by Mike Koshmrl Jackson Hole Daily
High-ranking federal officials are being held in contempt of court for using invalidated reports to support a Shoshone National Forest prohibition against packgoats.
U.S. District Court Judge Lynn Winmill ruled Tuesday that the U.S. Forest Service disregarded 2009 court orders that threw out Payette National Forest reports on disease transmission between bighorn sheep and domestic sheep.
Winmill’s ruling found that a 2012 Shoshone report on bighorn and domestic sheep and goats copied parts of the Payette report, which had been found unlawful because of a lack of public involvement.
“In fact, when the two reports are viewed alongside each other,” Winmill wrote in his ruling, “it becomes apparent that the author of the Shoshone report used the 2006 Payette [risk analysis of disease transmission] report as a template, liberally copying text from the Payette report into his report.”
A lengthy sampling from the literature review sections of the two reports was included in Winmill’s order. The text is verbatim, except that “and goats” was added to references of domestic sheep in the Shoshone report.
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Source: Jackson Hole Daily
