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Of Maps and Politics

Animals, Summer, 2001 by Joni Praded

In recent years, cartographer Ian Thomas has been a busy man, working on more than 20,000 maps for the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) at the Patuxent Wildlife Research Center in Maryland. There he led a quiet and diligent work life, arriving in the morning and often staying on as the rooms around him went dark. Staring into a computer screen well after midnight, he sorted through reams of data on bird and mammal migrations, vegetation, ice formations, and other natural phenomena. Then he translated it all into maps, which he posted with little fanfare and even less recognition on the agency's Web site.

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But one week in March of this year, Thomas was posting routine maps on national wildlife refuges. Among them was a map about the size of a postcard depicting the caribou calving grounds in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). On Thursday of that week, Thomas e-mailed his superiors, coworkers, and interested staff at other government agencies to let them know new material was on-line--just as he had done countless times before. Over the weekend, Thomas received a couple of e-mails from a colleague who was about to brief Interior Secretary Gail Norton on the highly controversial ANWR--a pristine swath of Alaskan wilderness that the Bush administration aims to open to oil exploration. The messages warned Thomas that his maps, which show the caribou's calving grounds overlapping the area slated for oil drilling, had been posted at a most inopportune time and could get him fired. But by the time Thomas saw the messages, it was too late.

On Monday, Thomas came to work to find a note on his door. "It said to come and see the research director," remembers Thomas, who soon learned that his map had been passed along to higher-ups in the U.S. Department of the Interior (USDOI). Recalling his supervisor's response, he says, "The initial reaction was, `What do we do? We don't want to lose you. Maybe we could fire you and rehire you.'" But by 4:30, the befuddled cartographer was terminated.

Just who issued the order to fire Thomas remains clouded, but high among the stated reasons was posting unauthorized information on the Web. Apparently, a then two-week-old directive had been issued that limits who is allowed to distribute new information on the ANWR. No one had told Thomas. Indeed, it's unclear whether anyone at Patuxent even knew of the new rule.

Thomas stayed at his office until 5 A.M. on Tuesday, cleaning and packing. Before leaving, he e-mailed his colleagues informing them of his departure. Within hours, an Internet uproar among mapping, scientific, and environmental circles ensued. A few media outlets in the States took note. Then news outlets in Europe seized the story. Thomas became the poster man for environmentalists protesting what they insist is a widespread "cleansing" of information on federal Web sites.

Thomas had never been political. He'd grown up in Britain, where he was a professional chess player from age 9 to 20. He jokes, "I was the British version of Searching for Bobby Fischer"--exercising the nearly obsessive traits that would, years later, find an outlet in prodigious mapmaking. Studying civil engineering at the University of London, he became fascinated by satellite images of the world's habitats. In three short years, he created the largest on-line collection of maps focusing on biodiversity and the environment.

Constantly looking at satellite data, Thomas saw the details of massive habitat destruction and wildlife loss the world over. "I had strong feelings about it," he says, "but I wasn't stupid enough to put them on a Web site. No one was aware of these views. I kept myself very quiet. I just tried to make maps."

Thomas calls his dismissal "a high-level political decision to set an example to other federal scientists." He cites an e-mail he received from a USGS official in Fairbanks. It read in part: "The fallout would not have been so great had the subject matter not been one of the three USDOI super hot topics with the new administration and had we not been briefing the Secretary at the nearly exact time your website went up.... Everyone is nervous, and as I mentioned earlier, consistency in presentation is paramount."

The USGS claims that Thomas' mandate was restricted to migratory birds and that his ANWR maps were inaccurate. Yet scores of the maps Thomas created--on his own initiative and by request--covered biological information well beyond migratory birds. The USGS's minerals division and world resources division had both recently authorized Thomas to map the effects of mineral exploitation in Africa and North America on the biodiversity of all vertebrates, not just birds. As for the inaccuracy, Thomas admits this is true. He had pulled the data then available on the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) Web site. Ironically, the slightly revised data show an even greater overlap between the calving grounds and the impact area from drilling.

Had anyone asked Thomas to remove or correct the maps, he says he would have. Perhaps then he'd still be making more of them at Patuxent. But this didn't happen, and Eric Wingerter, national field director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), puts no stock in the notion that Thomas was fired because his "map had the breeding areas a centimeter lower and a little more to the left."

Of Maps and Politics

Animals, Summer, 2001 by Joni Praded

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