USFWS reconsidering reduction in red-legged frog habitat

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has reversed seven rulings, including a reduction of critical habitat for the California red-legged frog, reports the Associated Press.

The rulings came under scrutiny last spring after an Interior Department inspector general concluded that agency scientists were being pressured to alter their findings on endangered species by Julie MacDonald, then a deputy assistant secretary overseeing the Fish and Wildlife Service.

MacDonald resigned her position last May.

Rahall in a statement said that MacDonald, who was a civil engineer, "should never have been allowed near the endangered species program." He called MacDonald’s involvement in species protection cases over her three-year tenure as an example of "this administration’s penchant for torpedoing science."
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In her three years on the job, MacDonald also was heavily involved in delisting the Sacramento splittail, a fish found only in California’s Central Valley where she owned an 80-acre farm on which the fish live.