A salutory reminder that cartographic representations can be political time
bombs. Thomas put a map on the web of the area where oil drilling is now
proposed in Alaska.

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> Hi All,
>
> Well, I have been fired for posting to the internet a single web page
> with some maps showing the distribution of caribou calving areas in the
> Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR).
>
> My entire website http://www.mbr-pwrc.usgs.gov/geotech/ has now been
> removed from the internet.  This represents about 3 years worth of work
> and 20,000 plus maps showing bird, mammal and amphibian distributions,
> satellite imagery, landcover and vegetation maps for countries and
> protected areas all around of the globe.  As far as I am aware it was
> one of the biggest collections of maps online and certainly the biggest
> collection showing maps of biodiversity and the environment.  The
> website was often visited by over a thousand visitors each week.  In
> addition, I was fulfilling roughly a dozen requests for geospatial data
> and information from colleagues, other researchers and the general
> public each day.
>
> All of this comes as a rather big surprise to me.  I was given no chance
> to remove the webpage or even finish writing an appeal before my
> position was terminated.  I was working under a contract so I believe
> I have very little legal recourse.  I have received no written
> explanation (or even an email) stating the exact reasons for the
> termination decision and I understand that even though this would be a
> reasonable courtesy to expect, it is unlikely to be forthcoming.
>
> >From my viewpoint my dismissal was a high-level political decision to
> set an example to other Federal scientists.  I base this belief on the
> following information I received from a colleague in Alaska who is a
> leading researcher on the issues involved:
>
> "I really hope you don't get fired.  In fact, had the timing of what
> you did not been so inappropriate based on everything else that was
> going on, I doubt that anyone would have noticed.  Your work showed a
> lot of initiative..."
>
> "...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."
>
> So now, I believe my only recourse is to appeal to the general public
> in the hope that in the future what just happened to me will not happen
> to others.
>
> I would recommend anybody in a similar circumstances to contact the fine
> people at Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility
> (http://www.peer.org) or a similar organization.
>
> The response and support I have received from friends online has been
> truely amazing.  I very much appreciate how quickly people have acted
> on my behalf and helped publicize my plight and I especially wish to
> thank the international mapping community...receiving letters of support
> from far away places cheers me up no end.  Please feel free to forward
> this email to other lists and media contacts!  I would also be grateful
> if anybody who misses all the maps I put on the internet please contact
> the USGS to let them know and to ask that the maps be reposted.
>
> I feel very bad that these events are also affecting my colleagues at
> Patuxent.  Patuxent was a great place to work, has amazing researchers
> and everybody I worked with is very supportive.
>
> Many, many thanks for your support,
>
> Ian Thomas [log in to unmask]
>
> The Details:
>
> Nobody instructed/authorized me to post the web pages on Arctic National
> Wildlife Refuge.  It was done on my own initiative.  I was working on
> land cover maps for all National Wildlife Refuges using the new National
> Landcover Datasets.  Last week I published over 1000 land cover maps
> online covering every National Wildlife Refuge and National Park in the
> lower 48.  (These maps have now been removed from the internet too).
> Similar land cover data for Alaska were not available but the Arctic
> National Wildlife Refuge had a good landcover map so I included it.
>
> In the past, I helped produce the only set of maps online showing all
> bird species distributions in Alaska.  In addition I have produced
> online mammal distribution atlases of Africa, maps for tigers in asia
> and I was working on digitizing North American mammal range maps
> produced by the Smithsonian Institution.
>
> I have also been conducting background research to prepare proposals to
> study the effects of mineral extraction on biodiversity and protected
> areas on a very large scale.  One such proposal that I was preparing
> would have looked at exporting analysis and mapping methods applied in
> the United States to other regions of the World such as Africa.  The
> proposal was co-sponsored by the Mineral Division of USGS and the World
> Resources Institute.
>
> The migration of caribou in North America is the closest thing that we
> have to the great mammal migrations that occur in Africa.  African
> protected areas are also under great pressure from possible development
> for mineral extraction.  So the carribou distributions that I found on
> the Fish and Wildlife Service public website were of particular
> interest.  I have also worked for several years on maps of migratory
> bird distribution patterns.  I therefore have a great interest in other
> migratory animals as many of the temporal mapping problems are similar.
>
> I was completely unaware that there was anything wrong with publishing
> ANWR maps.  I have never been informed of any agency restrictions or
> any other guidelines on publishing maps depicting ANWR...I only now have
> been informed that there is a two week old agency "communications
> directive" that limits who is allowed to distribute new information on
> ANWR within my agency.
>
> I thought that I was helping further public and scientific understanding
> and debate of the issues at ANWR by making some clearer maps.  I also
> hoped that colleagues in USGS would see the maps and then contact me if
> they needed additional mapping help.  I was careful to quote my sources
> and explain what I had done.  I made no statement about what the maps
> might mean with regard to oil development of the refuge.
>
> The web pages were put up on Wednesday, March 7, last week.  The first
> thing I did when I put the ANWR pages up on the internet was to inform
> other USGS Biological Resources Division mapping people and other agency
> (Fish Wildlife Service and National Park Service respectively) GIS
> people through email that they were on the web.  Informing other Federal
> colleagues and agencies immediately upon publication to the web appears
> to me to be the only reasonable review process available, seeing as
> there is no internal review website currently available ... I have never
> been informed of any other established proceedure for review of web
> content on our site.  I actually haven't had any complaints about or
> requests to change any other map on my website...
>
> I assumed that if anybody had a problem they could contact me directly
> and quickly and appropriate steps could be taken almost immediately.
> I received one warning from a colleague that the maps I put on the
> internet should be removed.  Unfortunately, it was sent on Saturday so
> I did not receive it in time.  I think the decision to terminate me was
> taken before I even got to work on Monday.
>
> I also assumed that because all I was doing was esentially presenting
> existing public information in a clearer and improved format, there was
> very little need for any extensive review other than the steps I took.
> Indeed the changes that I made to the original Fish and Wildlife Service
> (FWS) web maps were simply to digitize them ("trace"), then overlay them
> on satellite and vegetation maps and then summarize how may years
> specific areas were a high density caribou calving area.  I found a
> similar (poor quality) summary map on the FWS website that allowed me
> to check the accuracy of my simple analysis.
>
> I was unaware that FWS had updated the data.  There is no mention of
> updated information on the FWS website.  This new data has still to be
> made public.  If my maps were inaccurate in any way so are the public
> FWS maps I copied.... (please refer to
> http://www.r7.fws.gov/nwr/arctic/pchmap2.html#section6)
>
> I think that over the last three years I have put more maps up on the
> internet (at a guess approaching 20,000 to 30,000 static individual
> maps) equalling any other website on the world wide web.  So out of the
> tens of thousands of maps (and hours) I finally publish one that got me
> fired....I suppose the odds were going to run out eventually....
>
> I am concerned that other Federal researchers may easily make the same
> mistakes I just made and should learn from my example what happens if
> you're not careful.
>
> Patuxent was a great place to work, has amazing researchers and
> everybody I worked with is very supportive.
>
> Ian Thomas
>
> Former Mapping Specialist at the:
> GIS & Remote Sensing Unit
> Biological Resources Division
> United States Geological Survey
> Patuxent Wildlife Research Center
>
> Old Homepage (no longer available)
> http://www.mbr-pwrc.usgs.gov/geotech/home.html
>
> The Global Environmental Atlas (no longer available)
> http://www.mbr-pwrc.usgs.gov/geotech/cindi/world.html