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For Immediate Release
Scathing report blames Interior Department officials for wildlife mismanagement
Inspector general report calls for Congressional action to restore agency integrity
WASHINGTON – A scathing new report from the Interior Department’s Inspector General provides new details of the extent to which Julie MacDonald, a former Interior Department official manipulated decisions made under the Endangered Species Act, to the benefit of developers and the detriment of threatened and endangered wildlife.
The report, dated December 10, lambastes Julie MacDonald, former Deputy Assistant Secretary for Fish and Wildlife and Parks, for inserting herself “personally and profoundly in a number of ESA issues.”
“MacDonald’s zeal to advance her agenda has caused considerable harm to the integrity of the ESA program and to the morale and reputation of the FW, as well as potential harm to individual species,” notes Inspector General Earl E. Devaney in a cover memo accompanying the report. “Her heavy-handedness has cast doubt on nearly every ESA decision issued during her tenure.”
The report, prepared at the behest of Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), notes that MacDonald’s influence was extended by other officials at the Department of the Interior, including former Assistant Secretary for Fish and Wildlife and Parks, Judge Craig Manson.
“Judge Manson so thoroughly supported MacDonald that even when a known error in a Federal Register notice, which was caused by MacDonald’s calculations, was brought to Manson’s attention, he directed that the notice be published regardless of the error,” the report notes.
“Julie MacDonald and her cronies used their influence to directly undermine federal decisions that determine the future of some of our rarest species,” said Jamie Rappaport Clark, executive vice president at Defenders of Wildlife and a former director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. “This report proves just how widespread political decision-making has been in the Bush administration.”
According to the report, MacDonald and others were able to abuse their power in part because of an “enormous policy void” regarding the discretion that the Interior Secretary has to impact agency decisions.
“While the ESA affords the Secretary great discretion in several areas…the absence of policy in exercising that discretion has resulted, in MacDonald’s case, a wholesale lack of consistency, a process built on guess-work, and decisions that could not pass legal muster,” the report notes. “[A]ction is necessary to restore the integrity of the ESA program, and the morale and reputation of the FWS in the eyes of the public and of Congress.”
“Thank goodness President-elect Obama has pledged to get politics out of scientific decisionmaking,” said Clark. “January 20 cannot come too soon for America’s endangered wildlife.”
Read the report on Senator Wyden's website
