Subject: USGS scientist fired (Hill).
Date: Mon, 19 Mar 2001 055500 -0600
From: Roy Beavers
To: guru
--------------------------------------------------
.........From EMF-L........
Folks, this week the U.S. Senate will debate the McCain-Feingold
Bill. The crux of the matter is the role of $$$$$$ in controlling
the U.S. political process.
America is -- and has been for some time -- an oligarchy. The
governmental machinery is effectively under the control of a small
minority of the population -- the VERY wealthy and the BIG $$$$$$$
corporations.....
(I was extremely pleased to hear the noted billionaire financier,
Warren Buffet, say much the same thing on CNN over the weekend.....
He has joined in the support of McCain-Feingold ... and admits the
need for the system to be changed.)
Those who oppose the McCain-Feingold bill -- who favor continuation
of the status-quo -- are mainly the vested interests (the very
wealthy and the BIG corporations) who are now in control. They
exercise that control through their easy "access" $$$$$$$ and
lobbying advantages with BOTH political parties.....!!!
(Also admitted by Warren Buffet.)
They have brought America to the **Spanish Inquisition** kind of
behavior you see below.......
If we do not act fast -- and decisively (The Hegal Bill alternative
to McCain-Feingold is a diversionary tactic backed by the oligarchy.
It should be totally rejected.!!) -- we will see the darkness of
the Middle Ages descend upon America's freedoms ... including in
particular the freedom of speech (The First Amendment).
It is ONLY the free flow of information -- which we still enjoy --
that stands in the way of the oligarchy's ultimate and complete
take over of America......
I hope many of you will contact your Senator and Congressman to
register your COMPLETE support for McCain-Feingold ... and your
TOTAL opposition to the Hegal diversionary approach.....guru......
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: USGS scientist fired for posting Arctic Refuge map
Date: Sun, 18 Mar 2001 23:47:25 -0500
From: "DRHill"
To:
Roy: I am passing this along as an FYI because it seems in sync with other
recent news coming out of the present administration.
Dawn
----- Original Message -----
From: Zoltan Grossman
To: hirsch@earthsys.org ; wcronon@facstaff.wisc.edu
Sent: Sunday, March 18, 2001 11:03 PM
Subject: USGS scientist fired for posting Arctic Refuge map
Friends and colleagues,
This is the first act of environmental censorship by the Bush
administration. This source of information is David Inouye, noted ecologist
with a most distinguished record as a research scientist, science policy
advocate, and leader in the Ecological Society of America.
This is chilling news. Many people on the lists receiving this message
belong to professional societies that must be called into action
IMMEDIATELY. A am asking my fellow members of the American Library
Association to send this notice to as many colleagues as possible.
The message at the bottom of this commentary is frightening. I will request
that the Councilors of the American Library Association's
Social Responsibilities Round Table and its Task Force on the Environment
request ALA's Washington Office to provide its members a report on this
issue and have it published in American Libraries, and posted to ALL of
ALA's eMail discussion lists.
I will make a similar request to other appropriate ALA units, such as the
Science and Technology Section of the Association of College and Research
Libraries, the Government Documents Round Table, the Intellectual Freedom
Round Table, Map and Geography Round Table, and the Library and Information
Technology Association.
I would encourage every member of any professional organization to do
likewise. I have alerted the Special Libraries Association and the
American Institute of Biological Science as to this.
If Ian Thomas was fired to set an example for other federal employees to
follow the bush-mandates in lock-step fashion, we professionals must send a
clear message that this type of behavior will NOT be tolerated. Mr. Thomas'
work was being done as part of an ongoing research initiative to share
biological data with researchers and educators. His firing needs to be
investigated.
He is being punished for doing something that strikes fear into partisan
politians--providing information. This act of censorship cannot go
unchallenged.
Fred Stoss
Coordinator
Social Responsibilities Round Table
American Library Association
Past Chair
Task Force on the Environment
American Library Association
Past Chair
Environment Division
Special Libraries Association
****************
****************
From: "Ecological Society of America: grants, jobs, news"
ECOLOG-L@UMDD.UMD.EDU
From: "David W. Inouye"
To: ECOLOG-L@UMDD.UMD.EDU
This news story is also reported at:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nation/20010315/t000022700.html
********************
********************
From: Kennedy, Robert
Sent: Thursday, March 15, 2001 5:08 PM
Subject: USGS Scientist fired over Arctic Nat'l Wildlife Refuge maps
Hello All- Here's an infuriating piece of news on the Arctic National
Wildlife Refuge issue.
