I lost the map! Best bullshit excuse since dog ate homework

The United States government went to look for the map of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge so they could use it as the basis for their new legislation allowing drilling for oil in the pristine preserve and low and behold the map was gone! That's right. The U.S. Government has - or had - only one copy of this vital map establishing the borders of this recently created refuge. Damn! Gone? What a shame! No digitalized copy, no copy of any kind anywhere in the entire redundancy-mad bureaucracy. If you belive that, I've got a dog to sell you who eats nothing but homework.

No problem. Some guys in the GAO came to the rescue and drew up (from memory?) a new one. But wait a minute. Apparently the borders have been changed. The missing map did not seem to include in the coastal plain tens of thousands of acres of Native Alaskans' lands. On the new map, those lands were included, arguably making it easier to open them to energy development.

More below

Motive! Now you really wish there'd been a copy. But, all that's left is the hapless bureaucrat in charge of the map, Doug Vandegraft (aptly named) the cartographer for the Fish and Wildlife Service who was the last known person to see the old map, and is confident there was no foul play:

 "I hope to God not. So few people knew about it. I'm able to sleep at night because I don't think it was maliciously taken. I do think it was thrown out."

See, that's what happens when you don't back up your stuff?

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WASHINGTON, Oct. 20 - Maps matter. They chronicle the struggles of empires and zoning boards. They chart political compromise. So it was natural for Republican Congressional aides, doing due diligence for what may be the last battle in the fight over the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, to ask for the legally binding 1978 map of the refuge and its coastal plain.

It was gone. No map, no copies, no digitized version.

The map had been stored behind a filing cabinet in a locked room in Arlington, Va. Late in 2002, it was there. In early 2003, it disappeared. There are just a few reflection-flecked photographs to remember it by.

Read the whole article here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/21/politics/21map.html

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When your government is an open sewer what do you expect? The Peace Corp?

•  Good diary.

  Ridiculous excuse!!!

  by Karyn on Fri Oct 21, 2005 at 11:04:10 AM PDT

•  Sounds like the

  old west and the Rail Road barons.

  by Mike S on Fri Oct 21, 2005 at 11:08:54 AM PDT

•  A polar bear ate it

  by xrepub on Fri Oct 21, 2005 at 11:10:57 AM PDT

•  Having worked both with

  maps and the Feds, I can state that the enabling legislation for ANWR includes a legal description of the lands in ANWR.  As a last resort, the Gov't will have to shell out a few hunnert thou to resurvey the lands and recreate the map.  

  Something about this story smells, though...

  by wozzle on Fri Oct 21, 2005 at 11:19:57 AM PDT

  •  I e-mailed and asked just that

    to the ANWR website.  they have the revised map with the coastal arteas on it, but I asked about metes & bounds or field notes by the surveyor, normally attached to the map and any designating legislation, as you say.

    Something isn't right here...

    by tom 47 on Fri Oct 21, 2005 at 01:43:14 PM PDT

•  Yawn. Maps go missing ..ehr...all the time

  It isn't as though we're talking about Hillary Clinton's billing records, ya know. Things disappearing to the benefit of Democrats are always because of criminal conspiracies, while disappearances that benefit Republicans never are.

  Move along, folks.

  by elmo on Fri Oct 21, 2005 at 11:22:09 AM PDT

•  Remember the final scene in Raiders of the Lost

  Ark, with the sealed crate being wheeled into a huge governemnt warehouse?

  Someday we are going to find ALL the Bush Administration "missing document, briefs, maps," and Bush's teddy bear all sequestered and hidden in one of those crates.  

  by maggiemae on Fri Oct 21, 2005 at 11:25:42 AM PDT

•  Found it?

  http://arctic.fws.gov/maps.htm

  by high5 on Fri Oct 21, 2005 at 11:31:03 AM PDT

  •  I think that is the new one

    It looks like it is includes the coastal plains that the diarist discussed.  Also, I am seeing a creation date of 10/21/2005 for the file (which might not mean anything at all).

    by MattR on Fri Oct 21, 2005 at 01:09:37 PM PDT

•  Did they check peoples socks n/t

  by Thor Heyerdahl on Fri Oct 21, 2005 at 12:43:17 PM PDT