Staff report…
Most people think university professors – especially those with tenure – are safe from political interference in their research fields. They would be wrong – especially in state universities, according to a recent story just out from Washington State.
Robert Wielgus was director of the Large Carnivore Conservation Laboratory at Washington State University: Kay Morris
Washington’s leading expert on wolves, Professor Rob Wielgus, learned this lesson the hard way at Washington State University (WSU). Dr. Wielgus was Director of the university’s Large Carnivore Conservation Laboratory that did pioneering work demonstrating how to reduce conflict between gray wolves and livestock. His work became controversial after he showed that certain ranchers were provoking wolf predation to trigger policies requiring the state game agency to kill the entire wolfpack.
After Dr. Wielgus reported his findings, WSU administrators threatened him with disciplinary action, impeded his research, and imposed a gag order.
The university took these actions at the behest of the livestock industry and its legislative allies, according to one of the unions supporting public employees who protect the environment, PEER .
In Wielgus’s defense, the group filed a lawsuit charging WSU administrators with infringement of academic freedom and harassment. That complaint was settled Tuesday on the courthouse steps with a $300,000 buyout.
Wielgus will continue his work in another setting but in the absence of his predation avoidance program, Washington lacks a coherent, science-based wolf management policy.
The state is continuing “lethal removal” of wolfpacks in order to get the animals to “change their behavior” – “as if a wolfpack were North Korea,” says PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch.
“State game officials tacitly acknowledge the indefensibility of their current posture by cloaking their decision-making from public review to (in the words of one game official) ‘keep the temperature down’ in the face of protests over game agents shooting wolves from helicopters,” he said. “Yet, it is precisely because wolves are such an emotion-laden topic that objective scientific research is sorely needed.”
