Julie MacDonald resigned April 30 as deputy assistant secretary of the Department of Interior, a month after the department's office of inspector general issued a scathing report that accused her of altering scientific reports in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's endangered species programs and improperly leaking internal reports to industry groups and friends.
The report said nothing about MacDonald's participation in the decision to remove the Sacramento splittail from protection under the Endangered Species Act.
But documents show she edited the decision on the fish, at one point softening scientists' conclusion that the species "is likely" experiencing a population decline to say it "may be" in such a decline.
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The decision to withdraw the protective status of the fish was first made in the Fish and Wildlife Service's Sacramento office, leaving the extent of MacDonald's involvement in those Advertisement earlier stages unclear.
But her participation in the decisionmaking at any stage of the process may have violated conflict of interest rules because MacDonald owns an 80-acre farm in the Yolo Bypass, a floodplain of wetlands, pastures and row crops north of the Delta that is key habitat for the fish.
(source)
Of course any good reporter would give the Department of Interior a chance to respond to these sorts of allegations, and Mike Taugher of the Contra Costa Times did just that.
In response to Times inquiries, the Department of Interior issued a written statement.
“To our knowledge, senior departmental officials were unaware of these issues,” the statement read. “The Department of the Interior Inspector General investigated former Deputy Assistant Secretary MacDonald's role in administering the Endangered Species Act and issued a report. We rely upon the Inspector General's investigation and counsel. If it turns out that former Deputy Assistant Secretary MacDonald acted inappropriately regarding the Sacramento splittail, we will conduct an appropriate review of the regulatory process that led to the final decision.”
That response might sound reassuring. After all, the Inspector General investigated, and filed a report. What the Department's statement leaves unsaid is that the Inspector General's report concluded that McDonald “repeatedly altered scientific field reports to minimize protections for imperiled species and disclosed confidential information to private groups seeking to affect policy decisions” (source). Moreover, it wouldn't be too surprising to find that McDonald was involved in this decision. After all,
At one point, according to Fish and Wildlife Service Director H. Dale Hall, MacDonald tangled with field personnel over designating habitat for the endangered Southwestern willow flycatcher, a bird whose range is from Arizona to New Mexico and Southern California. When scientists wrote that the bird had a “nesting range” of 2.1 miles, MacDonald told field personnel to change the number to 1.8 miles. Hall, a wildlife biologist who told the IG he had had a “running battle” with MacDonald, said she did not want the range to extend to California because her husband had a family ranch there. (source)
Original reference to the story found in Environmental News Service
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