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Take a look at this article. I would like to look at the report.

  OFF-ROAD COMMUNITY COMMISSIONED LIZARD STUDY; APPLAUDS NEW CLASSIFICATION

The report is not supported by science. The report supports the best political knowledge. The case is going back to the Appeals Court very soon. It is sad when the "best available science" over the past 20 years shows the continued decline of Flattail Horned Lizard populations (5 different studies, at last count), but provisions and guidlines of the ESA are ignored. It continues to be points of mitigation, but without a protected status, the mitigation is useless. Lester G. Milroy III

Horned Lizard? It's State Endangered in Arizona, and can't be collected, although it's status may not limit land use. I don't think State Endangered species receive Critical Habitat designations.

The Flattail HL is catagory 1 (Species of Special Concern) in California and is protected from "take." Habitat protection is the problem at this point. There has been, and continues to be, too much mitigation to "findings of no significant impact (FONSI)." Federal listing was denied on the most recent appeals, but it will be returning to court very soon. The "best available science" continues to show significant declines in populations and loss of habitat. Lester G. Milroy III

A special interest group financed this study. Who financed the other five studies? I am not commenting either way on the Flat tail. I just know there always seems to be an agenda on one side or the other. How do you get an unbiased opinion? Is there such a thing?

This doesn't appear to have actually been a study, in the sense of an idependent collection and analysis of data. Instead, it is a report, based on someone's reading of other published studies. This is usually how many of these things are done. For example, all those Environmental Impact Statements you hear about - no one actually goes out and collects data to come up with those assessments. What they do is go to the library (or on-line) and look up a few papers that are somewhat related, then cobble together a rough guess about the impact of some activity might be, given their own reading of the "best science available", which is usually pretty poor to almost non-existant.

For example, let's say you want to build a nuclear power plant on the shore of Lake Tahoe. Now, no one has ever done this, so there is no way to test any ideas about what the impact of this would be, and no one has ever done a study of the effects of such a plant on Lake Tahoe, because there are no such plants there to study. But the law requires that you file an environmental impact statement before you can build it. So, you go to the library and look up any papers that might have been written on anything you think is close. Let's say you find a couple on the effects of a couple of other industries (paper mills and a foundary) on lakes in the Northeast, and one on the effects of a nuclear power plant on a prarie ecosystem in the Midwest. You read these (usually it's more than three, but the idea is the same), make some wild guess as to what the effects of your plant might be on Lake Tahoe (which can be as slanted as you want, because there's basically no way to test your conclusions), and then write it up as your EIR. Besides, unless some environmental or other group opposes your project, no one will likely ever even question your EIR anyway.

This is what it appears the off-road people did. But to understand what they really are saying, you have to read between the lines. "This study, which showed that there is no new evidence to suggest that the FTHL is threatened or endangered, was submitted to the Department of the Interior." What do the mean by no new evidence? Does that mean that there is old evidence showing that they are endangered? How new is "new"? In the last 5 years? The last 1 year? The last month? So what they could be saying is that there are plenty of published data to show that the FTHL is endangered, but that no one has published any new data saying that in the last 3 months. It's not necessarily a lie, it just doesn't paint a very accurate picture of the lizard's status. They also don't say that there are any data showing that they are not endangered.

Also, notice that they didn't just fund this "study", they commissioned it. In other words, they hired someone specifically to do a study challenging the endagered status. That is quite different from how typical scientific research if financed. In that case a scientist usually is simply asking a question that is more general, like "What is the population status of species X?", just because he doesn't know the answer. The difference is that there is no agenda except to learn what the situation is. The study seldom if ever is done with any preconceived idea of protection, or even a need thereof. It's simply an interesting question.

Also, he is not approached by any interested party. He formulates his question, devises an experiment or study protocol to answer it, and then finds some agency which funds similar research and suggests the study. If they agree that it is an interesting question, that his study protocol is sound, and that he is someone (based on his reputation) who is likely to do a good job (all this is often determined by a panel of other scientists, often his competitors), then they give him funding to do it, with the only expectation being that he do a good job and reports his findings, whatever they may be.

Besides the fact that no one in this scenario is likely to have a hidden agenda related to the results (or in the case of the off-road group, an obvious one), the other difference is that the criteria for determining the conclusions to be reached are specified before the study is done, not invented afterward in order to reach a desired conclusion. So, since you've already specified how you will analyse your data before you collect it, it will show what it shows, not what you want it to show. That's not to say scientists aren't biased in the things that they study. However if the standard procedure for funding and conducting such research is used, and the results are properly reported, it is easy for anyone who understands the methods to check the data against the reported results and evaluate the conclusions for such bias. Consequently you try very hard to keep bias out (if you're smart), since including it will affect your reputation, which will then affect your ability to get any future funding.

