Please comment on proposed changes to Endangered Species Act - Deadline OCT 15

The Bush Administration's Dept. of the Interior has decided to act on their belief that agencies like the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service are duplicitous, superfluous and about as necessary as a silly toesie on a rodent. (Trust me on that last part, I'll explain later.)

Please have a look at what the Bushies want to do and tell them NO. Go here, to the NRDC's website, to file an online comment letter, which they will print and deliver to the Fish & Wildlife Service. Even though this proposal supposedly does not require Congressional approval (WTF???), write your congressperson anyway, and tell them you vehemently oppose this disgusting, subversive attempt to gut the ESA and give developers, oil companies, you-name-it the ability to skirt or ignore environmental laws in order to build, drill, pillage, plunder... oops, did I say that? The deadline to get your voice heard is SEPTEMBER 15 so please don't put it off.

Dirk Kempthorne is an Idaho senator who served alongside the now-infamous Larry Craig before he was appointed Secretary of the Interior on June 7, 2006, to replace Gale Norton after she resigned. He is an industry darling and has always favored business interests over environmental ones. So it's really no surprise that he's dreamed this up.

Basically, the changes boil down to this:

only when a federal agency feels their intended actions could potentially harm a listed species must they consult an outside environmental regulatory agency, such as the Fish and Wildlife Service. Otherwise, they can write themselves a free pass (called a "No Effects Determination") and move forward with their project.

Here is a link to the US Fish & Wildlife Service's website with the exact language changes being proposed downloadable in PDF or text format. It's an incredibly dry, nearly incomprehensible legalese read, so here's a link to the Washington Post article on the topic that explains things pretty well.

A read of the proposed language clearly shows another bias - Kempthorne's DOI doesn't want the ESA used to regulate climate change. We should have seen this one coming -- the listing of the polar bear raised the spectre of climate change to the forefront. Greenhouse-gas emitting industry screamed NO FAIR! And this is the inventive way their fears are being assuaged.

Keep in mind that federal agencies often delegate authority to state agencies. Case in point: Caltrans. Whenever federal dollars are helping pay for a project, it's considered a federal project. The federal version of Caltrans is the FHWA. So basically, Caltrans assumes the role of a federal agency on many projects, usually the big, important ones. Can you imagine the insanity that would ensue if Caltrans (an engineering organization focused entirely on project delivery) were given the power to analyze its own activities and to decide when, how and where its projects would impact listed species? Yet if the changes proposed by Kempthorne somehow snake their way through, that would become a very real scenario.

A strong Endangered Species Act is a basic, vital tool if we are to accomplish anything like conservation of a species and its habitat. Without it, we are hamstrung. Believe it.

And the suckier part: I know people who work as biologists for Caltrans. Up until now, they have been able to use the environmental regulatory agencies like a club in order to force the engineers and project managers in charge to do the right thing by the species: allocate money in the budget for things like mitigation, for properly done surveys, for documentation, for road design changes that benefit sensitive species or their habitat, or for permitting. If the proposed changes go through, they will be in a world of hurt because the engineers will simply walk all over them in order to push projects through the planning process and get them on the ground. Try telling a design engineer in a meeting with all the functional groups including project management, construction, right of way, design, etc. etc. that he needs to allow for a bigger culvert in his road design because it aids wildlife passage and reduces roadkill... at a cost of 3X the cost of a smaller culvert. Why should he? Um, because it's the right thing to do? Oh yeah, that will fly.... not. The biologist will likely either get shut down and go away quietly (if he doesn't protest), or be portrayed as a money-wasting tree sitting crackpot environmentalist (if he does try to push it).

Please understand my stance on this is not about job security for myself. I'll pretty much always have a job, because people will always want salmonids around. Something like 75% of all money spent to restore listed species is spent on fish - namely, salmon and steelhead. That's the way it's been for quite a while, and I don't see it changing any time soon. But that is a whole 'nuther blog post, which I'll save for another time. This is about the Bush Administration's non-stop efforts since they took power in 2001 to circumvent the ESA any way they can. This isn't the first thing they've tried. But it is hopefully the last.

Another really sad part is that if Kempthorne's proposed new rules pass, the Dept. of Interior will simply be sued by one or several environmental organizations. Legal activity sucks up an amazing amount of time, money and resources from agency personnel, who obviously are not provided with any additional funding, nor are they allowed to hire help, to deal with the additional workload caused by responding to lawsuits. Their actual work to protect species, therefore suffers immeasurably. Please make your voice heard on this vitally important issue; if we can stop it now, we can have an important impact on how project proponents are required to adhere to the provisions of the ESA. Thanks.... from all the creatures who can't thank you themselves.