Lynx Conservation Under Fire

Published February 21, 2002 at 12:00 AM EST

The Canada lynx, protected under the Endangered Species Act, is at the center of an upcoming congressional inquiry. Three scientists stand accused of rigging a study on the wild cat's population in order to keep forest habitats in Rocky Mountain states off limits. NPR's Alison Aubrey reports. (The online version of this story was corrected online on February 22, 2002:
In NPR's online story Lynx Conservation Under Fire, we reported that a congressional committee has called a hearing to investigate allegations of fraud in research on the Canada lynx. We wrote online that wildlife biologist Michael Schwartz's "work -- and that of nearly 500 other scientists involved in the national lynx survey -- is now embroiled in controversy. Last December, several of the survey's biologists were accused of rigging results by mislabeling hairs to pass them off as having come from captive lynx in forests where the animals had never been spotted." In fact, Michael Schwartz's work on the lynx, published recently in Nature magazine, has nothing to do with the National Lynx Survey and is not currently involved with any congressional investigations. Michael Schwartz wrote in to say of his research: "You have taken something that was not under controversy and now placed it under controversy." )