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WHAT'S THIS ALL ABOUT?
It's a
dispute between one of the most powerful federal
agencies in America - the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
with its nearly omnipotent Endangered Species Act -
and a lone scientist who found a mistake in their
science.
WHY IS THIS
IMPORTANT?
Even
though it started with just a mouse and a scientist,
it revealed a serious problem with most of the
government's
biological
regulators.
They
get their science from
agency scientists in a closed loop:
-
regulator orders
report from
science agency,
-
science agency gets funded by
regulator,
-
which assures predetermined outcomes and no dissent.
This
created a hardened power base for agency expansion, secure careers, guaranteed
raises, self-congratulatory praise,
prestigious awards and recognition --
all backed by the environmental movement and its wealthy foundation funders, who found that the Endangered
Species Act was their biggest weapon
for stopping economic growth.
WHEN A DISSENTER SHOWED UP,
THEY VICIOUSLY TRIED TO DESTROY HIM
WHAT'S SO SPECIAL
ABOUT THE MOUSE?
One day in
1899, a naturalist from Massachusetts named Edward A.
Preble wandered into the Rocky Mountains of Colorado and
found a jumping mouse in a meadow. Lots of them, in
fact, and recorded his experience as unremarkable.
Fifty-five
years later (in 1954), naturalist Philip Krutzsch found
the same jumping mice in Loveland, Colorado meadows,
studied four adult specimens and hair color of seven
juveniles,
and, on that basis only, decided that
they were a subspecies of
the ordinary meadow jumping
mouse,
and named the subspecies after Preble.
Now we had Preble's meadow jumping mouse.
THAT'S WHERE THE TROUBLE BEGAN
REGULATORS CREATE
SUPERMOUSE
When the
Endangered Species Act (ESA) took effect in the 1970s,
subspecies were covered along with species.
The Fish and
Wildlife Service (FWS) were motivated to find more
creatures to add to their ESA list of endangered and
threatened species in order to build their own empire.
And so, in
1998, FWS listed the Preble's meadow jumping mouse
as "threatened" with extinction in Colorado
and Wyoming because when you counted the "subspecies",
there weren't as many Preble's mice as there were
ordinary meadow jumping mice.
The FWS listing prohibited public and private
landowners from disturbing Preble's "habitat" (their
land) in any way,
costing them about $18 million each year.
The tiny Preble's meadow jumping
mouse had become
a giant economic menace and a powerful weapon
of the anti-development Big Green movement.
THE
TROUBLE WITH SUBSPECIES
As early as 1953, animal geneticists were finding that
subspecies is a subjective
and even arbitrary category
that can be used to divide a species into
any desired number of "subspecies,"
depending on what natural variations you emphasize.
When the ESA became law, allowing subspecies to be listed,
FWS was not about to let a power tool like that get away
just because it had no real scientific meaning.
Lord Acton applies.
ALONG COMES RAMEY
Rob Roy Ramey II, curator of vertebrate zoology at
the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, did a thorough genetic study and found
Preble's mouse was not a subspecies.
After a grueling peer review and two additional lab
studies, his findings were published in the respected journal,
Animal Conservation,
thereby becoming the "best available science"
as the ESA law requires.
Also, people kept finding large numbers of the imaginary
subspecies jumping through the meadows
of the Rocky Mountains (and beyond).
If it's not a "subspecies," and it's not threatened with
extinction, it should be delisted.
THE FIRST ATTEMPT TO DISCREDIT RAMEY
Several business, landowner and citizen groups pressed FWS
to delist the "Preble's" meadow jumping mouse.
That would be death to the ambitions of FWS and Big Green.
So the FWS war to resist all reason and protect their
turf began
with a coordinated effort by FWS and its Big Green troopers
to keep the
listed status of the
non-threatened, non-Preble's meadow jumping mouse and discredit and destroy Dr.
Rob Ramey.
The first truly vicious attack on Ramey came from
University of Washington
Professor Sacha N. Vignieri,
who published an article
"The mistaken view of taxonomic validity undermines conservation of an
evolutionarily distinct mouse."
With help from interested parties in academia and Big
Green groups, FWS regional official Ralph Morgenweck
employed and funded an agency ally, USGS
researcher Dr. Tim King,
to protect Preble's listed status.
King and his team produced a study that was rigged from
the start, improperly sharing information with regulators, switching things in
the proofing process, and obtaining FWS staff influence in what was supposed to be an
"independent review"
of the scientific issues.
Predetermined
outcomes. No dissent.
Lord Acton applies.
Dr. Ramey's team of scientists rebutted Dr. King's
research and exposed his improper actions in a response that FWS ignored.
