Does the Forest Sector Have Something to Teach the Oil and Gas Industry?

by

I think it’s interesting to compare and contrast how we think about different kinds of resources use. There are many oil and gas wells on public lands, as well, so this is a bit out of our normal sphere but relevant to this blog.

I think when people in environmental groups focus on “don’t do it”, when the action continues to happen, there is less emphasis on “doing practices better and reducing the environmental impact.” Or perhaps because environmental lawyers are very active in these groups, and don’t feel as comfortable with the nitty-gritty of operations?

Back when I worked for the Forest Service, I was in discussions with environmental folks in the Administration (not this one) about potentially requiring oil and gas operators who work on public land to have an independently audited EMS. When I look back I wonder if the conversation might be different today if that had happened.

Now I know that many readers hate EMS the way the Forest Service did it. And it gets mixed up with sustainable forest certification..which is about being audited to external standards. But when we were exploring the use of EMS back then, we did find a few things about some gas and others wells and got them fixed, and looked at how to systematically improve things so that the problem didn’t happen again.

The idea that people figure out where their environmental impacts are, and use continuous improvement practices to reduce the environmental effects, and the work is watched by independent folks (and funded by the companies themselves, not the taxpayers) .. seem like that could help build and share knowledge.

It would be a good story to tell, it seems to me, how they are working to make their operations safer to workers and the environment and reduce environmental impacts. Maybe they are, and that’s not being covered in the press(??).

Here is an article from the Denver Post on the State of Colorado grappling with the increase in oil and gas operations. It seems to me like they could learn something from the experience of state and others regulating forest practices.

State enforcers also are trying to shore up protection for wildlife habitat.

A Colorado Parks and Wildlife team is updating maps of sensitive habitat where drillers must consult with biologists. Proposed changes, if approved, would lead to 2 percent net increase in areas where surface activities are restricted and a 10 percent net increase in designated sensitive habitat.

“In some cases, new wells will be subject to consultation” with state biologists, Lepore said. “In others, this requirement may no longer apply.”

The overall number of state inspectors is expected to increase to keep pace with the expanding oil and gas operations.

COGCC enforcement currently has 15 inspectors who are charged with monitoring operations at about 51,000 active wells statewide, in addition to oversight of waste disposal and cleanup at depleted drilling sites.

Those inspectors physically visited 6,179 industry sites this year and conducted inspections of 10,678 wells, state data show, confirmed by Lepore. COGCC supervisors this month are interviewing candidates for six new positions. They plan to hire another six by early 2014, which would bring the total to 27.

“More inspectors on staff,” Lepore said, “will mean that more inspections are conducted.”

Three inspectors are to be equipped with infra-red cameras to detect toxic leaks. One camera in use is borrowed from the Regional Air Quality Council. COGCC officials recently purchased two more. While the cameras cannot measure how much has leaked, they can help pinpoint the source.

Infra-red cameras, Lepore said, “are another tool to promote best practices and to reduce impacts.”

Environmental groups receive $1.25 million in grazing case

by

What I think is interesting about this is the quote from the judge where he seems to depart from decisions in Legal World (his purview) to statements about Physical World. Plus it seems like he is giving them bucks based on how much good they do in Physical World. All very confusing (what is real in Physical World and why they should get the money), and unmeasured in a direct logic path, if this quote is correct: their effects in Physical World are the “most important” reasons to give them (more) money. See the last sentence in the excerpt.

Here’s the link and here’s the excerpt (my italics). Perhaps the judge was quoted incorrectly?

