Greenbacks, Politics and the Flat Earth Society

September 27, 2007 By: Marshall Cutchin

Columnist Dave Buchanan takes an insightful look at the controversy surrounding the discovery a few weeks ago that the greenback cutthroat used to replenish populations in the U.S. west weren’t quite as pure as they were thought to be (see “AP Covers ‘Wrong Fish’ Story“). Not surprisingly, some enterprising legislators jumped on the story and cited it as evidence of yet more wasteful wrongdoing by environmentalists. “But the story that today’s latest scientific advances overturn earlier, less-sophisticated methods (one researcher said Metcalf’s methodology was unavailable less than two years ago) has brought out the bottom-feeders interested more in denigrating the DOW’s science instead of ferreting out the real question — what do you do with the trout populations now?” In Colorado’s Grand Junction Sentinel.