stinging report that said she violated federal rules by giving industry lobbyists internal agency documents and rode roughshod over agency scientists

Interior Official Steps Down Over Rules Violation | By FELICITY BARRINGER | Published: May 2, 2007

WASHINGTON, May 1 — A deputy assistant secretary at the Interior Department resigned Monday, a month after the department’s inspector general issued a stinging report that said she violated federal rules by giving industry lobbyists internal agency documents and rode roughshod over agency scientists. ...
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Even as environmental groups issued statements of satisfaction with the departure of an official who had become a magnet for accusations of political interference with the work of federal biologists, they and Congressional critics said they were not convinced that the interference would end.

Representative Nick J. Rahall II, Democrat of West Virginia and chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, said Tuesday in a statement, “The problems at the Fish and Wildlife Service are not merely a matter of people and personalities; the faults run much deeper than Julie MacDonald.”
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Among other actions that drew the ire of wildlife biologists and lawyers, Ms. MacDonald had heavily edited biologists’ reports on sage grouse, a species that in the end was not placed on the threatened or endangered lists. Their habitat overlaps with vast parts of the Rocky Mountain West, where oil and gas drilling and cattle ranching are prevalent; listing the grouse as endangered or threatened could have curbed those industries’ access to federal lands.

In another case in the inspector general’s report, Ms. MacDonald demanded that scientists reduce the nesting range for the Southwest willow flycatcher to a radius of 1.8 miles, from a 2.1-miles, so it would not cross into California, where her husband has a ranch....