they became available would have gone far towards reducing the 

 misunderstandings . 



As described by Dodd (1982), he was notified by a regional USFWS 

 representative that a draft final report was available on 7 January 1980 

 which described the results of the surveys and some preliminary taxonomic 

 conclusions based upon results of analyses completed to date. The 

 regional office was told that there was no need to forward this report 

 since a final report was scheduled for submittal on 30 January 1980. A 

 few days later (11 January 1980) he accepted a copy of this report (which 

 was not marked draft) from staff members of the Senate Environment and 

 Public Works Committee as a response from them to his question of what 

 data were being ignored. Even though he had been advised only three or 

 four days earlier that a draft report bearing a November 1979 date was 

 just now (January) available, and that the final report was not due until 

 some 19 to 20 days later he somehow perceived this report as being the 

 final report and sent it out for review (without any notification to us) 

 by nine turtle specialists. A simple telephone call at this point could 

 have greatly lessened the ultimate misunderstandings. 



Dodd (1982) reported that "All respondents severely criticized the 

 many conclusions with little or no supporting data." This response could 

 have been anticipated, given that the report was a draft. Further, most 

 of the criticism (not all) was directed at the taxonomy sections — the data 

 were not included in the draft. However, not all the reviewers were 

 entirely critical. For example, with regards to the distribution studies, 

 one of the reviewers noted that "The report performs a valuable service by 

 demonstrating, contrary to the conclusions of the Brown and Moll report, 

 that additional, extant populations of K- L- spooneri do indeed exist. I 

 agree with the authors of the LGL report that the Illinois Mud Turtle is 

 not on the verge of extinction." Among the most critical of these reviews 

 (dated 20 January 1980), was that provided on the taxonomy section by Dr. 

 J.B. Iverson of Earlham College who had authored the most recent taxonomic 

 work prior to this study. 



Unaware of the OES review, we had earlier invited Dr. Iverson, along 

 with others, to a meeting at Texas A&M University on 23 January to 

 evaluate the taxonomic analyses which had been conducted prior to their 

 presentation at the public meetings. Dr. Iverson reviewed the results and 

 agreed that the data that had been collected and analyzed up to that time 

 were valid and did not support the recognition of spoongrl as a valid 

 subspecies. However- he suggested severed additional multivariate 

 analyses were necessary before definite conclusions were drawn. He did 

 not indicate that he had recently reviewed the draft report. 



Results of our analyses and supporting data were presented at the 

 public meetings on 30-31 January. At the first of these meetings, one of 

 the nine reviewers of the January draft report. Dr. Lauren Brown, 

 presented his review of the report, variously characterizing it as 

 "biased", "improperly conducted" and not a "free inquiry". From our 

 perspective, it was at this point that the listing process became an 

 emotionally-charged controversy. The belief that objectivity was not 



