BY HANK REICHMAN

Yesterday the welcome news arrived that scandal-ridden Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke would, as previously hinted, be departing his post by year’s end.  The announcement came just days after release of a scathing 38-page report by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), Science under Siege at the Department of the Interior (DOI), which documents “a clear pattern of sidelining science” at the department, “with serious implications for the nation’s public lands, wildlife, health and safety.”  While it is unlikely that the UCS report prompted Zinke’s departure — the more than 15 ethics investigations of his behavior, six of which are ongoing, are likely more to blame — the report provides an important cautionary tale, suggesting that the rot at Trump’s DOI runs much deeper than just the haplessly corrupt Zinke.  One former department scientist has gone so far as to call the situation “a monumental disaster.”

Revelations about the assault on science pursued by Zinke’s DOI are, of course, but the latest exposure of the avalanche of anti-scientific policies and practices under the current administration.  As Los Angeles Times columnist Michael Hiltzik points out, “The Environmental Protection Agency has been similarly hollowed out, and the Department of Health and Human Services has all but abandoned its duty to advance Americans’ access to affordable healthcare.”  As early as the summer of 2017, the UCS issued a report, Sidelining Science Since Day One, that concluded:

A clear pattern has emerged over the first six months of the Trump presidency: multiple actions by his administration are eroding the ability of science, facts, and evidence to inform policy decisions, leaving us more vulnerable to threats to public health and the environment. The Trump administration is attempting to delegitimize science, it is giving industries more ability to influence how and what science is used in policymaking, and it is creating a hostile environment for federal agency scientists who serve the public.

Building on that effort, in October 2017 the AAUP issued its own report, National Security, the Assault on Science, and Academic Freedom, which noted that attacks on science “threaten not only the academic freedom of scientists but also the ability of American science to maintain its international stature and continue to contribute to the improvement of American lives.”  And then there is the recent attack on fetal tissue research by the National Institutes of Health that I reported on this blog earlier this week.  (See also this August 2017 post by Martin Kich.)

The new UCS report on the DOI is well worth reading in full, but I will try to recap some highlights here. The DOI “oversees around 500 million acres of public land and more than 1.5 billion acres of submerged land” and its “scientists conduct research and public education across many disciplines,” the report states.  The department “sets policies that affect a wide range of resources and values” that “can affect drinking water sources, the safety of oil and gas drilling both offshore and on public lands, and the health of people living near mining operations and other toxic industrial sites.  And the DOI plays a crucial role in how and whether the federal government works to address climate change.”

Zinke, however, “has gone out of his way to cater to oil, gas, and mining industry lobbyists.”  Top DOI positions have been filled “with individuals who have either lobbied for the coal and oil industries or worked for Zinke’s campaigns or political action committees.”  In September 2018, Zinke himself keynoted a Louisiana Oil and Gas Association luncheon, where he declared, “Our government should work for you, the oil and gas industry.”  So much for serving the public good.

The UCS study “documents four broad categories of abuse: systematically suppressing science; failing to acknowledge or act on climate science; silencing and intimidating agency scientists and staff; and attacking the science-based laws that help protect America’s wildlife and habitats today and for future generations.”  Let’s take each in turn.

Suppressed Science

According to the report, the Trump-Zinke DOI has “stifled politically inconvenient research, put industry interests ahead of public health, and undermined science-based rules and regulations. The department has established a clear pattern of suppressing science and scientific evidence, particularly when they run counter to the interests and priorities of the coal, gas, and oil industries.”

One glaring example came on August 18, 2017, when the department cancelled a study of “Potential Human Health Effects of Surface Coal Mining Operations in Central Appalachia.”  The study was “assessing the toxic dust emanating from surface coal mining methods like mountaintop removal in the Appalachians. . . . Exposure to the toxic dust can lead to serious health problems, including significantly higher rates of birth defects, cancer, and cardiovascular and respiratory diseases.”  The report calls the decision a “striking attack on science” that “clearly prioritized the interests of fossil fuel companies over the public’s health.  Stopping the study after lifting a ban on new coal leasing on public lands only added insult to injury.”

In Minnesota, the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) was preparing an environmental impact statement “to determine if sulfide-ore mining would harm nearby Boundary Waters Canoe Wilderness.”

