Bush Gutting The Endangered Species Act

[kpete]

Officials Regularly Overrule Agency Scientists' Recommendations... Personnel Barred From Using Info To List New Species... Not One Species Listed As Endangered In Nearly Two Years... Conservation Group: "Roadblock To Listing Under Bush Is Criminal"...
Some Species Have 'Vanished'

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

...................

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.

....................

As a result, listings plummeted. During Bush's more than seven years as president, his administration has placed 59 domestic species on the endangered list, almost the exact number that his father listed during each of his four years in office. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne has not declared a single native species as threatened or endangered since he was appointed nearly two years ago.

more at:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/22/AR2008032202204.html?hpid=topnews&sid=ST2008032300179

[saltpoint]

1. His doing so will make it necessary for the next president to put Republican

voters on the endangered species list, as quite a few more Americans will be supporting the Democratic ticket and local and state Democrats in November.

Bush has always been abominable for the environmental voter, and the hits just keep on comin'.

[Beaverhausen]

2. 1/20/09 can't come soon enough

[victordrazen]

3. A friend of mine works for EPA

on a local level and told me that they are not allowed access to information anymore. He told me that last Xmas. God, I'm just so sick.