Bush Administration Pulls the Teeth from Endangered Species Act

December 12, 2008 By Laura Bailey

Pika. Photo by William C. Gladish.

The outgoing Bush Administration dropped another last-minute bomb on environmental protections this week. Who took the hit this time? The Endangered Species Act.

On Dec. 11, the Department of Interior announced its decision to approve regulatory changes that will allow government agencies to fast-track decisions about projects that could harm threatened and endangered species.

Federal agencies will now be able to bypass independent scientific review when determining whether a project the agency is planning, such as the construction of a road, could harm critical habitat for plants and animals at risk.

"The decision by the outgoing Department of Interior to gut portions of the Endangered Species Act was as appalling as it was expected,” said David Moulton, The Wilderness Society’s director of Climate Policy and Conservation Funding.

“Not only are they ignoring science, they are preventing others from considering it by forcing through a regulation that could tie the hands of the future administration. It is an abuse of power that either Congress or the new administration must undo at the earliest opportunity," he said.

Under the act, federal agencies had been required to submit project plans to an independent review board and consult ecological experts with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service or the National Marine Fisheries Service when planning projects that could affect endangered species.

The new regulations create a shortcut that would essentially allow agencies, who have limited ecological expertise and often a stake in moving projects forward, to decide if those projects are safe for threatened and endangered species.

The new regulations will also prevent thorough analysis of a project’s global warming impacts by placing the issue beyond the scope of environmental review. The impacts on threatened and endangered species from a project’s greenhouse gas emissions would simply not be evaluated.

“Faced with the facts of a warming climate, destroying critical habitat of threatened species such as the polar bear, this administration has once again turned its back,” Moulton said.

This is bad news at a time when, according to the International Panel on Climate Change, as much as 30 percent of our planet’s species could become extinct if global warming continues unabated.

The ESA regulations are the latest in a lengthy list of last-minute environmental rollbacks that the administration is attempting to push through before it leaves office.

photo: Pika, Photo by William C. Gladish.

Tags: Bush administration, Endangered Species Act, Global Warming, Action and Issues

Legacy Comments

logging and the benefits of it

Submitted by April on Tue, 12/16/2008 - 21:52.

Did you realize that by Oregon not being allowed to log it's natural timberlands we have more risks of fire and other natural disasters as well as crime than at any other time in our state's history.
Here are just a few of the reasons why I say this.:
1. Dead trees generate heat. This happens in the natural state we call decomposition. These trees are dead but as they decompose through years of weather patterns they get wet then dry out over and over again. With each weather cycle they generate more and more heat. Thus being a fire hazard all on their own.
2. Landslides: What about trees that are pulled out by their roots from landslides. They lay on hilltops and rot. Through lobbist efforts you have made it impossible to take these trees off those hillsides and use them for mills, firewood, etc. Not allowing these trees to come off those hillsides will create another risk factor besides fire, Disease.
3. Crime: With the passing of legislation of the afore mentioned act 2/3 of Oregon loggers were all but retired. You put hundreds of thousands of people out of work. Many of these people had young families they were trying to support. Logging was not just a job for these people, it was the only way they had ever known. In the last 15 years we have still not recovered even 1/3 of the jobs that were lost due to the logging loss. There is not many things that Oregon has to offer other than trees and grass seed. Sorry only so many people can work in grass seed. How far would you go to make sure your family has the food it needs to survive? How far would you go to make sure you can keep a roof over your son or daughter's head? These people are proud of the fact they were able to support their families without government assistance, which has run out again and it is either continue to pay it out every year or open up the land so people can get back to supporting themselves.
4. Spotted owl is not native to Oregon. Matter of fact if my memory serves me correctly, it came north from California. So the claims that it will not migrate is for the birds. If your goal was to kill an entire community you did so quite well. The area that spans from Lyons to Detroit (along Hwy 22) was a logging community. These people have no place to go for work within miles of home. Aren't the fumes from cars more detrimental to the environment than the cutting of a few trees? Loggers were planting 3 trees for every tree they cut down. So that is how we still have so many trees even though you seem to think we were going to run out of them.
I know more about the logging industry than I should beings I was only a teen when the whole thing came crashing down. But I lived with my aunt and uncle for years who owned a logging outfit based out of Albany, Oregon. Green is good. I will not say clear cutting is right because it is not. But 9 out of 10 logging outfits do not clear cut. They take a specific section of forrest land and cut enough for an order. But at the same time there is a balance that goes with it. Because they also clear out the fallen trees that they did not cut but that nature saw fit to take out herself.
There are benefits to logging that far outweigh the setbacks. Especially when you consider how many fires logging prevents. How many diseased logs the loggers pull out and send to pulp mills for your tiolet paper, paper towels, notebookpaper for your kids, etc.
You take out logging completely you will hurt our entire society. Think before you act please.
April

Excellent comment April. I

Submitted by DOA on Fri, 12/19/2008 - 17:40.

Excellent comment April. I am all for conservation, but leftist environmental wackos go way overboard. No balance.
~ DOA