 June 2001
American Friends Service Committee Peacework Magazine Patrica Watson, Editor Sara Burke, Assistant Editor Pat Farren, Founding Editor 2161 Massachusetts Ave. Telephone number: Fax number:
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Geologist Fired for Posting Maps of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge The following excerpts--disturbing for what they suggest about the Bush administration's attitude toward both the environment and the public's right to know--come from an Email message by Ian Thomas, a contract scientist for the US Geological Survey. Thomas was abruptly fired from his job in March, after posting a map on the World Wide Web showing migratory patterns of caribou in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve which the administration wants to open up for oil drilling. For more information, check Thomas' website at www.maptricks.com. Hi All, Well, I have been fired for posting to the Internet a web page with maps showing the distribution of caribou calving areas in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). My website has been removed from the Internet. This represents about three years' worth of work and 20,000-plus maps showing bird, mammal, and amphibian distributions, satellite imagery, land cover, and vegetation maps for countries and protected areas all around of the globe. As far as I am aware it was one of the biggest collections of maps online and certainly the biggest collection showing maps of biodiversity and the environment. All of this comes as a rather big surprise to me. I was given no chance to remove the web page or even finish writing an appeal before my position was terminated. I was working under 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. 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 US Department of the Interior 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."
 Nobody instructed/authorized me to post the web pages on the ANWR. 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. Before being fired I published more than1000 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 ANRW had a good land cover map so I included it. The migration of caribou in North America is the closest thing that we have to the great mammal migrations of Africa. African protected areas are also under great pressure from possible development for mineral extraction. So the caribou distributions I found on the Fish and Wildlife Service public website were of particular interest. 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 these maps. 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 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 the US Geological Survey 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. I also assumed that because all I was doing was essentially 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, overlay them on satellite and vegetation maps, and then summarize how may years specific areas have been high density caribou calving areas. 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. Many, many thanks for your support,
Ian Thomas, Former Mapping Specialist, United States Geological
Survey, Patuxent Wildlife Research Center  Previous Article
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