Local communities had serious concerns that sulfide ore mining could pollute the wilderness and hurt the region’s economy by driving away people who came to enjoy the area’s abundant recreational activities.  In response, the DOI under President Obama had issued a two-year “time out” to conduct a thorough environmental review on the adjoining DOI lands and determine if mining permits would cause environmental harm to an extent that the department should prohibit all mining there for 20 years.  Under the Trump administration, the Forest Service cut the environmental assessment short, ending it after only 15 months.  This shift to a less stringent review came only a month after the DOI had renewed expired mining leases near the wilderness area.

The DOI also now requires political review of research grants.  “A single political appointee with no science degree, Senior Advisor Steve Howke,” who before he worked for credit unions played football with Zinke in high school, “now must review all science grants over $50,000 from every DOI bureau.”  Such interference is “unprecedented and pernicious,” to quote former DOI Deputy Secretary David Hayes.

The department has also reduced the time allowed to conduct environmental assessments, while also limiting the number of pages in any given report.  According to UCS, Zinke has utilized these policies “to accelerate potential oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, one of America’s last great wildernesses.”  After the Republican Congress opened the door to drilling in 2017, “Zinke implemented a new policy that gave the Bureau of Land Management an unrealistic deadline for processing proposed lease sales.  He also hired a private firm to conduct an accelerated environmental assessment of proposed leases in the refuge, signaling his intent to shortcut the assessment process.”

Failure to Acknowledge or Act on Climate Change

According to the report, “Zinke’s refusal to place a high priority on climate action—or even to acknowledge the need to protect public lands from this rapidly growing problem—undermines the very mission of the agency.  His deliberate sidelining of climate science has taken several forms:

• refusing to acknowledge reality by striking climate change from the agency’s strategic vision and rescinding
policies that factor climate change into future planning;
• covering up bad news by delaying and burying reports dealing with climate impacts and censoring established
science in press releases; and
• moving backwards by taking actions that are almost certain to increase global warming emissions.”

Take, for example, Secretarial Order 3360, signed in late 2017, which rescinded “several important climate mitigation and conservation policies.”  The Order “completely deleted the department’s 2012 climate policy and its directions to “use the best available science to increase understanding of climate change impacts [and] inform decision-making” and “integrate climate change adaptation strategies into its policies, planning, programs and operations.”

Key climate-related DOI webpages have been “buried, removed or languish without updates.  For example, www.doi.gov/climate was once a clearinghouse of information related to climate change, its effects on public waters and lands, and the DOI’s responsibility to plan and prepare for a changing climate. Today, it does not exist.”  In addition, UCS reports, department press releases “have censored established facts about climate science.  In a notable example, a May 2017 press release announcing a peer-reviewed publication was altered, reportedly at the request of DOI leadership.  A deleted line read, “Global climate change drives sea level rise, increasing the frequency of coastal flooding.”  This change removed the well-established link between rates of sea level rise and climate change, a key fact in a report whose co-authors included US Geological Survey (USGS) scientists.”

Silencing Scientists and Agency Staff

According to the report, “not only is science a target but so too are the scientists and staff who carry out the department’s crucial work.”  During 2017, “67 percent of DOI science advisory committees failed to meet as frequently as their charters dictate.”  In 2017 the department limited the number of its scientists who could attend the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union.  “In June 2018, the US Geological Survey (USGS) began requiring scientists who do attend conferences to submit their presentation titles in advance for political review.”  In May 2018, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) prevented 14 archaeologists from attending the largest scientific conference in their field, the annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.”  A June 2018 USGS communications policy “instructs scientists to obtain permission from DOI leadership before speaking to reporters.”

The report also documents extensive reassignment and harassment of scientists and other career staff members.  As a result, “the DOI lost nearly 1,400 workers between January 2017 and March 2018, a slow drain that represents a loss of accumulated expertise and guidance, while creating a climate of uncertainty for remaining DOI staff.  One UCS survey respondent at the US Fish and Wildlife Service described the bureau’s atmosphere in dismal terms: ‘Many key positions remain unfulfilled, divisions are understaffed, and process has slowed to a crawl.’”

Joel Clement, a forest ecologist, had been a climate science advisor at Interior for seven years until he was abruptly reassigned to an accounting office that collects royalty checks from fossil fuel companies.  As he wrote in a Washington Post op-ed last year, “I believe I was retaliated against for speaking out publicly about the dangers that climate change poses to Alaska Native communities.”  He’s one of the co-authors of the UCS report.

“Let’s be honest,” he wrote in the Post.  “The Trump administration didn’t think my years of science and policy experience were better suited to accounts receivable.  It sidelined me in the hope that I would be quiet or quit. . . .  Trump and Zinke might kick me out of my office, but they can’t keep me from speaking out.  They might refuse to respond to the reality of climate change, but their abuse of power cannot go unanswered.”

