Jonathan Lundgren, Former USDA Entomologist: A Bee Expert With His Integrity Intact
When USDA’s research arm tried to stifle his research on the effects of pesticides on honey bees and the environment, Jonathan fought back. With PEER’s help, he invoked the agency’s own Scientific Integrity rules, which say that research cannot be suppressed merely...
Ed Patrovsky: A Ranger for Responsible Recreation
Ed worked for the Bureau of Land Management and the National Park Service as a law enforcement ranger, where he witnessed widespread agency indifference to the epidemic of violence perpetrated against land management agency employees. Ed was a founding member...
Amy Griffin: Amy’s List and Toxic Turf
Amy Griffin is associate head coach of the University of Washington women's soccer team. One of her grads developed non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and when Amy visited her she met another ex-goalie with the same condition. A nurse in the ward said, “Don’t tell me you guys...
Tim Caverly: Protecting Paradise
Tim Caverly was a ranger with the Maine Department of Conservation for 32 years. During his last 18 years with the department, he was Regional Supervisor for the Allagash Wilderness Waterway. In trying to preserve the wilderness character of the Allagash, Tim ran...
Brian Czech: Wrestling the 800-Pound Gorilla
Brian was hired in 1999 as among the first Conservation Biologists in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. When he began to raise awareness of the trade-off between economic growth and wildlife conservation, Refuge System leadership got cold feet and started issuing gag orders.
Water & Brimstone
Environmental scientist Barry Sulkin begins to study the impact of recreational ATV activity on the rivers and creeks that feed into the Big South Fork of the Cumberland River, a protected national treasure
Zoe Kelman: Sounding Chromium Alarm
Zoe Kelman was a New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection chemical engineer who blew the whistle on the state’s inaction on chromium–the Erin Brockovich chemical.
Bob “Action” Jackson: Yellowstone Backcountry Ranger
Bob revealed that Yellowstone NP’s grizzlies were becoming habituated to hunting parties outside the park by feeding on elk “gut piles” left by outfitters. PEER won Bob’s reappointment as a seasonal ranger for the final three years of his 30-year career, during which time restrictions were enforced on hunting outfitters near Yellowstone.
Rob Wielgus: War on Wolf Science
Rob is one of the continent’s leading experts on wolf-livestock interactions. His pioneering research on wolves and livestock in eastern Washington found that lethal control of wolves was in fact increasing livestock depredations, and that ranchers who took part in his cooperative program employing nonlethal measures experienced minimal livestock mortality due to wolves.
Rob Danno: Ranger Danger
The National Park Service destroyed the career of Chief Ranger Rob Danno, a highly decorated 30-year veteran ranger. The agency subjected him to horrific retaliation after he blew the whistle on illegal tree cutting by Washington Redskins owner Dan Snyder. Amazingly, the mind-numbing reprisal campaign, including a failed criminal prosecution, against Robert Danno went on for more than seven years.
Quentin Bass: Appalachian Tales with a Megaphone
Quentin Bass blew the whistle on the Forest Service’s suppression of its own historic ecological records showing Eastern Forests were dominated by old trees, which was used to justify increased logging and prescribed burning on millions of acres of public forest throughout the Southern Appalachians.
Jeff DeBonis: PEER Origin Story
As a timber sale planner on Oregon’s Willamette National Forest in the late 1980s, Jeff came to the conclusion that the Forest Service was over-logging which would lead to the type of eco-degradation he had seen in Central America in the Peace Corps. He co-founded PEER
Teresa Chambers: The Honest Chief
Teresa waged a 7-year legal battle through PEER to overturn her termination for honestly answering a reporter’s questions as first female Chief of the U.S. Park Police. Her case created important protections for all national security and public safety whistleblowers.
Paula Dinerstein: Whistleblower Lawyer
Paula is PEER’s Senior Counsel, and discusses the enormous range of cases brought to PEER by the experts seeking to uphold environmental integrity within their agencies.
Steve Gniadek: Talking Down a Jumper
Steve was the chief biologist at Glacier National Park, who reached out to PEER for help when his superintendent was pushing a permit for a parking lot that would have destroyed old growth forest without proper environmental review.
Heather Wylie: Kayaking to Save the L.A. River
Heather took part in a demonstration to protect the L.A. River, and footage of her kayaking to prove its navigability ended up on YouTube, leading her superiors to propose a career-crippling suspension. PEER mounted a First Amendment defense (the kayaking protest as...
Brian McKenna: Michigan Environmental Anthropologist
An anthropologist in the University of Michigan-Dearborn's Department of Behavioral Sciences, Brian works as an environmental scholar. Three years before joining academia, Brian was hired by the Ingham County Health Department to conduct an analysis of environmental...
Ben Lomeli: Standing Up for Scientific Integrity
Ben called on PEER to assist his efforts to save Arizona’s San Pedro River from excessive groundwater withdrawals.
Paul Berkowitz: Case of the Indian Trader
Paul Berkowitz led PEER to do an autopsy of an official screw-up that was compounded by a cover-up at the National Park Service.
Matt Chew: Free Speech With A Price
Matt was an Arizona States Parks employee who was fired when he brought attention to the resource conservation impacts of high visitation in places like Kartchner Caverns. With PEER’s help, Matt was reinstated.