Of course that's not a problem when you're hired specifically to tell a group of people exactly what they want to hear, as was pretty obviously the case in the article.

Nice response Blakkat.
I agree in theory but in reality I don't believe there is a single objective study done. It would take someone with no personal interest and no "funding" from any other party to achieve this. And once it is done you have to wonder if the correct issues were studied. To say that half the range of a particular species is gone and therefor conclude that the species is in trouble sounds good, but may not be accurate at all. Someone has to define what "trouble" means.
We talked about some of this on the old forum with Lester and several others. Informaton was quoted from what I assume must have been some scientific studies. But when I asked some more detailed questions, no answers followed. Like the genetic pool being diminished to a point of harm. I asked how that info was determined and got no aswer. It sounds plausible on the surface but where is the data to back it?

Money is almost always the motivator when it comes to human nature. This is not always a greed issue. We all have needs that must be met and money helps that. Even tree huggers need cash to pay the rent or eat. So when you are talking about funding and grants for studies you have to question who is paying for these, and then consider the agendas involved. You don't get grants to prove the hypothesis wrong for the group paying the bills whether it be offroaders or treehugger environmentalist politicians. When it comes to politics, you have the same forces in effect that greed might bring out. Win at any cost mentality.

I am not putting all this forward because I am an offroader, I am not. But what I am is a hiker, diver and outdoors type in general. I have seen too many areas fenced off due to real or imagined environmental threats and it is discouraging. When you go camping you are now either fenced in or out of many areas. We are becoming distant observers of nature instead of experiencers and that is truely sad. It points to poor management in my opinion. I know of an area where I used to live that has restricted access due to a kangaroo rat. I lived there for 10 years and hiked that area many times and never saw the rat. I don't think it even exists anymore. yet the area is closed to traffic. But not 100 yards away are houses with cats and dogs which probably are the most serious contributors to the decline of the beast.

I may be rambling.
Anyways, just some thoughts for consideration. I don't buy that these offroaders are "wrong" just because they have an agenda and that the studies are "right" just because they are scientific research. The human factor is just to large to ignore.

Cheers all.

http://www.hornedlizards.org/FTHLRFQ/RFQ.html

http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~iffp475/losingCAZ.html

Hi Cable_hogue,

I don't disagree with you, but the point I was trying to make is that there is a vast difference between these "studies", whether done by user groups or preservationist groups, and real science. Generally these studies are nothing more than the kind of digging up whatever papers you can twist to support your point of view, and then summarizing them in such a way as to make it sound like what you want is actually supported by science that I mentioned before.

Science, however, is something very different. For example, part of my doctoral research was on the pollock fishery in the Bering Sea, which is an issue with a lot of competing special interests, and a lot of money (over $1 billion for the US economy/year alone), involved. I was working on a large grant to design a DNA analysis technique in order to study the population structure of the fish, and to use the technique to actually figure out what that population structure was. The answer to that question would have great consequences to how the fishery should be managed, so there was certainly a great deal of "interest" in what I found. However, the funding came from a government regulatory agency, not any of the economically or politically interested parties, and the funding was not at all contingent on what result I came up with, only that I came up with an accurate answer. Either way, the funding would have continued, as long as I was making progress. Since I had no interest in which answer I found, as long as it was the most accurate one, and since none of the parties who would have liked to have one particular answer rather than the alternatives had control of the funding, my research was not at all influenced by one interest or another. That is usually how real scientific research is done (and the reason why government, instead of private or corporate, funding of research is so important). Also, none of that money went in my pocket, so I didn’t have a direct financial motive either. The grant funded the work, not the worker. I was paid through a totally separate and unrelated funding source.

However, some scientists are more emotionally (and often unrealistically) involved with their study system, though very seldom economically involved. In my case I understood that nothing I said would ever stop the economic exploitation of pollock, so if I was at all concerned about their health as a species, the most responsible thing I could do is give the most accurate answer possible and make recommendations from that about the best way to manage that exploitation. Not taking this intellectual approach to your research invalidates it completely. And most academic scientists understand that such is the case.

Now, the reports that someone else makes from that research are another story. For example, the usual drill with fisheries biology is that the data are ignored by everyone and policy never changes. But that’s where those "studies" like the one in the article come in. The science is used, abused, or ignored by all those "interested" parties, depending on what the results say and what they wanted them to say once they get their hands on it. But that’s not science, as I said before; that’s politics. So, if you want unbiased information, you have to look up the papers yourself.

