It was just two years ago that the local biology community stood in stunned disbelief as news spread that Mad River Biologists and its founder, Ron LeValley, were under investigation for embezzling almost $1 million from the Yurok Tribe. This wasn’t some backwoods outfit or a fringe biologist with a shady reputation.
This was Ron LeValley, a man who, over decades on the North Coast, had developed environmental credentials that could stand with the best of them. Mad River Biologists, his Eureka-based consulting firm, had risen to the top of the profession over 30 years. When the state began the controversial process of implementing the Marine Life Protection Act, LeValley was selected as co-chair of one of the scientific advisory teams. LeValley also started a nonprofit, MRB Research, that was regularly awarded grants from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to conduct research on Western Snowy Plover populations, and he served on the boards of several others.
From the outside, LeValley’s private life seemed in lockstep with his public persona as one of the North Coast’s standout biologists. He began bird watching in Humboldt County during a 12-week stopover when he served in the U.S. Coast Guard in 1970. He never stopped, ultimately joining the county’s exclusive 400 Club, a designation reserved for those enthusiasts who have recorded 400 or more species in the field. LeValley seemed to relish in sharing with others, sending out a daily birding picture dubbed “Outside My Window” from his wildlife photography website, which boasted more than 90,000 images, and creating an audio cassette of bird calls for the amateur enthusiast. He even volunteered some weekends to lead trips for the Mendocino Coast Audubon Society.
When fellow biologists spoke of LeValley, a graduate of Humboldt State University’s master’s program in biology, they used terms like “mentor,” “beyond reproach” and “exemplary.” So, when news of the investigation and LeValley’s subsequent arrest hit headlines, there was an air of disbelief.
“There is no way that this is even possible,” C.J. Ralph, a research scientist with the U.S. Forest Service, told the Times-Standard in the days following LeValley’s arrest, echoing the sentiments of many. “With all the work they have done over many years — and Mad River Biologists has set a very high standard for intellectual and financial integrity — I have no doubt that when this finishes up, they will be found not to have done anything wrong.”
Well, the whole thing is now finished up, and LeValley has admitted to doing plenty wrong, including setting in motion a scheme that saw Mad River Biologists submit dozens of fake invoices billing the Yurok Tribe for survey work it had never done. When checks would come back from the tribe, Mad River Biologists would take 20 percent off the top before routing the rest of the money back to then Yurok Tribe Forestry Director Roland Raymond. The survey work LeValley claimed his company performed was primarily supposed to be looking for habitats for the northern spotted owl in order to determine what tribal properties could be logged without harming the federally endangered birds’ nesting habitats. It remains unclear whether Raymond and LeValley’s conspiracy affected timber harvest plans or led to the destruction of potential owl habitats.
In a letter submitted to a federal court after LeValley followed Raymond’s lead and pleaded guilty to a single federal count of conspiring to embezzle from an Indian tribal organization, LeValley addresses his conduct publicly for the first time since his arrest.
“I accept full responsibility for the offense that I committed,” LeValley writes. “I agreed to allow the false invoices from Mad River Biologists to be submitted to the Yurok Tribe for work that we did not do. I then gave most of the money paid to MRB by the tribe back to Roland Raymond, although I kept some of the money and used it for MRB’s operations.”
In a memorandum to the court from the federal government arguing that LeValley should serve a year in federal prison, we learned that some of that money kept for “MRB’s operations” went to pay LeValley more than $55,000 in 2009 and 2010, and to finance the re-roofing of an employee’s home.
LeValley writes that he was lured into the conspiracy by Raymond, who LeValley says told him the pilfered funds would be used to pay forestry and fire crews to the ultimate benefit of the tribe and its members. (According to court documents, Raymond used all the funds he received back from LeValley’s company to support his gambling and drug addictions.) “I was shocked when I found out the truth about where the money went and that the fire crews that were supposedly getting paid by this scheme did not exist,” LeValley wrote.
But the feds make plain in their memorandum that LeValley can’t play the innocent victim card, noting that it cannot be said he was “entirely naïve, or duped, regarding the significance of the arrangement.” The U.S. Attorney’s Office notes that investigators found numerous e-mails between LeValley and Raymond in which LeValley expresses concern about their arrangement coming to light. The memorandum also details how LeValley ignored a kind of intervention staged by his staff.
