Both Australia's Sunday Age columnist Terry Lane, and our own Garry "Doonesbury" Trudeau have fallen for the same press release put-out by an anti-Bush environmentalist group (are there any other kind?) that said...well, here's how Lane put it:

Here’s an amusing example of the divide between good and bad America. A recent press release from the organisation Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility draws attention to the fact that rangers in the Grand Canyon National Park are forbidden to answer visitors’ questions about the age of the canyon because the truth will upset Bush’s fundamentalist supporters. However, Bush’s National Parks Service refuses to withdraw from sale in the park bookshop a book that explains how the canyon was formed by Noah’s flood.

A number of blogs have lambasted the National Park Service after Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) authored a press release claiming Grand Canyon National Park (GRCA) is under orders to "cater to creationists" and is not permitted to get an official estimate of the geologic age of the Grand Canyon.

I was skeptical, and after reading PEER's press release, I called the contact listed on the release. On January 3, I spoke with Executive Director Jeff Ruch who told me he talked with unnamed interpretive staff and park rangers. His complained mainly about lack of guidance for rangers on what to say when asked about the canyon's age. Ruch's comments seemed random and unfocused and his claims unsubstantiated. He focused on a book, Grand Canyon: A Different View, sold in the GRCA bookstore that offers a creationist view of the canyon's formation. Ruch stated that since 2003, GRCA has avoided releasing a draft from the geologic services division (I'm not aware of such a division) that gives guidance to park rangers. Incidentally, GRCA started selling the aforementioned book in 2003.

I received an email from GRCA staff which contained the NPS's official response. It reads in part,

"If asked the age of the Grand Canyon, our rangers use the following answer. The principal consensus among geologists is that the Colorado River basin has developed in the past 40 million years and that the Grand Canyon itself is probably less than five to six million years old. The result of all this erosion is one of the most complete geologic columns on the planet. The major geologic exposures in Grand Canyon range in age from the 2 billion year old Vishnu Schist at the bottom of the Inner Gorge to the 230 million year old Kaibab Limestone on the Rim."

Like the many Plastic Turkey stories which have appeared since 2003 and the earlier Bar Code Scanner story involving Bush #41, how many people will believe the hype behind the initial claims and not know they're completely spurious?

Update: Jim Treacher emails to say that he wrote the post at the Daily Gut in addition to the Doonesbury re-captioning below it. We apology for the confusion; it's a problem of ophthalmology.