April 10, 2014 09:36 AM UTC

More Grandstanding in Garfield County

• 0 Comments
• by: western_values

On Tuesday, Garfield County Commissioner Tom Jankovsky and biologist Dr. Rob Ramey testified at a House Natural Resource Committee on a number of bills that would amend the Endangered Species Act.

If both those names sound familiar, it’s because it’s not the first time we’ve heard from both of them. Commissioner Jankovsky has been under pressure for paying out-of-state consultants, like American Stewards of Liberty, hundreds of thousands in taxpayers’ dollars for consulting fees to plan and adopt an alternative sage grouse plan—a plan seemingly headed for the trash bucket at BLM and USFWS offices.

One of the consultants that Commissioner Jankovsky hired to draft an alternative Sage Grouse proposal was none other than biologist-for-hire Dr. Rob Ramey. Dr. Ramey has made the point for years that scientific information should be public information.

In his testimony yesterday Dr. Ramey claimed, “when data are not publicly accessible, legitimate scientific inquiry is effectively eliminated as no third party can independently reproduce the results. Such secrecy does not further the goal of species recovery. Such secrecy also puts the evidentiary basis of some resource agency decisions outside the realm of science and in clear violation of the Information Quality Act.”

That’s an interesting take, but one not grounded in reality. In fact, Dr. Ramey consistently finds himself lambasting any science other than his own, which is probably why he’s been routinely hired by industry associations to counter any government findings.

It’s also interesting Dr. Ramey would bring up the idea of information quality.  In 2007, Dr. Ramey said in a Congressional hearing that in order to better make ESA listing decisions the government should “take steps to eliminate financial and other conflicts of interest in Recovery Teams and peer reviews.”  Ramey’s involvement with the American Petroleum Institute and the Western Energy Alliance seems like a clear conflict of interest and a relationship that could lead to a real lack of information quality.

Instead of grandstanding and reciting campaign talking points, our local and national elected officials should be spending their time working with all stakeholders to avoid a listing. Anything but this is a surefire way to an ESA listing. And that’s bad news for Westerners.