Lawmakers Ask Interior to Investigate Scientific Integrity at NPS

Democratic lawmakers from the House and Senate have sent letters to the Deputy Inspector General of the Interior Department, Mary Kendall, requesting an investigation into the “effectiveness of scientific integrity policy” at the National Park Service (NPS). According to a report from Reveal, a nonprofit investigative journalism organization, NPS officials have removed any mention of human role in climate change from drafts of a report on sea-level rise and storm surge. An analysis of eighteen different versions of the scientific report revealed that the word “anthropogenic” and references to “human-activities” were crossed out. The NPS report, written by a scientist at the University of Colorado at Boulder, describes research that projects risks from rising sea-levels at coastal national park sites and is intended to inform park officials as well as the public on ways to protect park resources and visitors from the impacts of climate change. The long-awaited report is not yet published and has been held up for ten months. Many scientists have criticized the move as a violation of an NPS policy to protect science from political influence. Joel Clement, a former Department of the Interior official under the Obama Administration, called the NPS report “probably the biggest scientific integrity violation at the Department of Interior, by far … because this is an actual scientific report.” Interior Secretary, Ryan Zinke,...
Source: Public Policy Reports - Category: Biology Authors: Source Type: news