FISH & WILDLIFE SERVICE FIRES PANTHER WHISTLEBLOWER

For Immediate Release: Monday, November 8, 2004
Contact: Chas Offutt (202) 265-7337


FISH & WILDLIFE SERVICE FIRES PANTHER WHISTLEBLOWER
Agency Does Not Dispute Orders to Suppress Scientific Findings

Washington, DC — The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service has decided to terminate the biologist who publicly challenged its reliance on flawed studies about the habitat and population of the endangered Florida panther, according to Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). The agency’s action comes ten weeks after a federal court found the agency guilty of scientific fraud on the same grounds raised by the now-former employee.

Andrew Eller, Jr., an 18-year FWS biologist, had spent the past ten years working in the Florida panther recovery program. This spring, he filed formal charges that studies relied upon by the Fish & Wildlife Service (FWS) to make decisions about proposed development in Southwest Florida inflate panther population and inaccurately minimize habitat needs. One week after that filing, the agency proposed his termination. On Friday, November 5th, FWS finalized its termination of Eller.

“This case is about whether scientific dissent will be tolerated under the Bush Administration,” stated PEER General Counsel Richard Condit who will be leading Eller’s legal challenge of his firing. “A federal court found the agency knowingly used junk science to okay projects, but the official committing the fraud gets a commendation while the one who exposed it is fired.”

Contending that its actions were motivated solely by the timeliness of Eller’s work, FWS officials did not reply to Eller’s affidavit citing evidence of retaliation, including --

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http://www.ems.org/nws/2004/11/08/fish_agency_does

an 18 year old gets 10 years of experience working on the program...

here's your answer:

Andrew Eller, Jr., an 18-year FWS biologist, had spent the past ten years working in the Florida panther recovery program.

He has eighteen years of working with the FWS and has spent ten of those years studying the Florida panthers.

Obviously, a "policy guy" at a right wing think tank, who has read three or four memos on the subject knows the situation better. He's talked to the lobbyists from the groups that stand to make a lot of money from flouting the rules.

Science is meaningless to these guys. From stem cells to global warming, it's all subservient to policy. Even Nixon listened to the scientists.

eom

the liar gets promoted and the honest MORAL person
gets fired .

disappear, his god will just make more of them.

It's alreay remarkably similar to Skinny Dip.

And boy, we sure need him now.

OUR PLANET DIES

http://www.ericblumrich.com/sp.html WATCH THIS VIDEO


Smothered Hope

withered rope you hang what's empty can't remain to put it simply
in time cry the hollow words to sing with false disguise
smothered hope fly from sorrow for a new divine tomorrow
i just don't want to know anymore
life shifts up and down everybody knows it's wrong
why don't you care? now do it seem fair?
it's not in the rhyme or reason
so it goes with every season crawl to top fall through bottom
first hand love is really rotten
slice of life find what's plenty inch towards a sanctuary
light with me inside the womb
i know everyone everybody knows it's me
it's my voice, my voice cries out obscenity
sightless eye regard my past sometimes it should
i just don't want to know anymore.

--SKINNY PUPPY

but I was wrong. This INFURIATES me!

:grr:

We've just seen the tip of the iceberg.

Sorry--don't mean to sound flip, but I am so enraged at what Bush & Co. have been doing to the environment I can hardly see straight. And the devastation will increase with all due haste, now that he has his mandate and all that political capital. It's the will of the people, of course.

I honestly feel like I've stepped into the Twilight Zone.

Tired Old Cynic