http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2015/05/wyoming_law_against_data_collection_protecting_ranchers_by_ignoring_the.html

My google search was “critique’s of citizen science.” I hypothesized that some professional scientists may have issues with the trustworthiness of numbers gathered by people who have nothing to lose, no tenure to gain, or no reputation to build. However, I discovered something much more frustrating and disappointing: Wyoming has made it illegal for anyone to “collect resource data” from any federal, state, or privately owned land with the intention of sharing it with the state or federal government.

The article further explains the implications of this law. It makes photography of natural spaces illegal, it makes pointing out an environmental disaster illegal, and it makes citizen science illegal. The article also quickly points to the E. coli outbreak in the water in many places in Wyoming as the reason for this law. It mentions that the abundance of E. coli is from ranching, a politically powerful industry in the state.

I routinely point to money in politics as the number one thing that needs to change to allow environmentally minded legislation take place. Big-ag lobbying within states has enacted laws such as this one in Wyoming, Ag-gag laws which make it a crime to video or photograph the inside of a factory farming operation, and has prevented California from enforcing water restrictions on Agriculture, the biggest water consumer in the state. Many people don’t realize how much of a chokehold industrial farming has on this country due to the fact that they can get these seemingly small laws passed within states without many people noticing.

If we don’t allow citizens to have a voice when it comes to the cleanliness of their own land, we’ve surely eliminated democracy. Furthermore, if a citizen cannot ask their government for help when their land has been ruined, or their water polluted, we’ve now allowed the interests of a few to jeopardize the health and happiness of the majority over generations. We cannot allow states to enact laws which only shove problems under the rug rather than addressing them.