The news came over a topic-based listserve on image processing and remote
sensing. A scientist working with the USGS was fired because he placed maps
of caribou calving areas in the Arctic Nat'l Wildlife Refuge on the web.
This map was one of more than 20,000 maps he'd placed on the web. His web
page (with all 20,000 maps) has been removed. This apparently happened in
the last few days. Please read at least some of his account.
This needs attention. It seems to indicate a sea-change in the Department of
Interior. While this is not a surprise given Bush's position on the Refuge,
we should make sure that it does not go unnoticed. If it bugs you like it
bugs me, do something about it. Email Bush. Email or write Senators (our
only hope for protection of the Refuge lies in the Senate). Write the
newspaper, call your Aunt. This is outrageous.
********************
********************
********************
********************
Hi All,
Well, I have been fired for posting to the internet a single web page with
some maps showing the distribution of caribou calving areas in the Arctic
National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR).
My entire website http://www.mbr-pwrc.usgs.gov/geotech/ has now been
removed from the internet. This represents about 3 years worth of work and
20,000 plus maps showing bird, mammal and amphibian distributions, satellite
imagery, landcover and vegetation maps for countries and protected areas all
around of the globe. As far as I aware it was one of the biggest
collections of maps online and certainly the biggest collection showing maps
of biodiversity and the environment. The website was often visited by over
a thousand visitors each week. In addition, I was fulfilling roughly a
dozen requests for geospatial data and information from colleagues, other
researchers and the general public each day.
All of this comes as a rather big surprise to me. I was given no chance to
remove the webpage or even finish writing an appeal before my position was
terminated. I was working under a contract so I believe I have very little
legal recourse. I have received no written explanation (or even an email)
stating the exact reasons for the termination decision and I understand that
even though this would be a reasonable courtesy to expect, it is unlikely to
be forthcoming.
>From my viewpoint my dismissal was a high-level political decision to set
an
example to other Federal scientists. I base this belief on the
following information I received from a colleague in Alaska who is a
leading researcher on the issues involved:
"I really hope you don't get fired. In fact, had the timing of what you did
not been so inappropriate based on everything else that was going on, I
doubt that anyone would have noticed. Your work showed a lot of
initiative..."
"...the fallout would not have been so great had the subject matter not been
one of the three USDOI super hot topics with the new administration and had
we not been briefing the Secretary at the nearly exact time your website
went up. Everyone is nervous and as I mentioned earlier, consistency in
presentation is paramount."
So now, I believe my only recourse is to appeal to the general public in the
hope that in the future what just happened to me will not happen to others.
I would recommend anybody in a similar circumstances to contact the fine
people at Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility
(http://www.peer.org) or a similar organization.
The response and support I have received from friends online has been
truely amazing. I very much appreciate how quickly people have acted on my
behalf and helped publicize my plight and I especially wish to thank the
international mapping community...receiving letters of support from far away
places cheers me up no end. Please feel free to forward this email to other
lists and media contacts! I would also be grateful if anybody who misses
all the maps I put on the internet please contact the USGS to let them know
and to ask that the maps be reposted.
I feel very bad that these events are also affecting my colleagues at
Patuxent. Patuxent was a great place to work, has amazing researchers and
everybody I worked with is very supportive.
Many, many thanks for your support,
Ian Thomas free_world_maps@hotmail.com
THE DETAILS:
Nobody instructed/authorized me to post the web pages on Arctic National
Wildlife Refuge. It was done on my own initiative. I was working on land
cover maps for all National Wildlife Refuges using the new National
Landcover Datasets. Last week I published over 1000 land cover maps online
covering every National Wildlife Refuge and National Park in the lower 48.
(These maps have now been removed from the internet too). Similar land
cover data for Alaska were not available but the Arctic National Wildlife
Refuge had a good landcover map so I included it.