“The evidence shows that in 2009, certain MRB employees were concerned about illegality when they realized the tribal money was moving through MRB with no corresponding work being done,” the memorandum states. “They felt strongly enough about it that they convened an in-person meeting with LeValley, who had moved away to Mendocino. At that meeting, the employees questioned the legitimacy of the false invoicing and encouraged LeValley to end the practice. … LeValley chose otherwise and continued the scheme through 2010 over his employees’ objections.”
In the next year in which LeValley continued the relationship with Raymond they embezzled another $500,000, according to the memorandum.
On May 20, a judge put the case to rest, sentencing LeValley to serve 10 months in a still-to-be-determined minimum security federal prison — less than a third of Raymond’s three-year sentence —and ordering him to join Raymond in re-paying more than $850,000 to the Yurok Tribe. Tribal Chairman Thomas O’Rourke voiced outrage at the sentence, calling it a “slap on the wrist” and dubbing LeValley “a crook.”
In some circles, this view of LeValley the “crook” has served to either create or reinforce doubts about the science underlying his work, whether it was charting out MLPA protection zones, staking out nesting grounds for the snowy plovers or working to protect Marbled Murrelets. After all, the thinking goes, if he forged invoices, who knows what other work Mad River Biologists simply may have not performed?
In his letter to the court, LeValley notes that his “reputation has been ruined.” But — while one can imagine a crime like this rendering LeValley an outcast from the biology community — that doesn’t seem to be the case. When the Pacific Seabird Group — a nonprofit group dedicated to monitoring and conserving sea bird populations — held its annual meeting in Juneau, Alaska in February, LeValley not only attended (after receiving a grant from the court allowing him to leave the state while his sentencing was pending) but presented a paper on pelagic cormorants. Of the 80 or so letters that flooded the court on LeValley’s behalf, more than a handful came from colleagues who raved about his scientific knowledge, generosity and moral fiber.
In the last two years, an image has emerged of LeValley as a birder and environmentalist who knowingly and systematically circumvented federal and tribal governments by pretending to do surveys designed to protect a federally endangered species, at least in part, to line his own pockets. Then there’s the image of LeValley the environmental scientist, lover and protector, engrained over decades of work. As LeValley prepares to voluntarily surrender himself to federal prison on July 1, the greater communities of Humboldt and Mendocino counties continue struggling to reconcile these contrasting images.
This article appears in ‘Bye, Folks!’.
In an email to his supporters, Ron LeValley touts his 10 months in “fed club med” as a victory that will allow him to get his life “back to normal”. He does not display any signs of remorse. The intentional diversion of $175,000 to line his pockets is theft pure and simple. As the old saying goes “if it quacks like duck, it must be a duck” or if a ” it honks like a pelagic cormorant then it must be pelagic cormorant (this species honks”. A thief is a crook no matter what credentials you hold.
Not everyone shared the belief that the sun shone out of LeValley’s rectal orifice. In my decades in the environmental consulting business, I’ve always regarded him as one of the shadiest people with whom I’ve had to do business. I came to regard MRB — and by extension the North Coast biological consulting/agency community — to be so incestuous and distasteful that I got out of the marbled murrelet survey business so as to avoid LeValley, and rebuffed all agency recommendations and requirements to subcontract work to MRB, sometimes at the cost of not being awarded projects on the coast. If LeValley is able to resume work in the field, it will lend further credence to the unfortunate notion that biological consultants are “biostitutes.”
The Pacific Seabird Group has revealed itself to be the type of elitist club that would have someone like LeValley in its fold even after he is revealed to be a criminal, and the type of liar who would commit scientific fraud by billing for surveys that were never conducted.
Thanks for the permanent stain on our profession, Ron.
(My condolences to the Yurok Tribe regarding the slap-on-the-wrist sentence.)
LaValley has cost our community millions and discredited the incestuous biological community. First he created a non profit MRB research then handed that over to his pal Mark Coldwell who then made sure Ron’s new for profit company MRB would get grant monies channeled to him. Probably not illegal but since Prof Coldwell is also known as Prof Plover it is just another example of incestuous-ness.
