Dances with Horses: Lessons from the Environmental Fringe

When environmental activists disregard or show contempt for facts and the rules of evidence, their intrusion into environmental issues may be perversely counterproductive. Using field and telephone interview data and unpublished and published documents, including court briefs, I show that certain ac...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Conservation biology 1996-06, Vol.10 (3), p.708-712
Main Author: Symanski, Richard
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Animal rights
Animal, plant and microbial ecology
Applied ecology
Biological and medical sciences
Censuses
Conservation biology
Conservation, protection and management of environment and wildlife
Environmental conservation
Environmentalism
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Horses
Land management
Law schools
Parks, reserves, wildlife conservation. Endangered species: population survey and restocking
Public land
Sustainable land management
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Summary:When environmental activists disregard or show contempt for facts and the rules of evidence, their intrusion into environmental issues may be perversely counterproductive. Using field and telephone interview data and unpublished and published documents, including court briefs, I show that certain activists misrepresented the Nevada Bureau of Land Management in its custodial role for the nation's wild horses. The core of the misrepresentation was an independent census of Nevada's wild horses conducted by the Public Lands Resource Council, an ad hoc association. These census data differ dramatically from those produced by the Bureau of Land Management. The latter data were confirmed, in part, by Bureau of Land Management roundups in northcentral Nevada. The Animal Rights Law Clinic at the Rutger's School of Law joined forces with the Public Lands Resource Council and used the council's questionable census results in an attack on the Bureau of Land Management's horse program. A careful probing of environmentalist agendas and data is at least as important as careful scientific design, execution, and display of results. Saving species and ecosystems is, then, as much an exercise in human psychology and the politics and sociology of advocacy groups as it is in conservation biology.
ISSN:0888-8892
1523-1739
DOI:10.1046/j.1523-1739.1996.10030708.x