Land Study on Grazing Denounced
Two retired specialists say Interior excised their warnings on the effects on wildlife and water.
By Julie Cart
Times Staff Writer
June 18, 2005
The Bush administration altered critical portions of a scientific analysis of the environmental impact of cattle grazing on public lands before announcing Thursday that it would relax regulations limiting grazing on those lands, according to scientists involved in the study.
A government biologist and a hydrologist, who both retired this year from the Bureau of Land Management, said their conclusions that the proposed new rules might adversely affect water quality and wildlife, including endangered species, were excised and replaced with language justifying less stringent regulations favored by cattle ranchers.
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"This is a whitewash. They took all of our science and reversed it 180 degrees," said Erick Campbell, a former BLM state biologist in Nevada and a 30-year bureau employee who retired this year. He was the author of sections of the report pertaining to the effect on wildlife and threatened and endangered species.
"They rewrote everything," Campbell said in an interview this week. "It's a crime."
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-grazing18jun18,0,6468976,print.story?coll=la-home-headlines
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