There is still no peer reviewed science to support the many claims LaValley made that forced land managers to create ineffective and highly contentious policies that have not boosted plover populations at all. After 15 years of this nonsense.
Of course they had to admitt that researchers were leading ravens to nests. While most of the public got fooled the ravens were led to afternoon snacks.
We will be paying his debt for generations.
LeValley and Roland Raymond are straight up criminals. They are no different than the thieves robbing banks and stores. A 20 year sentence and take R.Raymond of the tribal roll would be a decent sentence. It’s not ok to steal from anyone, especially your own tribe. I keep wondering what really happened and why did it continue for such a long time. this has left some of us tribal members with a lot of resentment towards all the greedy, careless people involved.
Greenson fails to mention one of the most significant aspects of this embezzlement scandal. This is the fact that the validity of the science employed by the Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative Science Advisory Team under LeValley’s “leadership” becomes highly suspect when one considers that LeValley and the Team repeatedly and inexplicably refused to allow the Yurok Tribe, the same tribe he embezzled from, to present their scientific studies regarding “marine protected areas.”
The Tribe exposed the questionable science of the MLPA Initiative in a statement on June 6, 2012 that questioned the “protection” provided in the so-called “marine protected areas, showing how two species, Pacific eulachon and mussels would be “summarily mismanaged.” (http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2012/06/1…)
“Under the MLPA each marine species is assigned a certain level of protection,” according to the Tribe. “Species like mussels are given a low level of protection, which in MLPA-speak, translates to more regulation.
“To date, there has been no scientific data submitted suggesting that mussels on the North Coast are in any sort of danger or are overharvested. In fact, it’s just the opposite. The readily available quantitative survey data collected over decades by North Coast experts shows there is quite an abundance of mussels in this sparsely populated study region,” the Tribe continued.
“Fish like Pacific eulachon, also known as candle fish, are given a high level of protection, or in other words, their harvest is not limited by the proposed regulations. Eulachon are near extinction and listed as threatened under the federal Endangered Species Act,” the Tribe stated.
“Both of these marine species are essential and critical to the cultural survival of northern California tribes,” said Thomas O’Rourke, Chairman of the Yurok Tribe. “However, under the proposed regulations they would be summarily mismanaged. It’s examples like these that compel our concerns.”
The Tribe said it attempted on numerous occasions to address the scientific inadequacies with the MLPA science developed under the Schwarzenegger administration by adding “more robust protocols” into the equation, but was denied every time.
For example, the MLPA Science Advisory Team Co-Chaired by LeValley in August 2010 turned down a request by the Tribe to make a presentation to the panel. Among other data, the Tribe was going to present data of test results from other marine reserves regarding mussels
The Northern California Tribal Chairman’s Association, including the Chairs of the Elk Valley Rancheria, Hoopa Valley Tribe, Karuk Tribe, Smith River Rancheria, Trinidad Rancheria, and Yurok Tribe, documented in a letter how the science behind the MLPA Initiative developed by Schwarzenegger’s Science Advisory Team is “incomplete and terminally flawed.” (http://yubanet.com/california/Dan-Bacher-M…)
On the day of the historic direct action protest by a coalition of over 50 Tribes and their allies in Fort Bragg in July 2010, Frankie Joe Myers, Yurok Tribal member and Coastal Justice Coalition activist, exposed the refusal to incorporate Tribal science that underlies the “science” of the MLPA process.
“The whole process is inherently flawed by institutionalized racism,” said Myers. “It doesn’t recognize Tribes as political entities, or Tribal biologists as legitimate scientists.”
(http://klamathjustice.blogspot.com/2010/07…)
The no-take state marine reserves created under LeValley’s leadership currently prohibit tribal gathering and fishing at Redding Rock, the False Klamath and other traditional tribal gathering areas on the North Coast, in spite of numerous requests by the Yurok and other North Coast Tribes to protect tribal gathering rights.
Wouldn’t it have been prudent for the Natural Resources Agency and Department of Fish and Wildlife to have postponed the implementation of the alleged North Coast “marine protected areas” until this case had been resolved in the courts – and when the legitimacy of the “science” of the MLPA Initiative was already facing severe criticism from respected Tribal scientists?
