Scientists side with Drakes Bay oyster farmer DRAKES BAY Scientists find errors in reports by Park Service

Sandro Roblero, right, and Manuel Manso, center, separate oysters at Drakes Bay Oyster Company in Inverness, Calif., on Tuesday, May 5, 2009. The oyster company learned today that their company was not harming the ecosystem and environment as environmentalists had said they were. less Sandro Roblero, right, and Manuel Manso, center, separate oysters at Drakes Bay Oyster Company in Inverness, Calif., on Tuesday, May 5, 2009. The oyster company learned today that their company was not harming ... more Photo: Hardy Wilson, The Chronicle Photo: Hardy Wilson, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 7 Caption Close Scientists side with Drakes Bay oyster farmer 1 / 7 Back to Gallery

Supporters of a Marin County oyster farmer claimed victory Tuesday after a panel of scientists concluded that National Park Service officials made errors, selectively presented information and misrepresented facts in a series of reports about his Drakes Bay shellfish operation.

The findings mark the second time in a year that the Park Service has been put under a spotlight for essentially fudging data in its attempts to show that the Drakes Bay Oyster Co. harmed the environment.

While the report did not specifically accuse anyone of misconduct, it raised serious questions about governmental misuse of scientific data.

"I find it troubling and unacceptable that the National Park Service exaggerated the effects of the oyster population on the ... ecosystem," U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., wrote in a letter Tuesday to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar.

In fact, the farm, which operates under a federal lease until 2012, had no demonstrable negative impacts on the bay's ecosystem, harbor seals or native eelgrass, biologists with the independent National Research Council found.

The findings were widely seen as vindication for the oyster company, which has been embroiled in a rancorous dispute with the Park Service over its impact on the pristine estuary along the Point Reyes National Seashore.

Started in 2005

The trouble started in 2005, when Kevin Lunny, a local rancher, purchased the oyster farm from Johnson Oyster Co. He was required to get a special-use permit from the California Coastal Commission, which had placed a cease-and-desist order on the property as a result of previous problems.

In the midst of those negotiations and discussions about extending the 2012 lease, the Park Service came out with accusations of environmental damage, setting off a series of dueling scientific reports.

"What has happened is the National Academy of Sciences has shown that all the claims made by the National Park Service are wrong," Lunny said. "It gives us a clean bill of health."

Lunny and others claim Jon Jarvis, the Pacific West regional director of the National Park Service, deliberately misrepresented data to bolster his own ideological agenda.

Jarvis apologized Tuesday for mistakes that were made on the initial report but defended the Park Service's handling of the science.

"They didn't say our research was wrong. They just said it was incomplete," Jarvis said. "What there really is here is a disagreement among scientists about the level of impact on the environment. That does not mean that one side is guilty of misconduct."

The battle intensified in 2007, when the Park Service issued a report claiming, among other things, that oyster farming reduced the number of harbor seals and damaged eelgrass beds.

Lunny, who is trying to persuade the Park Service to renew a 40-year occupancy agreement in 2012, was furious. His case was helped by Corey Goodman, a biological scientist who reviewed Park Service studies on oysters.

They accused Park Service officials of fabricating environmental problems to drive the oyster company off the bay where explorer Sir Francis Drake purportedly landed more than 430 years ago.

Among the disputed claims was a complaint that Lunny expanded his farm to an area historically used by female harbor seals and their pups, and that oyster boats were observed scaring off seals in the area. The Park Service said the number of harbor seals declined from 250 to 50 in the area Lunny developed.

Park Service officials also claimed the oyster farm could hasten the spread of destructive nonnative species that hitchhike on the oyster shells. The voluminous waste produced by oysters, they said, increased sedimentation in the estuary.

Goodman used Park Service records to refute much of the disputed data, including evidence that the amount of eelgrass in the bay doubled between 1991 and 2001, and that the number of harbor seal pups increased overall in the bay while oyster harvesting was under way.

Complained to Feinstein

Lunny and his supporters complained to the Marin County Board of Supervisors and Feinstein. The inspector general of the U.S. Department of the Interior issued a report last year accusing Park Service officials of exaggerating data.

The Park Service agreed to pay for the latest review, which pointed out that Park Service scientists did not mention in six reports that native Olympia oysters lived in the estuary until they were over-harvested and wiped out.

Although the Park Service corrected mistakes in later reports, the panel concluded that the agency "selectively presented, over-interpreted, or misrepresented the available scientific information on potential impacts of the oyster mariculture operation."

Pete Peterson, a professor of marine biology at the University of North Carolina who chaired the study committee, said political pressure, funding issues and conflicting mandates, not deliberate misconduct, are concerns.

"I'm disturbed by the recognition that what went on at Drakes Bay is part of a bigger picture nationwide in which the Park Service has a dual mandate," Peterson said, "the use and enjoyment of cultural resources and the responsibility that those resources are sustained for future generations. That's almost a catch-22."

Jarvis said the new research will be valuable to the Park Service to guide scientific studies that will assist it in making future decisions. But he does not intend to extend the oyster farm's lease in 2012, despite Feinstein's request for that in her letter to Salazar.

"The permit of use and occupancy expires in 2012," Jarvis said, "and that really is a policy and law issue, not a science issue."