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Thin as a hair

Government biologists offer only a pathetic excuse for their lynx-fur hoax

Here we are, depending on the so-called "best science" to resolve vexing environmental disputes in the Pacific Northwest, and government biologists plant hair samples from a captive Canadian lynx in two national forests. The seven federal and state biologists admit they planted samples of lynx fur on rubbing posts in parts of the Wenatchee and Gifford Pinchot national forests in Washington state during research in 2000. But they claim they planted the fur only to test whether labs could accurately identify the hair.

That explanation is suspect, bordering on unbelievable. The Forest Service learned about the deception only when a survey supervisor spoke up. If he hadn't, the faux fur could have set in motion new restrictions on public activities in those forests in order to protect Canadian lynx. The Forest Service and Fish and Wildlife Service are doing a four-year survey to determine how best to protect the secretive lynx, which is classified as "threatened" under the federal Endangered Species Act. The Forest Service and other agencies kept quiet about the lynx scam for more than year. Congressional staffers were briefed only last week. The public and members of Congress are rightly furious about the scheme and the fact that the biologists were not fired from their jobs.

One retired and six others were transferred to new duties.

Interior Secretary Gale Norton properly called for an investigation by her agency's inspector general. This is a serious breach of public trust. Imagine the outcry in Oregon if government biologists had planted evidence of Northern spotted owls in forests during the timber crisis of the 1980s, or slipped a few short-nosed suckers into other bodies of water in the Klamath Basin last summer. Conservation groups ought to be especially infuriated.

With a dumb stunt, the biologists have undercut not only the lynx study, but many other wildlife and land-management decisions. This certainly will sully any future decisions to protect wild lynx, either by prohibiting snowmobiling and other winter activities in some areas or by managing forests for snowshoe hares, the primary lynx food.

It also makes the search in the Pacific Northwest for the "best science" to resolve environmental conflicts seem ever more fragile - as fragile as a hair.

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