Last year, a federal judge ended a court battle between environmentalists, ranchers and the U.S. Forest Service over the effect grazing had on threatened steelhead habitat.
During the nearly 10 years of litigation, U.S. District Judge Ancer Haggerty issued several injunctions that limited grazing at the request of the Oregon Natural Desert Association.
Grazing in the national forest is now governed by a new “biological opinion” developed by the government, which ended curtailments imposed by the court.
Haggerty ultimately concluded that ONDA won several of its legal claims against the Forest Service, which entitled the group to attorney fees and costs from the federal government.
The environmental group originally asked for nearly $1.4 million in compensation, which the government called “prodigious” and “excessive” because ONDA’s legal victories were modest.
The government also claimed the group inflated the requested amount by billing at premium “expert” rates for work that didn’t require extensive environmental experience.
However, Haggerty slapped down the government’s arguments, finding that the “fees requested are great, in large part because this case involved a large administrative record, complex scientific materials and a lengthy duration of time.”
“However, there is no doubt that the hours expended were increased dramatically by repeated delays caused by federal defendants and government counsel,” the judge said in a ruling.
If the defendant were a private party, Haggerty said he would have granted ONDA its full request. Because the money came from taxpayers, though, it deserved more scrutiny, he said.
While the government argued that the amount of compensation should be cut by up to 50 percent because ONDA didn’t prevail on all of its claims, Haggerty said the “federal defendants underrepresent the success plaintiffs achieved.”
The environmentalists “prevailed, or partially prevailed, on eight out of twelve claims eventually litigated, obtained substantial injunctive relief during the years prior to final judgment, and most importantly, were able to reverse the degradation of habitat in the MNF and achieve substantial protections for threatened steelhead,” the judge said.

Manitou Springs Post-fire Flooding

by

flood manitou

If Derek is correct in quoting, in his post below, that “The AWR has repeatedly made the preposterous claim that “sediment from logging will rival that of wildfire.”

The below story seems like evidence that suggests that wildfire impacts can be much more severe than that from vegetation treatments and roads using BMP’s.

Here’s a link, below is an excerpt. Check out the videos on that site.
You can also search on “manitou springs flood photos” and find many good ones that are copyrighted.

MANITOU SPRINGS, Colo. – Following a burst of heavy rain over the Waldo Canyon burn scar, a new round of flood waters rushed down into parts of Manitou Springs on Monday.

According to the National Weather Service in Pueblo, 0.43 inches fell in less than 20 minutes. Shortly thereafter, 7NEWS reporter Molly Hendrickson saw brown waters flooding city streets and the Colorado Springs Fire Department reported that the flow of Fountain Creek had doubled.

U.S. 24 was closed in both directions near Manitou Springs at 2:40 p.m. because of flooding. It reopened around 4:30 p.m., when the threat of flooding had subsided.

A flash flood warning was issued for the area earlier by the National Weather Service, covering both the Waldo Canyon and Black Forest burn scars. The warning expired by 4:15 p.m. but a flash flood watch covers the area until 3 a.m. Tuesday.

The watch cited saturated, unstable soils and the potential for heavy rainfall as potential causes of more flash flooding. That rain is possible throughout the afternoon and evening.

As the flood waters subsided in Manitou Springs Monday, El Paso County health officials said they are concerned about the presence of tetanus bacteria.

The bacteria can make humans sick with flu-like symptoms, even paralyze muscles. Emergency responders fear the bacteria may have been carried by the flood waters onto city streets where volunteers are working.

“It’s in dirt. It’s in soils. It’s in feces,” said Manitou Springs Fire Chief Keith Buckmiller. “We just want to make sure the people helping us don’t get hurt,” he said.

Volunteers and residents doing clean-up are advised to get vaccinated. A free clinic will be held from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Tuesday at the Community Congregational Church at 103 Pawnee Avenue in Manitou Springs. Vaccinations will be provided while they last.

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

by

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!

by

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

Wolves in Europe and “The Landscape of Fear”

by
The European gray wolf is steadily returning to much of its former range in western Europe. Photograph: Alamy
The European gray wolf is steadily returning to much of its former range in western Europe. Photograph: Alamy

I had been saving these two New Scientist articles and since we’ve been discussing wolves..Here’s the link to how gray wolves are faring in Europe..and one on how prey react based on Yellowstone.

GOODNESS, what big teeth you have, and what close ties to humans you have! And what negative attitudes you elicit from rural people all over the world!