Endangering Wildlife and Habitats

“Ignoring science sets Secretary Zinke free to ignore decades of practice and convention—and it puts America’s treasured wildlife at risk, both today and for future generations,” the report declares.  “Several specific examples illustrate how the Trump administration has politicized the process of listing an endangered or threatened species.”  For instance,

Secretary Zinke has sought to weaken current activities designed to protect the greater sage-grouse as part of an effort to open up millions of acres of sage-grouse habitat to oil and gas leasing.  Known as an “umbrella species,” the greater sage-grouse plays an integral role in protecting more than 350 types of plants and wildlife in sagebrush environments.

In 2013, multiple stakeholders—including scientists, federal agencies, states, industry, private landowners, and environmental groups—had finalized a long-term conservation plan for the greater sage-grouse. According to that plan, “Declines of sage-grouse near oil and gas fields in this area have been well documented.”  Significantly, the DOI and several western states put in place these conservation efforts as an alternative to the more drastic step of listing the greater sage-grouse as endangered under the Endangered Species Act. Evidence suggests that the resulting conservation efforts produced results.  In a 2015 press release, the FWS stated, “An unprecedented, landscape-scale conservation effort across the western United States has significantly reduced threats to the greater sage-grouse across 90 percent of the species’ breeding habitat and enabled the USFWS to conclude that the charismatic rangeland bird does not warrant protection under the Endangered Species Act.”

However, in August 2018, the BLM approved a massive natural gas project in the heart of greater sage-grouse territory, despite the fact that Matthew Mead, the Republican governor of Wyoming, and John Hickenlooper, the Democratic governor of Colorado, had written to Secretary Zinke that attempts to roll back conservation and pave the way for more oil and gas development in this species’ habitat would be undesirable. His actions, they agreed, could soon lead to an “endangered” listing for the bird, constraining Western economies with far more stringent restrictions than those in the agreed-upon conservation plan.

One likely replacement for Zinke is Deputy Secretary David Bernhardt, a former farm industry lobbyist who issued Secretarial Order 3360.  Even before his appointment, environmental groups warned that he would be overseeing an agency that deals with “clients who have paid his law firm millions of dollars in legal and lobbying fees,” as the Los Angeles Times reported.  Bernhardt then agreed to recuse himself on matters related to his ex-clients for one year. Almost as soon as that year passed, however, Bernhardt published an op-ed in the Washington Post arguing for a rollback of the Endangered Species Act — a statute over which he had sued Interior on behalf of a former client, Westlands Water District. “The application of the Endangered Species Act to future water projects is of profound interest to Westlands and other agribusinesses like it,” the Times’ Hiltzik wrote, “not to mention other industries Bernhardt represented as a private attorney.”

Adds Hiltzik,

Interior would like us to think that Bernhardt’s policy decisions all fall within the four walls of his job at Interior and have zero to do with his prior employment or future employment.  Is this plausible?  Prior to 2001, he was associated with the natural resources law firm Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, which has numbered Westlands and Cadiz as its clients.  That year, he jumped to the Interior Department under George W. Bush and eventually served as its top legal official.

After the Bush administration, he returned to the Brownstein firm and traipsed back through the swinging doors to Interior upon his nomination by Trump last year.  Obviously, it’s impossible to say that he would be back on Brownstein’s payroll after the Trump administration goes off into the sunset, but as Shakespeare said, “What’s past is prologue,” and who wants to argue with him?

Writing about the new report on the UCS blog, Clement concludes:

It is a desecration of the concept of public service for Zinke to ignore science aimed to protect the public’s best interest, and an insult to the taxpayers who pay his salary and those of his political colleagues.  Zinke won’t be around forever, but he has filled the ranks of political appointees at DOI with like-minded industry lobbyists and climate deniers, so things are not likely to change at Interior anytime soon unless Congress, with a vocal public behind it, insists on transparency, scientific integrity and immediate climate action.

Summarizing his reading of the UCS report, Hiltzik adds: “Zinke’s hostility to scientific knowledge has been on vivid display in recent weeks, via a string of ignorant observations about the California wildfires in which he’s been outdone only by his boss, Trump.  The UCS report shows that his ignorance isn’t limited to this one topic, nor is it accidental.  His goal is to turn Interior from a steward of America’s natural patrimony into an agent of plunder, and he’s well on his way to victory.”

If only it were just Zinke!