For an issue of this magnitude, this is a sleazy way to run a peer review,” he said, adding that it could lead to additional litigation.

Ruch added that the FWS decision appears to flout the White House Office of Management and Budget’s guidance that says peer review panels should include experts with a range of viewpoints who are independent from the agency.

“Inviting reviewers with competing views on the science may lead to a sharper, more focused peer review,” the OMB guidance states.

The FWS delisting decision was hailed by Western states, livestock groups and hunters who agreed with the agency that wolves are no longer in danger of extinction after being nearly eradicated from the lower 48 states (Greenwire, June 7).

More than 6,000 wolves roam the western Great Lakes states and Wyoming, Montana and Idaho, up from nearly zero when they were listed in the 1970s.

But some environmental groups argue that wolves have yet to return to most of their historical range and that protections should remain so the animals can recolonize suitable habitat in the southern Rockies, the Pacific Northwest and the Northeast.

Fish and Wildlife has ordered the peer reviews to be completed by Sept. 11, the same date by which public comments are due.