Behind their cultural baggage, grey wolves are an evolutionary success story, giving rise to the domestic dog 10,000 years ago and, more recently, rebounding from centuries of persecution.

“There are wild wolves galore in Europe,” says Claudio Sillero, a conservation biologist at the University of Oxford. “They have recolonised vast areas of their former range and live almost unnoticed in populated areas.”

A wolf was recently spotted in the Netherlands, after an absence of over a century. There are ongoing calls from ecologists for them to be reintroduced to Scotland, where they’ve been extinct since the 1700s. In the US, arguments rage over whether their numbers are high enough to sustain hunting.

These wolves were photographed playing in the Black Mountain Wildlife Park, south of Hamburg in Germany, which has more than a thousand animals in an area of 50 hectares.

“While we think of wolves as masters of the wilderness in Europe, they thrive in human-dominated landscapes,” says Sillero. “Over 3000 wolves live in heavily populated areas of northern Spain and Portugal, and wolves from Italy have steadily colonised southern France.”

French farmers may not share Sillero’s enthusiasm, but with less persecution than in the past, wolf numbers are growing. For those of us in Europe, the howl of a wolf could one day become as familiar as the cries of foxes.

And “Scared to death: How intimidation changes ecosystems

IN JANUARY 1995, grey wolves returned to Yellowstone National Park, almost 70 years after they had been exterminated by an overenthusiastic predator-control programme. Over the next two winters, 31 animals captured in Canada were released into the park, fitted with radio collars so that rangers could track their whereabouts. But not all eyes were on the wolves; John Laundre was more interested in their main prey, elk. The large deer had run amok in the wolf-free decades, causing serious damage to the park’s trees. He wanted to know how they would fare now that their old nemesis was back.

By the second year, the answer was obvious. In the parts of Yellowstone that the wolves hadn’t yet reached, female elk grazed peacefully while their calves gambolled around them. “It was a scene out of a Disney film,” says Laundre, an ecologist at the State University of New York at Oswego. But in areas the wolves had colonised, things were very different. The calves were pinned to the sides of their ever-wary mothers. “It was like looking at two different countries, one at war and one at peace,” he says.

For Laundre, it was a light-bulb moment. He realised that wolves don’t just kill elk, they also change the deer’s behaviour without even lifting a claw. Their mere presence – perhaps their scent on the wind and tracks in the dirt – creates a perpetual state of apprehension in their prey. Seen through the eyes of an elk, the physical terrain is overlaid with a mental map of risk, complete with “mountains” where the odds of being eaten are high and they must be constantly vigilant, and “valleys” of relative safety where they can lower their guard. To describe this psychological environment, Laundre coined the term “landscape of fear”.

The concept seems simple but it subverts the dominant view in ecology – that predators only affect their prey by killing them. It also challenges the belief that most animals feel fear only in short bursts, like the sharp panic of a chase, while long-term psychological stress is something that only humans and other primates experience. With such emotions pushed aside, traditional ecological models have reduced predators and prey to little more than rolling marbles. “If one bumped into another, the second ball was dead,” says Laundre. The idea of adding psychology to the mix, especially a seemingly anthropomorphic emotion like fear, was anathema.

But times are changing. Ecologists are studying landscapes of fear in animals as diverse as wolves and elk, sharks and dugongs, spiders and grasshoppers. Time and again it has emerged that the greatest effect predators have upon their prey is not through slaughter, but intimidation. They can influence how successfully their potential victims feed, breed and raise their young, all without a single kill. And it doesn’t end there: these effects trickle through entire ecosystems, shaping the make-up of the local flora and even influencing the flow of nutrients through the soil. The implications are huge. Through the landscape of fear, predators can unwittingly remodel the physical landscape – just by being scary.

