Two federal judges are duking it out in
Yellowstone’s snowmobile saga. Last December, Judge
Emmet Sullivan struck down a National Park Service plan that would
have allowed 1,100 snowmobiles daily into the park, and instead
re-instated a ban on the machines (HCN, 1/19/04: Yellowstone
snowmobilers suffer whiplash). But in early February, Judge
Clarence Brimmer blocked that ban and gave snowmobilers free reign
in the park. Now, Sullivan has fired back, scheduling a March 9
hearing in which Interior Department officials will have
to explain why they violated his order.
Kennewick Man is scientific data, not a sacred
ancestor, according to a panel of judges. When
archaeologists found the 9,000-year-old skeleton in Washington in
1996, they dredged up a controversy that has pitted those who want
to study the remains against Indian tribes, who want to rebury them
(HCN, 1/20/03: Tug-of-war continues over ancient bones). In
February, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the tribes
can’t prove that Kennewick Man is an ancestor, and they
don’t have the right to rebury the remains.
Twenty-eight years after Anna Mae Pictou-Aquash’s
frozen body was found on the Pine Ridge reservation, a
South Dakota jury has convicted one of her killers, Arlo Looking
Cloud. The U.S. government is also trying to extradite a second
suspect from Canada. Pictou-Aquash, a member of the American Indian
Movement who stood alongside Leonard Peltier and Russell Means at
the 1973 Battle at Wounded Knee, was beaten and
killed in 1975. It’s still unknown if the two men, both
former AIM members, acted on their own, or under orders from AIM
leaders, who believed Pictou-Aquash was an FBI informant, an
allegation her family and friends deny.
Who are
you going to believe on issues of scientific integrity? A
bunch of Nobel laureates, or an oilman who scored C’s in
college? The Union of Concerned Scientists has released a report
saying the Bush administration deliberately abuses
science to advance its agendas in medicine, public
health, the environment, agriculture and nuclear weapons (HCN,
6/23/03: Sound science goes sour). More than 60 leading scientists
are asking regulators and lawmakers to “restore scientific
integrity to federal policymaking.”
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Follow-up.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
