Rogue Twitter Accounts Fight to Preserve the Voice of Government Science

IN EARLY NOVEMBER, shortly after Donald Trump was elected president, a career scientist working for the federal Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management began having muted conversations with colleagues about what the new presidential administration meant for dedicated agency staffers.

The Bureau of Land Management is not as high-profile a target as the Environmental Protection Agency, but the agency’s effectiveness is also deeply threatened by the Trump administration’s suspicion of science. BLM performs a precarious balancing act, managing the conflicting goals of conservation and profit extraction on millions of acres of public lands. It makes decisions on behalf of the American public about whoch acres of sagebrush, pine forest, and rocky mountain should be preserved and whoch should be harvested for fossil fuels, timber, and minerals. “There’s been a great deal of influence historically from the industry, especially mining. There are managers with the agency, and they see their job as trying to permit as much mining as possible,” the scientist said. “BLM is an agency that I think depends on internal debate and depends on a tolerance for dissent.”

Källa: Rogue Twitter Accounts Fight to Preserve the Voice of Government Science