As far as your questions on how population information is used to determine the health of a species, well that’s pretty complicated. If it wasn’t you wouldn’t have to pay for people with lots of letters behind their name to do years worth of work to find the answers. But if you know something about the biology of an organism, like its age of maturity, its social structure, its reproductive biology, etc., basically as much as you can find out, along with an estimation of genetic diversity within populations, gene flow between and within populations, level of inbreeding, effects of inbreeding depression on fitness, etc., you can make, through various mathematical means, estimates on how many of them are needed to maintain a viable population and how much habitat they require. Every species, and every population within a species, is going to be different, so there is no simple answer to the question. And if you take a realistic approach and accept that some habitat loss/species exploitation is inevitable, instead of the default "more is better, so do everything we can to protect them all" position, it’s even harder and more complicated.

I know where you’re coming from though. I grew up in the West and in undeveloped parts of the world, and I’ve seen both the destruction and the rabid "Do Not Touch!" preservationism destroying our way of living in close contact with nature from both ends (also an avid diver...you can check out my diving site at Gary’s Pinnacle . Be assured that scientists are not always on the preservation side. I’ve attended my fair share of government meetings where I was arguing on the other side, simply because the science didn’t support closing areas to certain activities, even though there was strong political pressure to do so.

Very nice response and also a very nice scuba page! I learned some things from your post and am gratefull for the perspective.

I have dove the central coast from Mill Creek down to Zuma. I am an avid hunter and enjoy all the sea life. I have a great respect for everything there. I have to admit much of my frustration with environmentalists comes from the fishing limits imposed this year in California.
After spending many hundreds on gear, 40ish on the license and the time and effort to truck it all to the water and get in they tell me I basically can't fish for half a year because they didn't properly regulate some gillnetters for the last 10 or more years and they are wiping out the fish populations. It's pretty frustrating. I am the "little guy" without much clout because I don't have the $$ to make things change. They just regulate me, tax me and charge me fees for observing everything. Very nice.

What has it to do with horned lizards? Not much and everything I guess.

Thanks again man. Hopefully something that makes sense for all concerned will happen sometime soon.

Cheers!

Thanks, I'm glad you got something from the site, and from all my rambling on here.

The fishing situation you are talking about is exactly what I mean about how this all works. I can guarantee that if you look up the research and the scientists' recommendations, you'll see that they've been warning for years (if not decades) that tighter regulations were needed to protect the fisheries, but if you look at the minutes of agency meetings and public hearings you'll see that the data are always denied, misinterpretted, and eventually ignored. Until, of course, the fishery collapses. Then everyone will start pointing fingers and whining that they were never told what could happen. In the end everyone pays for the greed and ignorance of a few.

As you said, this has nothing and everything to do with the HL situation. The off-roaders will fight anything tooth-and-nail that limits their access to any land at all, no matter what the science says. Never mind that what will happen if the habitat is not protected is that it will be eventually developed for some other use (like agriculture or housing), and be permanently lost to them as well as to the wildlife that lives there now. It's the same short-sighted selfish ignorance you see in commercial fishing. And if the fishing industry is any indicator of how the HL situation will end up, then I can practically guarantee that we're seeing the last days on the FTHL.

Hi Blackkat,
I've been giving this a little thought to what you said in your last post: The off-roaders will fight anything tooth-and-nail that limits their access to any land at all.... It's the same shortsighted selfish ignorance you see in commercial fishing. And if the fishing industry is any indicator of how the HL situation will end up, then I can practically guarantee that we're seeing the last days on the FTHL.

I was talking to my 13 year old nephew last week who does ride off-road and he didn't even know what a horned lizard was. Of course he does now and thinks they are interesting. My point is, a whole new generation or three has or is growing up without the experiences some of us more aged types have had of seeing horned lizards in the vacant field next to our houses when we were kids. They don't have the fond memories and really have no idea what they are missing. How are they supposed to have any clue as to why they can't and maybe shouldn't ride their bikes on those cool sand dunes? And I am sure they'd much rather ride than have it developed for agriculture or housing, either of which will reduce their riding turf.

As a conservationist/scientist, how can you fight this battle long term and win?

I can understand that you would want to set aside some land through protection acts. But it seams the battles should be chosen. Let the off-roaders have some of it. Fight the battles you can win with less effort. And lastly, wouldn't it be just as reasonable to try and raise awareness for HL's and with it the cash to buy land that can be set aside for their protection?

Maybe people would be more concerned and supportive if they knew what the heck a horned lizard was and why they are in trouble.

Some of us remember them from our youth and are interested enough to go dig up more info. But most folks just don't know anything about them to start with. Why would they go research it?

How about setting up a Horned Lizard living museum to help educate and raise awareness? Give them something to think about.

OK, that’s my spiel for the morning.
Cheers!