Since '01, Guarding Species Is Harder -Endangered Listings Drop Under Bush

[onehandle]

Source: Washington Post

With little-noticed procedural and policy moves over several years, Bush administration officials have made it substantially more difficult to designate domestic animals and plants for protection under the Endangered Species Act.

Controversies have occasionally flared over Interior Department officials who regularly overruled rank-and-file agency scientists' recommendations to list new species, but internal documents also suggest that pervasive bureaucratic obstacles were erected to limit the number of species protected under one of the nation's best-known environmental laws.

The documents show that personnel were barred from using information in agency files that might support new listings, and that senior officials repeatedly dismissed the views of scientific advisers as President Bush's appointees either rejected putting imperiled plants and animals on the list or sought to remove this federal protection.

Officials also changed the way species are evaluated under the 35-year-old law -- by considering only where they live now, as opposed to where they used to exist -- and put decisions on other species in limbo by blocking citizen petitions that create legal deadlines.

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/22/AR2008032202204.html

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Whichever centrist we nominate better reverse this.

[RoccoR5955]

1. Yet another attack on WE THE PEOPLE...

...and our environment. Bushco, Inc. is making this country a corporatocracy, and making sure that it will stay that way. The damage that this administration has done to our country, and our planet will take a huge effort. I hope you are all ready for sacrifices that will have to be made in the future, due to the actions of these evil bastards.

[PSPS]

2. The WP is only now waking up to this fact?

I guess all those dinner parties and bush comedy shows where they yuk it up while bush makes fun of dead soldiers just sidetracked them.

[Lorien]

3. Amen to that. But I've heard neither centrist say much of anything about

preserving our environment and (radical idea) making it healthier. Ethanol, coal shale and capping emissions by 2050 won't do a thing but make the planet far more unlivable far faster. Why can't they grasp the reality that the planet works like a living organism, and that it's now an organism that is dying of a spreading cancer? The mass die off of species is like taking parts off an automobile. It may still run without the rear view mirror, but eventually you'll remove one nut or bolt too many and the vehicle will no longer function. It took us 50 years to see what widespread damage the removal of the timber wolf has done to the West. Everything from forest reduction to spreading coyote populations. If we keep allowing the greedy and the thoughtless to ignore science completely we'll soon find ourselves in the middle of a mass die off of our own species. It boggles the mind.

[onehandle]

5. "Friends of the Earth" endorsed Edwards.

As far as I know, they're not set on either of the remainders.

[DeepModem Mom]

4. A mysterious internet seer used to say, at the beginning, Bush will bring death. K&R

[ForrestGump]

6. In an effort to balance it out, they've quite handily added

humans to the IUCN Red List...