Debunking Lynxgate (Cont.)

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Outside Magazine April 2002

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Dispatches: Investigation
Debunking Lynxgate (Cont.)

To understand this fracas and why it has staying power, it helps to know a little bit about the threatened Canada lynx, a cousin to the bobcat found in Canada, the Rockies, and across a northern swath of the United States. The cat first landed at the center of controversy in 1998, when ecoterrorists cited the need to protect its habitat as justification for burning down $12 million worth of facilities at the Vail ski resort. But our story begins the following year, in 1999, when an interagency team of American biologists began a three-year, 16-state survey to determine where in the nation the cat still roamed, and where it didn't. The team's primary scientific tool is a simple rubbing post, wrapped in carpet, laced with attractant scent, studded with small tacks, and placed in the woods. Drawn by the odor, critters brush against the tacks and leave behind hairs, which are then collected and sent to the Carnivore Conservation Genetics Laboratory in Missoula, Montana. If a submitted sample turns out to be lynx, that means the cat exists in the woods where it was collected.

The problem was that in previous lynx studies, biologists had complained that the lab's results were screwy. In one case, technicians reported that submitted hair samples came from feral house cats—though the fur in question was taken from the middle of a wilderness. (The lab says it has clear protocols in place to correctly identify samples.) So in 1999, and again in 2000, several biologists working on the survey on behalf of the U.S. Forest Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife, and the Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife independently decided to test the men and women in white coats by sending them hairs from a captive lynx. One biologist even sent in hairs plucked from "Harry"—a stuffed bobcat that he keeps in his office.

In September 2000, somebody at the Forest Service sounded an alarm about the use of these "unauthorized" control samples. A departmental criminal investigation cleared the biologists of any wrongdoing, but a second report, prepared by a Portland, Oregon, private investigation firm and completed last June, notes that the biologists claim to have done everything aboveboard, except for a small detail: The national lynx study doesn't authorize using control samples, whether they're taken from Harry or a captive lynx. The scientists shrugged, and the whole thing landed in a binder on a shelf.

In mid-December, someone tipped off The Washington Times, and the paper subsequently ran with news that "wildlife biologists planted false evidence of a rare cat species in two national forests." Other papers followed suit with bombastic editorials, and the fur really began to fly. Congressman Hansen called for a top-to-bottom federal review of the lynx survey. The scandal, he warned, threatened the very economy of rural America. "This hoax, if it hadn't been discovered," Hansen said, "could have wrecked some people's way of life."

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