Judge Reverses Trump Administration's Removal Of Migratory Bird Protections
A federal judge has reversed the Trump administration’s 2017 rollback of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act (MBTA) that allowed for the killing of migratory birds by corporations and individuals so long as the deaths could not be proven as intentional.
The New York judge, quoting Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird” in her ruling Tuesday, excoriated the administration’s interpretation of the 1918 federal wildlife law, stating that it “runs counter to the purpose of the MBTA to protect migratory bird populations.”
“It is not only a sin to kill a mockingbird, it is also a crime,” Justice Valerie Caproni, quoting the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, stated in her ruling. “That has been the letter of the law for the past century. But if the Department of the Interior has its way, many mockingbirds and other migratory birds that delight people and support ecosystems throughout the country will be killed without legal consequence.”
Under the Trump administration’s controversial 2017 legal opinion, deaths of migratory birds by such things as oil spills, uncovered oil pits and liquid waste tanks, and uninsulated power lines had been excused from legal repercussions. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which administers and enforces the MBTA, estimates that these human-caused threats result in tens of millions of bird deaths each year. The BP Deepwater Horizon oil well disaster in 2010, on its own, is estimated to have killed 1 million birds.
https://www.yahoo.com/huffpost/judge-overturns-trump-mbta-change-175854013.html
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