Real-Life Decision Making
The Burns Bog project is extremely controversial. Public opinion against the project is extreme. It took months of haggling by developers, government and environmental officials, but they finally agreed on a tentative proposal.
The government gives a green light to the project. It plans to allocate one-quarter of the land for commercial development. The rest is to be left as is.
Even with this preliminary approval, people are upset. They fear commercial development on the environmentally sensitive wetland might upset the biological balance. Thus, every move in the Burns Bog project will be examined very closely by the media, pressure groups and citizens in general.
Before the next step can happen, an environmental review will have to be made. "By law, an environmental impact assessment of what the development would do to all of the living things in the area will have to taken," says Margaret North. She is a biogeographer.
You are a biogeographer who works for a private environmental consulting agency. Your agency has been hired to do the environmental assessment report on the Burns Bog project.
Your boss is really excited about doing the environmental assessment for such a high-profile project. He promises you a hefty bonus if you do a good job.
From your research, you already have a pretty good idea of what the terrain might look like. There are plenty of marshes and marsh life in the bog -- everything from turtles and frogs to elk and deer. The bog is teeming with life.
You spend an entire week in the bog, cataloging and mapping all the animal and plant life living in the area. With your research and a discussion with the developers, you've collected enough information to draw a clear conclusion of the area's sustainability. By the end of the week, you're able to finish the report and hand it over to the developers.
A few days later, your boss calls you into his office for an emergency meeting. You go in and see that the developers are in his office. Your boss tells you to close the door behind you and sit down.
During the meeting, the developers express their concerns about your report. They feel you are being too critical and that your findings might prevent the project from gaining approval. They want you to be less pessimistic in your report so the project will be more acceptable to the public. Your boss is diplomatic, but it's clear he wants the same thing.
Burns Bog is an ecologically sensitive environment. If you change the report to please your boss, the bog might not survive the development. What do you do?