Julie Mac­Don­ald was a civ­il engi­neer inex­plic­a­bly appoint­ed to over­see the Fish and Wildlife Ser­vice. Dur­ing her reign, she rewrote the sci­en­tif­ic assess­ments of Inte­ri­or Depart­ment biol­o­gists, sent con­fi­den­tial doc­u­ments to a vir­tu­al friend on an online role-play­ing game and col­lud­ed with devel­op­ers to block endan­gered species list­ings. Then just before the Demo­c­ra­t­ic con­gress got to rake her over the coals, she quit, mak­ing her tes­ti­mo­ny moot. 

Sev­en months lat­er, some endan­gered species rul­ings she inter­fered with have been thrown out:

The Fish and Wildlife Ser­vice reversed sev­en rul­ings that denied increased pro­tec­tion for endan­gered species, after an inquiry found that the actions had been taint­ed by polit­i­cal pres­sure from a for­mer Inte­ri­or Depart­ment offi­cial. In a let­ter to Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Nick J. Rahall II, Demo­c­rat of West Vir­ginia, the agency acknowl­edged that the actions had been “inap­pro­pri­ate­ly influ­enced” and that “revis­ing the sev­en iden­ti­fied deci­sions is sup­port­ed by sci­en­tif­ic evi­dence and the prop­er legal stan­dards.” The rul­ing affects species includ­ing the white-tailed prairie dog, the Preble’s mead­ow jump­ing mouse and the Cana­da lynx.

It does not seem to cov­er Gun­nison’s sage grouse, a species that rich­ly deserved list­ing, but which she blocked. The case of Pre­ble’s mead­ow jump­ing mouse is sketch­i­er, since there’s decent mol­e­c­u­lar evi­dence that it isn’t a dis­tinct pop­u­la­tion. The Inte­ri­or Depart­ment did­n’t review deci­sions which reduced pro­tec­tions for the mar­bled mur­relet and the spot­ted owl.