And now that the trial is over, isn’t it time for a complete investigation into the questionable “science” of the MLPA Initiative, especially when the Co-Chair of the MLPA Science Advisory Team is headed to federal prison after forging documents in a conspiracy to embezzle $852,000 from the Yurok Tribe?
We can file this case with all the others that exemplify a two-tiered justice system that incarcerates disproportionate numbers of the poor and minorities for longer periods under far less offenses.
No mention of the presiding judge(s)? We need to pay closer attention to their elections.
The blatant exclusion of native people is just the beginning and should concern everyone.
The collapse of the world’s fisheries, fresh water sources and the bio-diversity dependent upon fresh water, are worsening with climate change, over-population, and increasing pollution. Water-theft is already occurring in “water-rich” rural Humboldt.
History is repeating itself as scarcity is revealing the tenuousness of our “civilization”.
Those that never thought of themselves as members of a “class” are gradually being excluded from access to information, clean food and water, privacy, education, affordable housing, elected and appointed offices, jobs…and justice. Typically, exclusion is limited by individual’s access to wealth and leisure, eventually it expands to race, sex, age, political views, and religion, among other historic scapegoats. As scarcity worsens, exclusion will expand.
Unless addressed, injustice and scarcity lead to violence.
I was part of a group from Petrolia who participated extensively in the MLPA process here on the North Coast. This article provokes mixed feelings based on that experience: on the one hand, there’s a sense of, “see, we’re not crazy, there was bad science here,” and on the other hand, there’s a renewal of that same old sense of frustrated powerlessness against the absolute power of the science team.
For the citizens who helped create the new Marine Protected Areas, wrestling with the soi-disant science was both Herculean and Kafkaesque. Even with clear data it would have been an epic challenge, but gradually it became clear that the data we were asked to use was pitted with elisions and smeared with error. We found ourselves working not with solid, reliable data but with shifting shadows. Certain empirically observable facts such as the existence of kelp or of large near-shore rocks were summarily refuted by the assertions of science team on which Levalley had a prominent role. At one meeting, an MLPA stakeholder from one of the Humboldt Bay management organizations gave a brief presentation about the problem of “floating rocks.” He displayed images of large near-shore rocks in areas that the MLPA’s scientists had categorized as not rocky. But their word was law: if the science said it was not rocky, then those mountains of rock jutting up above the waves were merely illusions born of our proletarian ignorance. I used to joke about the “invisible kelp” when we saw it bloom just beyond the breakers where we live. We, the citizens residing in the area, could see the stuff, but according to the science that dictated how we mapped the Marine Protected Areas, that kelp did not exist. They were right because they were scientists. There’s a nightmarish kind of irony to it: science ought to be all about empiricism, but this seemed to be nothing more than irrational elitism.
Perhaps Lavalley did conscientiously perform the survey work for the MLPA’s North Coast regional profile. Perhaps defrauding the local tribes was enough. But this seems unlikely, what with the federal conviction and little problems like floating rocks and invisible kelp. It sounds like his colleagues in the scientific community are standing by him. It may be overly optimistic to hope that in the future, democratic legislative processes like the MLPA process will be guided by empirical facts (like rocks) rather than by a biased preference for elite opinions.
Science and empiricism are the bedrock of our culture’s liberal values (liberal in the Lockean, non-partisan sense). Maybe our scientists should take some more history classes.
The Lockean notion of the unfettered right to nature’s bounty made possible by money is a deeply embedded, anachronistic theme in American culture.
We are living in the sixth largest extinction event of life on Earth, inconceivable to John Locke’s 17th century Europe when the world population could be counted in the hundreds of millions.
However, a trillion dollars a year is spent to keep Locke’s radical philosophy afloat with media’s single, ubiquitous message:
“This is a world of plenty for the deserving”.
It’s past-time that science erred on the side of conservation, (if the MLPA was actually flawed).
I also would like to add my condolences to the Yurok Tribe. Ten months for one of the most cynical betrayals of trust I’ve seen is a further crime committed by the court. I hope the perp gets to experience a “new normal” after his vacation time in prison and that I see him on a street corner with a cardboard sign.
I will assume everything he ever said was a lie.