The dueling contentions that the conclusions of learned biologists supported protecting the grouse - and more importantly, the grouse's habitat - elegantly spelled out the knotty nature of the debate over the Endangered Species Act that was the topic of a summit of governors from 18 western states that opened Friday.

We all agree on what the goal of the Endangered Species Act should be, which is to help preserve and protect and to eventually recover endangered species, Gov. Bill Owens of Colorado, the chairman of the Western Governors Association, told reporters at the meeting's opening session. But occasionally, there are different approaches on how to accomplish that.

The conflicts have more lately moved into the debate over the quality of the scientific studies that are used by the federal government to set the benchmark for a species' present status and determine whether or not the critters in the spotlight are on the road to extinction or can be saved.

Both the pro-development forces and the environmental movement, along with their respective supporters in Congress, have used the term sound science with increasing frequency in recent years to argue that studies conducted by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) to determine the status of a species are woefully flawed or downright incomplete.

Such arguments often wind up in court where one side or the other will contend that the biologists violated the Endangered Species Act with their allegedly fouled-up work, and that the decision to add a species to the endangered list should be scrapped.

It is that open season on biologists and other scientists who are career federal employees, but the group does not enjoy political protection that has some environmental policy experts worried that the entire system is in the verge of collapse.

The science behind the Endangered Species Act has to be respected, or else the entire act isn't going to be respected, said David Hayes, an environmental issues attorney with Latham & Watkins who served as a deputy secretary of the interior under President Clinton.

The Endangered Species Act has bumped heads with farmers, loggers, housing developers and other economic sectors in the West that feel the need to share the wide open spaces with creatures such as the spotted owl, the gray wolf and the salmon in order to preserve their livelihoods and the species' survival.

The sage grouse is the latest obscure but nonetheless venerable species to be brought into the spotlight, and there was a debate Friday over the quality of the science used by the Fish and Wildlife Service in deciding that the bird was in robust enough shape that endangered species protection was not necessary.

The pseudo-science put forward by activist lawyers in this process was rightfully rejected by the USFWS and its local biologists right here in the West, cheered Jim Sims, vice president of the Partnership for the West, an advocacy group whose membership includes the mining, timber and agricultural industries.

On the other hand, the environmental group Sagebrush Sea Campaign said in a statement that hard evidence that the sage grouse was withering away was ignored and that the service's decision was at odds with the best science on the status of this native western bird and its sagebrush habitat.

A listing would have required the federal government to protect sagebrush habitat, said Mark Salvo, the director of the Oregon-based organization.

As in many endangered-species squabbles, the rub of the sage grouse debate isn't the bird itself but rather the land it calls home. Declaring the grouse an endangered species would put sharp limits on areas used by ranchers or acreage slated for housing construction.

That makes the stakes of the grouse debate fairly high - the need to make a living versus the idea that a bird first recorded by Lewis and Clark in 1805 and considered by some Native Americans to have magical and healing powers, might fade into oblivion under a stampede of commerce.

The WGA governors have been pressing for voluntary conservation measures by the private landowners who control 28 percent of the grouse's habitat, and the governors do not expect to see a gutting of the Endangered Species Act by the Bush administration.

Instead, the hope among the governors is a tightening up of the rules for the research that is conducted in support of an endangered species listing so that decisions can be made with less involvement by lawyers and a minimum of the kinds of heated emotions that some say led to the Endangered Species Act in the first place more than three decades ago.

Hayes told the audience in La Jolla that science is not always perfect and sometimes the resulting alchemy simply cannot provide the exact data needed to answer high-stakes questions about the listing of a species as endangered.

It is stating science as Gospel that has lawmakers and experts in the environment concerned that the debate could further degenerate into partisan bickering using massaged so-called scientific findings to support non-scientific agendas; science alone no longer appears to be sacrosanct.

The fact that these are mixed scientific and economic questions shouldn't be hidden under a barrel, said Hayes. No one should be allowed to hide behind science when the issues are not purely scientific.

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