TIME: Endangered Species: In More Danger
Tuesday, Aug. 12, 2008
By BRYAN WALSH
(Kennan Ward/Corbi)
Environmentalism is synonymous with loss. We fret about the loss of the rainforest, the loss of the Arctic ice cap and, eventually, the loss of a livable planet to climate change. But while that decline is undeniable, it can sometimes obscure several decades of real environmental achievement, including the rehabilitation of scores of animals rescued from the brink of extinction. Thanks to the Endangered Species Act (ESA) — the 1973 law that requires the federal government to protect endangered species and plan for their recovery — iconic animals like the bald eagle, the peregrine falcon and the gray whale have rebounded to healthier numbers. It is one of the real success stories of the green movement.
If the Bush Administration has its way, however, those protections may soon be endangered themselves. The White House on Aug. 11 proposed a sweeping regulatory overhaul of the ESA, virtually eliminating the independent scientific evaluation of the environmental impact of federal actions. The current law mandates any project that may impact an endangered species and requires approval by a federal agency — for example, a new highway planned by the Department of Transportation that could damage the habitat of a listed red wolf — to undergo an independent review by scientists at the Fish and Wildlife Service or the National Marine Fisheries Service. The proposed new rules would allow the agency in charge of the project — in this example, the Department of Transportation — to decide whether a review would be necessary.
Green groups point out that there is little reason to think that federal agencies whose brief doesn't include the environment would go through the bureaucratic trouble of requesting such reviews for their projects....
The Bush Administration's new rules — which could go into effect in as little as 90 days, unless Congress acts to block them — also address a loose end left by the Interior Department's decision in May to list the polar bear as threatened. The reason for listing the bears was climate change — warming is melting their sea ice habitat — but the proposed changes to the ESA will explicitly exempt any action on global warming based on the law. In other words, even though scientific opinion says that global warming will have a disastrous effect on wildlife, the government can't use the ESA to do anything about reducing carbon emissions. "It's not possible to draw a link between greenhouse gas emissions and distant observations of impacts on species," said (Interior Secretary Dirk) Kempthorne....
(I)t's difficult to avoid the conclusion that the White House is simply trying to dismantle as much of the nation's framework for environmental protection as possible in its last months in office. The Bush Administration had tried in the past to push similar changes to the EPA through Congress, but was defeated. The new regulations, which do not require the approval of Congress, seem to represent a last-minute end run around that opposition....If the rules do go into effect, a new Administration might overturn them, but that could take months or even years, as would attempts to challenge the new rules in court. The changes to the ESA come after a series of breathtakingly obstructionist moves by the Bush Administration — from denying California a routine waiver to institute stronger automobile emissions rules to the Environmental Protection Agency's refusal to regulate greenhouse gases. What seems certain, says Bob Irvin of the Defenders of Wildlife, is that "history will judge this Administration as the most anti-environmental Administration in the history of the U.S."
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1832164,00.html?xid=site-cnn-partner
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