In the past, I helped produce the only set of maps online showing all bird
species distributions in Alaska. In addition I have produced online mammal
distribution atlases of Africa, maps for tigers in asia and I was working on
digitizing North American mammal range maps produced by the Smithsonian
Institution.
I have also been conducting background research to prepare proposals to
study the effects of mineral extraction on biodiversity and protected areas
on a very large scale. One such proposal that I was preparing would have
looked at exporting analysis and mapping methods applied in the United
States to other regions of the World such as Africa. The proposal was
co-sponsored by the Mineral Division of USGS and the World Resources
Institute.
The migration of caribou in North America is the closest thing that we have
to the great mammal migrations that occur in Africa. African protected
areas are also under great pressure from possible development for mineral
extraction. So the carribou distributions that I found on the Fish and
Wildlife Service public website were of particular interest. I have also
worked for several years on maps of migratory bird distribution patterns. I
therefore have a great interest in other migratory animals as many of the
temporal mapping problems are similar.
I was completely unaware that there was anything wrong with publishing ANWR
maps. I have never been informed of any agency restrictions or any other
guidelines on publishing maps depicting ANWR... I only now have been
informed that there is a two week old agency "communications directive" that
limits who is allowed to distribute new information on ANWR within my
agency.
I thought that I was helping further public and scientific understanding and
debate of the issues at ANWR by making some clearer maps. I also hoped that
colleagues in USGS would see the maps and then contact me if they needed
additional mapping help. I was careful to quote my sources and explain what
I had done. I made no statement about what the maps might mean with regard
to oil development of the refuge.
The web pages were put up on Wednesday, March 7, last week. The first
thing I did when I put the ANWR pages up on the internet was to inform
other USGS Biological Resources Division mapping people and other agency
(Fish Wildlife Service and National Park Service respectively) GIS people
through email that they were on the web. Informing other Federal colleagues
and agencies immediately upon publication to the web appears to me to be the
only reasonable review process available, seeing as there is no internal
review website currently available...I have never been informed of any other
established proceedure for review of web content on our site. I actually
haven't had any complaints about or requests to change any other map on my
website...
I assumed that if anybody had a problem they could contact me
directly and quickly and appropriate steps could be taken almost
immediately. I received one warning from a colleague that the maps I put on
the internet should be removed. Unfortunately, it was sent on Saturday so I
did not receive it in time. I think the decision to terminate me was taken
before I even got to work on Monday.
I also assumed that because all I was doing was esentially presenting
existing public information in a clearer and improved format, there was very
little need for any extensive review other than the steps I
took. Indeed the changes that I made to the original Fish and Wildlife
Service (FWS) web maps were simply to digitize them ("trace"), then overlay
them on satellite and vegetation maps and then summarize how may years
specific areas were a high density caribou calving area. I found a similar
(poor quality) summary map on the FWS website that allowed me to check the
accuracy of my simple analysis.
I was unaware that FWS had updated the data. There is no mention of
updated information on the FWS website. This new data has still to be made
public. If my maps were inaccurate in any way so are the public FWS maps I
copied.... (please refer to
http://www.r7.fws.gov/nwr/arctic/pchmap2.html#section6)
I think that over the last three years I have put more maps up on the
internet (at a guess approaching 20,000 to 30,000 static individual maps)
equalling any other website on the world wide web. So out of the tens of
thousands of maps (and hours) I finally publish one that got me fired....I
suppose the odds were going to run out eventually....
I am concerned that other Federal researchers may easily make the same
mistakes I just made and should learn from my example what happens if you're
not careful.
Patuxent was a great place to work, has amazing researchers and everybody I
worked with is very supportive.
Ian Thomas
Former Mapping Specialist at:
GIS & Remote Sensing Unit
Biological Resources Division
United States Geological Survey
Patuxent Wildlife Research Center
Old Homepage (no longer available)
http://www.mbr-pwrc.usgs.gov/geotech/home.html
The Global Environmental Atlas (no longer available)
http://www.mbr-pwrc.usgs.gov/geotech/cindi/world.html
Archive provided courtesy of WaveGuide, http://www.wave-guide.org
Reprinted with permission of Roy Beavers, http://www.emfguru.com