FWS employees told not to discuss climate change

Internal memorandums circulated in the Alaskan division of the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) appear to require government biologists or other employees traveling in countries around the Arctic not to discuss climate change, polar bears or sea ice if they are not designated to do so. The memos, which were sent to employees two weeks ago and leaked to the press last week, require that any employee seeking permission to travel "understands the administration's position on climate change, polar bears, and sea ice and will not be speaking on or responding to these issues." The memos also state that "any future travel requests involving or potentially involving climate change, sea ice and/or polar bears will also require a memorandum from the regional director to the director indicating who'll be the official spokesman on the trip and the one responding to questions on these issues, particularly polar bears." Deborah Williams, an environmental campaigner and former high-level Interior Department official in the Clinton administration, called the memos "a gag order." "These memos are an outrage, and do a great disservice to federal employees and to advancing discussion and knowledge on these critical issues," said Williams. "I worked very closely with Fish and Wildlife and other Interior agencies, and a memo like this is truly inconceivable," she said. "This is an issue of international significance, and you want your professional public servants to be able to discuss these issues. It is unconscionable to gag them." At a news conference, Fish and Wildlife Director H. Dale Hall denied that the memos were a form of censorship. He described the content of the documents as part of a policy to establish an agenda and the appropriate spokesperson for international meetings. Considering the high-profile nature of climate change and the issues that might come up, it was prudent to know ahead of time what everyone was going to discuss, he said. Environmentalists hope to use a recent administration proposal to list polar bears as threatened under the Endangered Species Act to put pressure on the Bush administration to regulate greenhouse gases. "The polar bear has created a 24/7 forum for the US government to be grilled about what its position is on global warming, and it's really put the Bush administration in a tight, tight corner," said Kieran Suckling, policy director of the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental group. The Bush administration has been under increasing fire for allegedly trying to curb the speech of government scientists who produce studies that contradict the administration's positions, particularly on global warming. Scientists in several government agencies have been chastised for speaking to reporters, and some have been asked to submit papers and lectures to high-level managers for review. Political appointees at NASA have turned down journalists' requests for interviews with scientists, and the Minerals Management Service has allowed journalists to interview scientists, including on polar bear observations, only if the agency could record them.