http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010517/pl/bush_energy_mapmaker_dc_2.html Thursday May 17 1:33 PM ET Fired U.S. Mapmaker's Role in Bush Energy Plan By Deborah Zabarenko WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Ian Thomas, a soft-spoken researcher with an affinity for migratory birds, Asian tigers and the Colombian rain forest, has an unlikely role in the Bush administration's energy plan: he was fired for making a map. Thomas's map showed sites in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska where caribou go to give birth to their calves. It is roughly the same place, known as Area 1002, that the Bush administration wants to open to oil drilling. The administration proposes to open up about 8 percent of the refuge to development. The White House said on Wednesday this would open an area about one-fifth the size of Dulles International Airport to energy exploration, without saying just how big this would be. Thomas said it could amount to an area 100 miles (160 km) long by 35 miles (60 km) wide. ``When (Vice President) Dick Cheney says we're only going to drill 8 percent of the reserve, it's the 8 percent that the caribou are using,'' Thomas said on Wednesday in a Reuters interview. ``That's where the oil is, unfortunately, and that's what my map showed.'' When he posted his map to a government Web site March 7, it sparked an outcry at the U.S. Geological Survey, where he worked at the time. He was let go March 12, before he could explain his position, with nothing in writing from the agency. Thomas's timing was lousy: the map was put on the Web at almost the same time that Interior Secretary Gale Norton -- who has come under fire from environmentalists -- was being briefed in Washington on prospects for the refuge. ``The fallout would not have been so great had the subject matter not been one of the ... super hot topics with the new administration and had we not been briefing the secretary at nearly the exact time your Web site went up,'' survey researcher Brad Griffith wrote Thomas in an e-mail. ``Everyone is nervous and ... consistency in presentation is paramount.'' AN ACCIDENTAL MARTYR Portrayed as a martyr by supporters, the 33-year-old British-born map maker is featured this week in the politically tuned-in ``Doonesbury'' comic strip. ``Sir, the Post reporter is here to talk about Ian Thomas,'' a bland-looking government secretary warned a bland-looking government bureaucrat in Wednesday's strip. ``He's the U.S. Geological Survey map maker we martyred last month.'' Thomas did not seem quite comfortable with the martyr tag. ``I'm an accidental martyr, because if they had given me a chance to take down the map and save my job, I would have done it in five seconds,'' Thomas said. ``I didn't want to lose my job.'' Survey spokeswoman Trudy Harlow confirmed that Thomas lost his job because of the caribou calving map, saying it was not peer-reviewed, went beyond the scope of his job and was riddled with ``errors and inaccuracies.'' Harlow said in a telephone interview that Thomas was repeatedly counseled to stay within his job's limits; he was supposed to be looking at migratory birds of the U.S. East Coast. But Thomas said no one complained about his work in the three years he was with the survey, a period in which he said he posted some 20,000 maps to the Web, using computer short cuts -- macros -- to add new data to maps already available to the public. As for peer review, Thomas said his Web postings were part of peer review, and he said he never was given any other way to have other professionals comment on his work. On his Web site, http:/www.maptricks.com, Thomas said he believed he was fired ``due to the political considerations ... with regard to caribou and development for oil within Area 1002.'' Working now as a map maker at the World Wildlife Fund office in Washington, in a room filled with maps and charts with titles like ``Terrestrial Regions of Africa'' and ``Frogs and Toads of Kentucky,'' Thomas clearly landed on his feet. Asked what the fate of the caribou might be if oil drilling begins in the arctic refuge, Thomas said it would be difficult to say without specific knowledge of where drilling will occur. The advocacy group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, or PEER, which has supported Thomas, expressed concern that the firing sends a chilling message to other government scientists. As the group's Eric Wingerter wrote in a letter to Harlow in March: ``Scientists within your agency who have contacted PEER express reluctance to post research findings that may run counter to the policy positions of Interior Secretary Norton.'' Copyright � 2001 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.
