Weather | Sports | Forums | Comics | Classifieds | Calendar | Movies
FORT MYERS - The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has delayed adoption of a plan designed to protect Florida panthers from encroaching development.
The agency decided to hire an outside contractor to review disputed science that was used in part to make the plan, spokesman Bert Byers said. That will delay adoption indefinitely, he said.
The service had planned to publish the strategy this fall in the Federal Register, Byers said. That would open up the plan for a public comment period, after which the agency could adopt it as official policy.
The plan was completed in 2002 by a team of 11 panther experts. Since then, an independent scientific review team has issued a scathing report on some of the science used by the agency.
The agency last week fired a biologist who publicly accused it in May of knowingly using faulty science to approve construction projects in panther habitats.
Agency officials claimed Andrew Eller, a 17-year veteran of the service, was consistently late in completing his work and had engaged in unprofessional exchanges with the public.
Eller, who worked in Vero Beach, said he planned to appeal. He said he was later with his work than other biologists in the understaffed office.
He called the firing "politically motivated" retaliation for his repeated attempts to protect panther habitat from developers seeking to build roads, houses and other projects in fast-growing southwest Florida.
Byers declined to comment on the firing.