Environment

The Reno Gazette-Journal this week ran a three-part series by reporter Frank X. Mullen and its staff of photographers that raises substantial questions about campus treatment of animals, whether the university cooperated in luring coyotes to a research farm where they were shot, and whether the university struck back at a whistleblower in the case.

Associated Press synopses of the Mullen series and reports that the U.S. Department of Agriculture is investigating the university system have appeared in publications from one end of the nation to the other. The Boston Globe, for instance, posted a story in the early morning hours of Tuesday, and the New York Times posted one on Monday.

The university has long had a mixed record on the environment. In 1976, for instance, after the campus newspaper, Sagebrush, revealed that the course of the Truckee River had been altered by a university project, environmental officials fined the university and ordered campus officials to restore the river channel.

There have also been occasional accusations against the university medical school over its treatment of animals, but the school’s practices haven’t been officially faulted.