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Science Under Siege: The Politician's War on Nature and Truth

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Science Under Siege: The Politicians' War on Nature and the Truth. By Todd Wilkinson. Johnson Press, Boulder, CO. 343 pp.

Reviewed by Pete Geddes, Program Director, Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment

From the Civil War until roughly Earth Day, commodity production dominated federal land management. This was often at the expense of ecological integrity, economic efficiency, and social sustainability. Todd Wilkinson's new book Science Under Siege: The Politicians' War on Nature and the Truth adds personal ethics to this list. He demonstrates how bureaucratic and political pressures sacrifice both environment quality and careers to political expediency.

Wilkinson, a western correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor has been following western environmental issues for the last ten years. Science Under Siege reaffirms that bureaucracies function ultimately as machines to protect and perpetuate their budgets and co-dependent political interests. Wilkinson tells the stories of eight well intentioned and hardworking "whistleblowers" and the personal and professional price they pay when their convictions confront the leviathan. The stories of political manipulation and agency retaliation are depressing but important reading for those seriously interested in federal land management reform or bureaucratic pathologies more generally.

For readers east of the Mississippi River, it's important to understand west of the 100th Meridian, the federal government controls of half the Western lands. At the turn of the century, the West was the staging ground for experiments in Progressive Era conservation. Through "scientific management" benevolent, centralized bureaucracies (e.g., the Forest Service) were to stop the abuses of the nation's natural resources. This was a well intentioned, but naive idea. Instead an "iron triangle" emerged among Congress, federal agencies, and clientele (chamber of commerce/stock grower/mining alliances). As this alliance hardened, the federal agencies, dependent upon the political process for budgetary survival, bowed to political pressures. This may come as a surprise to those who believe it's the mission of the Forest Service to preserve 191 million acres of national forests for "future generations". But as Wilkison documents, the interest of these agencies comes at the expense of national taxpayers, sustainable ecosystems, and agency employees.

The danger in a book like this is that Wilkinson opens himself to charges of being a pawn for disgruntled employees. For most of the book Wilkison avoids this trap. He insulates himself in two important ways: First, Wilkinson chooses carefully. He selected eight subjects from a field of 110. To each profile Wilkinson brings in a range of supporting characters. This adds both substance and a soothing tone. Second, by profiling scientists who publish in professional journals, Wilkinson avoids "he-said, she-said" mud-slinging.

His profile of David Mattson is illustrative. A former Yellowstone National Park grizzly bear researcher, Mattson is an internationally respected as a leading authority on grizzly bear populations dynamics. He arrived at his office one morning to find it ransacked; data gone, computer confiscated, and personal files locked away. Mattson's offense? His research was leading him to conclude that grizzly bear populations in and around Yellowstone may be declining over the long-term. This was counter to the official line preached by bear recovery coordinator Chris Servheen. Servheen maintains that grizzlies in Yellowstone have multiplied since the species was listed as endangered in 1975. Mattson recently opened his data to criticisms of the entire scientific community by publishing his results in the journal Ecology. Servheen has the same opportunity.

The ultimate vindication for Wilinkson's whistleblowers may be found on the land itself. Readers can judge the veracity of former Forest Service fisheries "combat" biologist Al Espinoza by visiting the Clearwater National Forest in central Idaho. They can see the steep slopes, denuded of trees from top to bottom, and the miles of logging roads responsible for spilling sediment into fragile salmon streams. (I spent a summer reviewing appeals of Forest Service decisions on the Clearwater and provided Wilkinson information.)

In the patchwork pattern of clearcuts on the national forest of Oregon and Washington, whistelblower Jeff DeBonis made his mark. DeBonis, an up and coming Forest Service timber sale planer, was responsible for "getting the cut out" in the region's old-growth forests. The Pacific Northwest is the "Big League" of professional forestry. Here both the trees and the stakes for meeting timber quotas are big. Sometimes the results are disastrous. For example, the Forest Service recently "accepted blame" for trashing the entire Fish Creek watershed on Oregon's Mount Hood National Forest. It will cost taxpayers $5.4 million to restore areas where logging caused some of the "worst landslides in the region" and runs of wild salmon have "been nearly wiped out".

After a crisis of conscience DeBonis left the Forest Service and founded the Association of Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics (AFSEEE). He notes, "For many people who wear the green (Forest Service) uniform, the working environment is like living in East Germany before the Berlin Wall fell". This is a predictable consequence when decisions are made in the political arena. Here, political considerations trump ecological, ethical, and economic factors.

Without explicit reference, Science Under Siege reaffirms the thirty year-old message of public choice economists Noble Laureate James Buchanan, Mancur Olson, Gordon Tullock, and others. They described how concentrated, motivated interest groups forming around economic benefits, have significant advantages in political struggles against more disorganized groups. The powerful analytical tools of economics can help explain the causes of maladies environmentalist condemn: money-losing clearcuts on the national forests; federal dams that don't begin to cover operation costs (let alone the amortized costs of construction); federal agents killing predators such as mountain lions and bears on federal lands grazed by livestock at a huge ecological and economic expense, and a gaggle of other environmentally costly practices. The poignant stories in Science Under Siege, provide further motivation for removing resource management from the political process.

