By Michael Doyle - Bee Washington Bureau - Agency will investigate decisions in 8 cases after a top official's resignation
The federal Fish and Wildlife Service says it will re-examine the critical habitat of the California red-legged frog.
WASHINGTON -- The California red-legged frog is getting a second look from Bush administration officials who now acknowledge politics may have trumped science in earlier endangered species decisions.
In an extraordinary and apparently unprecedented move, the Fish and Wildlife Service said Friday it will review how the agency handled eight endangered species decisions going back several years. Officials fear former Deputy Assistant Secretary Julie A. MacDonald may have twisted policy to please private interests.
"In some cases, unfortunately, it appears there were changes made that shouldn't have been," said Fish and Wildlife Service Director H. Dale Hall, adding that "it's a blemish on the scientific integrity of the Fish and Wildlife Service."
The new reviews will reopen some intensely fought endangered species battles. They range from removing protections for a jumping mouse in Colorado to shrinking the critical habitat designed for the Southwestern willow flycatcher and the Canada lynx.
In California, the agency will be reviewing MacDonald's role in drastically reducing the critical habitat set aside for the California red-legged frog. Last spring, the agency designated 450,288 acres as critical habitat for the amphibian made famous by Mark Twain's story "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County."
Under MacDonald's guidance, the frog's final critical habitat was 39 percent smaller than scientists had proposed.
"If the (agency) has indeed found that Ms. MacDonald inappropriately -- and perhaps illegally -- interfered politically in what are supposed to be scientific decisions, then, yes, critical habitat for Twain's frog should be re-examined," said Robert Stack, founder of the Jumping Frog Research Institute, a small outfit with an Angels Camp mailing address.
A civil engineer and former California state official, MacDonald oversaw the Fish and Wildlife Service until her abrupt resignation in May. She left the Bush administration in the wake of a highly critical Interior Department investigation, which found she appeared to give preferential treatment to private groups.
MacDonald, for instance, was found to have leaked endangered species information to the California Farm Bureau Federation and the conservative Sacramento-based Pacific Legal Foundation that she did not make available to environmental groups.
"I try to respond to everyone when asked for information," MacDonald explained to investigators, according to the report. "It's my duty as a public servant."
MacDonald could not be reached Friday.
Intensely unpopular among the Fish and Wildlife Service's professional staff, MacDonald was accused of having "bullied, insulted and harassed" the agency's career employees.
"MacDonald did not want to accept petitions to list species as endangered, and she did not want to designate critical habitats," the Office of Inspector General noted, quoting one former co-worker.
The investigation further cited MacDonald's alleged interference in endangered species decisions involving the Delta smelt and California tiger salamander, among others. These species, however, will not be included in the new Fish and Wildlife Service review.
Jamie Rappaport Clark, a former Fish and Wildlife Service director who is now executive vice president of Defenders of Wildlife, said, "Hall wants to do the right thing," but she criticized the agency for limiting its review.
"It's really hard to believe that only eight decisions were problematic," Clark said.
A career Fish and Wildlife Service employee, Hall took over as director in 2005.
Hall asked Fish and Wildlife Service regional directors to advise which endangered species decisions should be reviewed. MacDonald "did actively attempt to influence our scientific rationale and conclusions on multiple occasions," Sacramento-based regional officials concluded in a memo late last month.
"We are interested in whether the science was modified in an inappropriate way," Hall said.
Hall said he hopes the reviews can be finished this year.
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Last Updated 12:14 am PDT Saturday, July 21, 2007
Story appeared in MAIN NEWS section, Page A3