Laundre wasn’t the first to recognise the role of fear in ecology. Since the 1970s, studies had shown that predators can force prey to mount costly defences, such as moving into poorer habitats and being so relentlessly vigilant that they do not have the time to eat enough. But most of these experiments were small in scale and duration, and few looked at the lasting consequences of the choices made by prey. It was the advent of big, long-term studies in natural settings that addressed these failings and brought the importance of fear into sharp relief.

“The Yellowstone example is the first one that really smacked us in the face,” says Laundre. Before the wolves were reintroduced, ecologists correctly predicted how big their populations would become and how many elk they would kill. However, they greatly underestimated the effect on elk numbers. “They really just assumed that wolves would impact the elk by eating them,” says Scott Creel from Montana State University in Bozeman, whose findings in another corner of Yellowstone showed how wrong that idea was.

While hunting for a photo, I found this by Garry Marvin on the return of wolves to the UK.

The solution is not imposition but dialogue. Conservation projects, however soundly based on science, can never succeed without taking account of the human dimension. Wildlife has to co-exist with humans. Put crudely, scientists often seem frustrated that local people do not understand what they tell them about the realities of wolves; shepherds and other livestock farmers feel resentful that outsiders do not want to listen to their traditional knowledge; and agricultural agencies seem to think that compensation for animals killed is payment enough for wolf predation.

Hmm.. sound familiar?

Megaloads! What’s It Really About?

by

I don’t understand what all this is really about, honestly. In fact, I couldn’t find a post category to really describe it, other than climate change.

I live in a part of the world in which megaloads of mining equipment are..well… somewhat routine, even in daylight hours.
I understand that it’s a Wild and Scenic River .. but it’s one with a State Highway next to it.

There apparently are a total of 10 loads, required to go by “state-ordered guidelines that include traveling at night, not holding up traffic for longer than 15 minutes and not making any alterations to the roadways or surrounding vegetation,” according to the LA Times story here excerpted below. For headline watchers, note that the title includes “Idaho Wilderness”. Of course, wildernesses don’t actually have roads in them, at least not state highways.

“Everything is in there,” said Silas Whitman, chairman of the Nez Perce tribal executive committee and among those arrested. “Yet they want to make it an industrial corridor.” By allowing the loads, he said, the tribe would “be a party to the destruction to those areas.”

The load this week has raised questions about who has the authority to approve such convoys. Omega Morgan, the Oregon contractor transporting a General Electric water evaporator, said it was operating under an oversized load permit approved by the Idaho Department of Transportation.

The company said it followed state-ordered guidelines that include traveling at night, not holding up traffic for longer than 15 minutes and not making any alterations to the roadways or surrounding vegetation.

But the U.S. Forest Service claims to have authority in cases in which the loads travel through protected lands. It has voiced opposition, saying in a statement that it disagreed with the state permit through the Nez Perce-Clearwater National Forests until a study could be completed in the coming months.

Forest Service officials are examining not only the effect on the ecosystem, but other intangible factors such as the spiritual value of the land to the tribe.

“That’s the part we struggle with, the intrinsic and spiritual value of this corridor,” said Rick Brazell, forest supervisor for the Nez Perce-Clearwater National Forests. “We can touch those biological things and get a feel for the numbers. We can’t gather that [kind of information with] intrinsic things you can’t see and touch, and they mean a lot…. We are on a path to get that information.”

It is interesting that spiritual values come up..and how we might estimate the impact of a particular policy on spiritual values. As regular readers know, I am a great believer in the Unseen. Still, it will be difficult to describe in an EIS. We have to look no farther than the world news today, on the celebration of the end of Ramadan, to see that there are many views of the Unseen that are sometimes in conflict.

If it’s really about keeping our neighbor to the North from engaging in policies we don’t agree with, well .. they are our neighbors with their own scientists and politicians, and it seems (to me anyway) to take a bit of hubris to tell them what they shouldn’t do. After all, you know the admonition, attributed to a spiritual leader, “First get rid of the log in your own eye; then you will see well enough to deal with the speck in your friend’s eye.”

Anyway, here is another news story. Lewiston here.

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

by

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.