As a current employee of the department of defense, I read in absolute amazement these eight cases from other federal agencies. I thought DOD could be restrictive: Now I know they are amatuers compared with BLM, DWF, NPS, and USFS ... This book (and hopefully more like them) need a wider audience ... If a majority of taxpayers only understood the money these bureaucrats waste in the name of some illogical political or management decision, maybe some true meaningful change would occur ... As a postscript, it was surreal watching President Clinton claim last night during his Demoractic convention speech how much he, his party, and Al Gore have done for the environment ... If the current administration, with Bruce Babbit as their enforcer, has helped the environment, then George W. is an environmentalist ...

Every now and then these days I hear someone bemoaning the lack of real "heroes" in contemporary America. Perhaps our definition of the term (athletes, entertainment figures, military types, the wealthy) needs to be altered, since the impressive group profiled in Todd Wilkinson's work are entirely admirable, hard-working and scrupulous, and not a little brave (including pure physical courage). This is a maddening book, fluently written, passionately argued and almost unbearable in its chronicling of offical mal- and misfeasance, lying, willful stupidity, and political gangsterism in the pursuit of selfishness. If you think that the smothering of science (and scientists) in the service of political expediency went out with the Middle Ages, think again. Everyone I have recommended it to has responded similarly: FOR GOD'S SAKE!--how can this be happening and why haven't I heard of it till now...check it out while there's still a few trees standing and frogs croaking....

There has been much made about Gloria Flora, the Humboldt Toiyabe forest supervisor in Nevada. Gloria quit her job in disgust over the way Forest Service employees are treated. People in Elko said Gloria was exaggerating the truth. This book proves otherwise. It gives example after example of public employees going through living hell to protect the environment. TWO THUMBS UP

This is not a book about Yellowstone, but anyone interested in Yellowstone will probably also be interested in this about what goes on behind the scenes in natural resource agencies. One chapter in particular centers on David Mattson, a champion of Yellowstone grizzlies punished for not toeing the government line, and even wanders into the debate over reconstruction of the North Fork Highway between Cody and Yellowstone Park. With all sides cranking up their fax machines to fire off press releases about the new National Park Service proposal to prohibit snowmobiles in parts of Yellowstone this winter, Science Under Siege is more relevant than ever.

"Science Under Siege is a remarkable project, both daunting and inspiring. It details almost too clearly one of the most elemental tenets of our time, or any other time: That truth has its own specific and considerable power, and that because of this, we cannot help but be tempted to shape and bend it, to buy and sell it. There are thousands of people in the governmental agencies who are not for sale, who exist, and persist, valiantly, in that strange no-man's land of being paid by the agency, or by Congress--individuals who still possess their integrity--but, as Wilkinson shows us, the cost is not cheap." Reviewed by Rick Bass in the San Francisco Chronicle Book Section, December 20,1998.

Wilkinson profiles eight government scientist who were persecuted and harassed for their scientifically-supported views on controversial issues, from the outrageous destruction caused by off-road vehicles in California's fragile Mojave Desert to one former logaholic's effort to revamp the corrupt U.S. Forest Service . . .these eight men have endured the slings and arrows of outrageous politics to conserve the resources our politicians are too short-sighted to protect.

From a new review by Lance Olsen in the literary journal, Northern Lights: "Early in the 1980s a rumor reached me of a Forest Service wildlife biologist's report indicating that oil and gas exploration wasn't good for grizzly bears. Immediately, the biologist's phone and office were taken away; he was transferred to another National Forest. I shrugged off the incident as an anomaly. Instead, it was followed by other instances of public employees punished for publicly expressing what the public has every right to know. In an era when corporate free speech was rising, scientific/professional speech was being suppressed. Todd Wilkinson's book takes similar tales public. Wilkinson names the names, but he neither deifies the pros who have taken heat for their intellectual integrity nor demonizes their ranking superiors who retaliated against them. His account is more sophisticated and straightforward than that; he reports secrets that have been too long held to too-narrow circles. A silenced battle against truth has been given its voice. Accountability is now possible. Science Under Siege is a very important book. The political habitat enveloping science and nature may get a wholesome and long overdue overhaul because of it."

I am quoted quite extensively in the chapter entitled "River Keeper". While the quotes have captured the essense of many comments I have made over the years, I point out that I have no memory of ever speaking with the Author. Yet, he quotes me as if he did interview me. Also, I looked and looked, but found no references or footnotes. This struck me as strange for a supposedly serious review of issues surrounding the protection of the planet. I gave the book a one star only because your rating scheme allowed for no lower a grade. Also, I am very proud to be one politician who stands up for the human race, and at the same time has developed a track record on environmental protection that most on the other side only drool about. Harold Vangilder, Councilman, City of Sierra Vista, Arizona

This book will shock you and make you mad; it did me. Todd Wilkinson has written a powerful manifesto about whistleblowers. It changed the way I think about government and the people trying to protect our environment