Opinion

Letter: McCain wrong to criticize funds spent on grizzly bear research


Published: October 2, 2008

To the editor:

As I listened to the first debate between Senators Barack Obama and John McCain, I heard Sen. McCain regurgitate his twice-told tale about the federal government's "pork-barrel spending" on the DNA of the grizzly bears of northwest Montana.

This project, which tracks and studies the grizzlies, has come under attack by McCain several times before. So I thought perhaps, this time, I needed to defend this project since I believe in science and the scientific method. And, from that perspective, my instincts as a microbiologist are the same as any wildlife biologist's.

Let me say at the outset that I'm not questioning McCain's rhetoric about "pork barrel spending" as a whole. I understand he wants to become our next president and this is his way of selling the American public his version of wasteful spending — which I largely understand.

So why don't I view federal spending on bear or seal DNA or, for that matter, "studying the mating habits of crabs" as pork-barrel spending? Because such requests are fundamental to basic scientific research; and without funding for such research, science in the U.S. as we know it cannot advance.

Requests such as these may sound dumb, trivial or unclear to non-scientists, but to biologists, what may be "trivial" or "unclear" is fundamental and incremental to basic scientific research. It adds to our collective pool of knowledge that benefits everyone in the long run.

Little discoveries add up and lead to major and exciting ones. One never knows the impact of what, at the time, appears to be a trivial piece of research on the future of science.

One such case was Gregor Mendel's studies of heredity in garden peas. Initially, his paper was ignored, even by the likes of Charles Darwin. Years after his death, though, cytologists working on the behavior of chromosomes during meiosis saw a link between the behavior of these chromosomes and Mendel's forgotten work. Suddenly his obscure writings led to a whole new scientific field that we call genetics.

In the early 1950s, James Watson and Francis Crick discovered the structure of DNA, a discovery which was based largely on their careful analysis of existing scientific research. Their "humble" 1953 landmark paper in the journal Nature, bridged our understanding of genetics and led to the birth of molecular biology, a field that revolutionized modern biology and medicine.

Our medical advances today, including treatment methods for cancer, benefit us all, and undoubtedly, not too long ago saved the life of at least one United States senator.

So now back to the grizzly bear of northwest Montana. Why are they so important to wildlife biologists? Well, largely because they are listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. That means, the grizzly could one day become extinct.

These bears roam a land area of Montana that is almost 8 million acres in area, so studying them is a monumental and expensive challenge.

Because of human encroachment on their habitat, these bears are under extreme stress, and so understanding their distribution is a management issue that can lead to our mutual coexistence and aid their long-term survival, and even, perhaps, their eventual removal from the Endangered Species list.

The study of their DNA also provides us with a better understanding of their fundamental behavior at the molecular level and allows us to better manage their population.

Protecting bears is, in essence, a way of protecting their habitat and ours — and making them and us safer.

While some of the work may be done by unpaid volunteers, the project still requires expensive equipment and dedicated scientists who can think through the tedious minutia of this research. One such challenge is counting the grizzly population. Because it is impracticable to count bears face to face (since they're hiding in the woods and can be dangerous when encountered), scientists resort to other methods including collecting bear hair samples left on tree bark or food traps. Since each bear's DNA is distinct, analyzing the hair's DNA is one sure way of counting unique individuals within this population. So far, scientists are encouraged that the grizzly population is recovering.

Interestingly, the bill that McCain criticizes was advocated by the former Montana senator, Conrad Burns, a Republican who's now the chairman of McCain's campaign in Montana. McCain ended up voting for that very bill most likely because getting the grizzly off the endangered species list opens the door for drilling on federal land.

And what about the mating habits of crabs and the DNA of harbor seals? It was Sarah Palin, as governor of Alaska, who actually requested federal funds for this research!

Peter Alachi

Salem

(Editor's note: Peter Alachi teaches biology at Salem State College.)