Here it is:
KING GETS
CHALLENGED
On March 15, 2006, the Coloradans for Water
Conservation and Development, and Colorado Farm Bureau filed
a Data Quality Act challenge to Dr. King's study.
This challenge was subsequently reviewed and rejected by Ralph Morgenweck, the
official who presided over the war
to keep the Preble’s mouse listing,
a conflict of interest.
Lord Acton applies.
KING GETS
CHALLENGED AGAIN
The Attorney
General of Wyoming was seriously concerned about the
economic damage the FWS listing of the mouse was doing
to the state's survival and prepared for an all-out legal
battle with the federal government.
The first step:
a
study comparing the results of both Ramey and King.
It
concluded that
the mouse should not be on the ESA
"threatened" list.
KRUTSCH SIDES WITH RAMEY
The man who started it all, Prof. Philip Krutsch examined
Ramey's findings and emphatically declared his mistake
in taking ordinary meadow jumping mice as a subspecies
in light of new data, as honorable scientists do.
FWS TICKS OFF A
SENATOR
FWS ignored complaints and assailed Dr. Ramey so hard that
Colorado Senator Wayne Allard
wrote to Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne
essentially asking what the hell are you up to?
CONGRESS GETS
INVOLVED
In July, 2007,
the House Committee on Natural
Resources held an oversight
hearing on:
"Crisis of Confidence: The Political Influence of
the Bush Administration on
Agency Science and Decision-Making."
Rob Ramey gave testimony on the FWS’s
use of
“obfuscation, intimidation, and ignoring contrary evidence”
to maintain the ESA listing of the
no-longer Preble’s meadow jumping mouse.
THE ATTACK ON RAMEY
INTENSIFIES
The FWS-sponsored peer review panel
issued
a deliberately rushed, rigged, negligent and biased report
denouncing Dr. Ramey and his research.
The academic peer review scientists
had all their allegiances
sworn in advance, as revealed in the transcript of their internal panel hearing
on the Preble's listing.
Their presence
on that peer review panel is
outrageously unethical
but perfectly legal.
If this nation is to survive the onslaught of Big Green,
the law must change to provide for
Separation of Science and the State.
Only disinterested outsiders with no conflicts
and no government funding
should be allowed to review government science.
Ramey and his team responded,
describing the false objectivity of the FWS peer review system. They conclude,
“It is our opinion that the panel abrogated their responsibility in presenting a
biased interpretation of the available information that failed to recognize the
basic implications of their conclusions relative to falsifiability and the
application of science to the ESA.
Our analysis of their conclusions finds
that they amount to advocating that
listings under the ESA do not need a scientific basis.”
RAMEY LOSES HIS JOB
The Denver Museum of Nature &
Science found itself in a compromised position, saying they
support Ramey, but also suffering pressure from government, Big Green, and
zealots.
Ramey sees the handwriting on the wall and resigns.
-
Vincent Carol column in the Rocky Mountain News on
Rob Ramey.
CAPSTONE
Attorney Kent Holsinger filed comments on
the challenge
and the FWS' weak proposal to make small
changes
in its rules on the mouse.
He sets up all the facts needed for
a frontal attack on the listing of the
mouse.
FWS delisted the mouse in Wyoming but not Colorado
and
still maintains it is a "valid subspecies."
Ramey's final
coments
RAMEY: NOW A
RESPECTED PRIVATE CONSULTANT AND RESEARCHER
His story is just now being told, but
it cost Rob Roy Ramey, a good and honest man, years of great personal stress.
His wife Laura has steadfastly supported him though this ordeal.
UPON REFLECTION
All men dream: but not equally. Those who
dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that
it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act
out their dream with open eyes, to make it possible.
―T.E.
Lawrence, The Seven Pillars of Wisdom
POSTSCRIPT BY RON
ARNOLD
When decent people think
about defying the job-killing, people-hating social disaster that is Big Green,
they should be warned of the ferocious attacks they'll suffer. There's nothing
for it. It's the human condition.
I'm not fond of corny
poems, but in 1857 an obscure American proverb-maker named John Butler wrote a
corny poem with the only advice I can think of:
If in the path of
life, safe and correct you'd be,
Believe not all you hear, regard not all you see:
One says this way is right, the other says not so,
Come quickly here, this is the only path to go.
Be cautious all, abroad, mind where you tread,
Be not deceived, be sure you're right, then go ahead.
That last phrase was
the motto of Davy Crockett - in the Walt Disney version, anyway, and somewhat
anachronistically - Crockett was killed in 1836 at the Alamo.
Don't forget that part.
I guess when they bite
you, just be too big a mouthful.
If you can.
Other MouseGate Files
of interest:
MouseGate Files
in order:
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