WIKIMEDIA, US DEPT OF COMMERCE AND LABOR BUREAU OF FISHERESSeven US government fisheries scientists this week (January 7) made a formal complaint in which they claim that an administrative official planned to shut down their department because results of their research into the fate of species of salmon under threat in the Klamath River Basin, Oregon, ran counter to those of other agencies.
“This falls into the basket of obstruction of science for policy or political ends,” Jeff Ruch, executive director of the Washington DC-based watchdog Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), told Nature. PEER sent the letter of complaint to the Department of Interior on behalf of scientists at the US Bureau of Reclamation office in Klamath Falls, who have worked on predictive models for the survival and recovery of the threatened coho salmon (Oncorhynchus kisutch), which many environmentalists believe is suffering due to a series of hydroelectric dams on the Klamath River.
Last November, Klamath Basin Area Manager Jason Phillips outlined plans to reassign scientists from the Bureau’s Fisheries Research Branch (FBR), effectively eliminating the department. In the letter of complaint, the scientists allege that Phillips’s ...
