The U.S. Department of Interior has placed a gag order on N.C. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologists working at Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge, according to N.C. environmental lawyers.
The DOI has called the charge untrue, although all inquiries to the Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge personnel now must be referred to the Atlanta FWS Southeast Region office. NO-OLF officials said the Bush Administration also had cut funding to the Pocosin Lakes refuge, resulting in the loss of nine jobs.
NO-OLF officials said FWS biologists have been ordered no longer to talk to the media about the Navy’s proposed Outlying Landing Field real-estate deal to purchase 33,000 acres in Beaufort and Washington counties
Environmental attorneys who are helping local residents fight the OLF plan called the DOI move a gag order, but federal spokesmen termed it “standard procedure.”
“The newly-issued gag order is an effort to keep the public from knowing the opinions of the Fish and Wildlife Service professionals who are concerned about the effects a proposed landing field will have on wildlife and the refuge at the Navy’s proposed site,” said Derb Carter, an attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center in Chapel Hill. SELC represents environmental groups and OLF opponents in the case against the Navy’s proposed OLF site.
“This directive only further confirms the decision to build the outlying landing field is entirely political and not based on law and science.”
The order came from the U.S. Department of the Interior, Carter said.
But a spokesman for the Interior Department called Carter’s release “a complete fabrication as far as I can tell.”
“There is no gag order,” said Interior Department spokesman Hugh Vickery in a telephone interview. “That’s absurd.
“How are we going to gag (thousands of) people, many of whom have PhDs? We tell them to tell the media to go get a public-affairs officer. That’s not a gag order. Sometimes when you have an issue … there are times when it’s inappropriate to comment … when the regulatory process is under way.”
Washington-area FWS biologist Wendy Stanton was quoted in a press release about a record number of birds seen near Navy-termed “Site C” during December. That release was sent out by North Carolinians Opposed to an Outlying Landing Field earlier this month. The gag order occurred about a month later.
Stanton works at the Pungo unit of the Pocosin National Wildlife Refuge, which is about 3.5 miles from the Navy’s preferred OLF site on the border of Washington and Beaufort counties. Stanton said she saw more birds at the refuge in December than she has seen at similar time frames during the last nine years, according to the NO-OLF release.
“During an aerial survey conducted on Dec. 7, 2006, I observed over 26,000 tundra swans in the Pungo unit,” Stanton said, according to that release. “Later that day, during my routine duties on the refuge, I observed between 75,000 (and) 80,000 snow geese flying into and present in Pungo Lake by the tens of thousands. … In terms of numbers, the 2006-2007 waterfowl season has been absolutely spectacular.”
Tom MacKenzie, a spokesman for the Fish and Wildlife Service’s Southeast Region, said the media-referral process is done simply to make sure everyone’s on the same page.
“It’s a matter of trying to have a coordinated response to a complicated issue,” he said.
He said such action is often taken when any matter involves “cross-programic issues.”
Be the first to comment