Charlotte Observer
2.04.07
Outrage in the refuge: Interior Department gag order on OLF an abuse of power
Editorial
Here's a dumb idea: The U.S. Department of the Interior has told its U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service employees in northeastern North Carolina not to respond to public inquiries about the effects of a proposed Navy practice landing field there. Any questions are to be referred to an office in Atlanta -- more than 500 miles away.
Why this cockeyed scheme? It's "an effort to keep the public from knowing ... about the effects a proposed landing field will have on wildlife and the refuge," says Derb Carter, an attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center. The field would be near the Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge, one of the East Coast's most important migratory waterfowl refuges.
The field will endanger large birds that spend their winters feeding and nesting near the field. If the 15- to 20-pound tundra swans and the 5- to 12-pound snow geese collide with expensive F/A 18 Super Hornet jets, chances are the jets are going down. So are the pilots.
This plan is one of the craziest the U.S. government has ever hatched. It presumes the Navy can manage the feeding, flying and colliding qualities of these large birds. That's a tall order. There aren't just thousands or even tens of thousands of these birds clogging the airways six months of the year. Last month, Fish & Wildlife Service biologists reported a record number of swans, geese and other waterfowl in the refuge this year -- well over 100,000. Each day they fly out to nearby farm fields to glean food -- and while they're in the air, they're also going to be in the way of the Super Hornet jets.
Perhaps the Interior Department is concerned about the public's knowing of the hazards the birds pose to pilots and $70 million aircraft. Or perhaps Interior is worried because the Navy is about to release this winter a revised environmental impact statement on the jet's likely impact on the birds, and vice versa. A federal judge ordered the revised report because the Navy did an inadequate job the first time around. That report contained errors and did not take the "hard look" at adverse impacts required by federal law, Judge Terry Boyle ruled.
If the Navy had listened more to the Fish & Wildlife Service when it drew up its flawed environmental statement, it might have honestly addressed the severe damage likely to occur when large birds get in the way of aircraft. The military's own expert on bird-plane collisions warned that it's not a matter of whether there will be collisions, but when.
That's why it's so maddening that there's an effort to suppress the truth
about the folly of putting the field near the Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife
Refuge. Ordering the Fish & Wildlife Service to stop talking about
the impact of the jets on the environment is about as nutty as ordering
the Army to quit talking about the impact of roadside bombs on our troops
in Iraq. It wouldn't change a single thing -- other than to keep the public
from knowing about it.
