Defender of the fur seal!

Having sung the praises of work-blogging elsewhere, it remains the case that there are days when nothing major really gels. So let me quote you Henry Elliott talking about the fur seals. Henry Elliott was an early conservationist who reported on the fur seal crisis and became a major advocate for them, working with policy makers on solutions to the sealing problem. In fact, according to IMDB there's a 2005 documentary called Henry Wood Elliott: Defender of the Fur Seal!

Here he is on private interests' influence on international cooperation around fur seal conservation:

That these facts were not presented by our agents and 'experts' to the Paris Tribunal was due to the ignorance of them by those men: they were not equal to the proper conduct of this case, either in making it up in Washington, or in presenting it to the Court. President Harrison was duly warned, in the spring of 1891, of that serious deficiency in these agents and 'experts.' But he ignored the warning; the lessees [private entities with interests in sealing] were pleased with them: and that settled it in the departments!

...this [conservation measures] was attempted in 1895 and again in 1898 by the passage of a bill in the House of Representatives: but that bill was defeated in the Senate by the agents of the land and sea butchers of this herd. ... They have made no open argument in defence of their infamous work - they cannot; but they have suborned departmental officials, Senators and Congressmen to that end. 

Private interests must be entirely eliminated from the situation now and forever...

 (Henry W. Elliot, "The Loot and the Ruin of the Fur-Seal Herd of Alaska," The North American Review, 1907)

So hey - the idea of distortion of environmental regulation by private interest pressure and the use of industry-backed "experts" presenting inadequate and inaccurate facts: at least a hundred years old! Surprising? I'm not sure if I find it so or not.