100-year-old environmental law at center of lawsuit against Trump administration
Legal wrangling over the future of a landmark conservation law signed 100 years ago centers on the question of whether inadvertently killing birds is illegal.
Environmental groups are suing the Interior Department over its reversal of a longstanding policy that the Migratory Bird Treaty Act prohibits killing birds, even unintentionally, if the deaths were avoidable.
Since the 1970s, the federal government had used the act to compel companies to halt or fix industrial practices that killed large numbers of birds. The Nixon administration first used it to get electric companies to redesign power poles to stop electrocuting eagles and other raptors in the Rocky Mountain West. Since then, Republican and Democratic administrations relied on the threat of fines and prosecution to stop birds from being trapped in oil company wastewater pits, snarled in fishing lines and injured in collisions with communications towers and wind turbines.
In December, the Trump administration issued a new legal opinion declaring that the act applies only to hunting, poaching or other activities that have as their purpose the taking or killing of migratory birds.
https://www.revealnews.org/article/100-year-old-environmental-law-at-center-of-lawsuit/