Senator challenges investigation of Arctic scientist

An investigation by the Interior Department’s Inspector General into one of the agency’s Arctic scientists, Charles Monnett, is under scrutiny by the ranking Republican on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, James Inhofe from Oklahoma.

Monnett, a wildlife biologist with the Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (BOEM), has been suspended since 18 July as a result of concerns over procurement issues surrounding a research project that addressed polar bear populations and sources of recruitment. But “details were not forthcoming,” Inhofe noted in a 9 August letter to the Interior Department’s IG, Mary Kendall.