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Lawmakers, Lobbyists and the Administration Join Forces To Overhaul the Endangered Species Act (nytimes.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: The Endangered Species Act, which for 45 years has safeguarded fragile wildlife while blocking ranching, logging and oil drilling on protected habitats, is coming under attack from lawmakers, the White House and industry on a scale not seen in decades, driven partly by fears that the Republicans will lose ground in November's midterm elections. In the past two weeks, more than two dozen pieces of legislation, policy initiatives and amendments designed to weaken the law have been either introduced or voted on in Congress or proposed by the Trump administration.
The actions included a bill to strip protections from the gray wolf in Wyoming and along the western Great Lakes; a plan to keep the sage grouse, a chicken-size bird that inhabits millions of oil-rich acres in the West, from being listed as endangered for the next decade; and a measure to remove from the endangered list the American burying beetle, an orange-flecked insect that has long been the bane of oil companies that would like to drill on the land where it lives. [...] The new push to undo the wildlife protection law comes as Republicans control the White House and both chambers of Congress, and is led by a president who has made deregulation -- the loosening of not only environmental protections but banking rules, car fuel efficiency standards and fair housing enforcement -- a centerpiece of his administration.
The actions included a bill to strip protections from the gray wolf in Wyoming and along the western Great Lakes; a plan to keep the sage grouse, a chicken-size bird that inhabits millions of oil-rich acres in the West, from being listed as endangered for the next decade; and a measure to remove from the endangered list the American burying beetle, an orange-flecked insect that has long been the bane of oil companies that would like to drill on the land where it lives. [...] The new push to undo the wildlife protection law comes as Republicans control the White House and both chambers of Congress, and is led by a president who has made deregulation -- the loosening of not only environmental protections but banking rules, car fuel efficiency standards and fair housing enforcement -- a centerpiece of his administration.
I don't remember the particulars of the law, but I can see a case for making the local, rather than global population determinative. For example, if Grey Wolves are occupying keystone spot and killing all of them will give you a rampant deer population, and that will eat all of the rare lilies that some butterfly needs to reproduce . . . and so on. But instead we get lobbyists writing: "Dear Mr. President, there are too many species nowadays. Please allow us to eliminate some via stack ranking to eliminate the least economically valuable."
Lawmakers, Lobbyists and the Administration Join Forces
Everything you need to know about the state of the union, right there.
I agree.
https://www.washingtontimes.co...
Bald and golden eagles may be legally killed or injured in the thousands by high-speed turbines (reaching speeds up to 170 miles per hour), under new regulations released Wednesday by the Obama administration. The rules, which affect individual wind-energy companies that plan to operate the technology for up to 30 years, allows up to 4,200 of the birds to perish.
Those evil capitalists just want to have government subsidies to kill endangered species.
Oh, I've brought up the problems of windmills killing birds before and a common reply is the far greater number of birds killed by domestic cats. If your "domestic cat" is hunting bald eagles then I suspect your "domestic cat" is also on the endangered species list.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
I'm not familiar with the rest of the list, but in MN and WI, the wolves certainly aren't endangered anymore. The state DNRs and the Federal Fish & Wildlife services have taken them off the list for valid "they're so many of them, we have to manage the population" reasons a couple times now: under Obama's watch, not Trump's. Anti-hunting activists sued to put them back on, over the objections of the experts.
It's certainly possible that the conservation officers snuck a reasonable, as-requested-by-the-scientists thing into a list of dodgy requests. But that's not the way it's being reported, so it makes me wonder about the rest of the things being complained about.
Anybody here know the particulars of the other species in the story, or is everyone just going to get wound up to the left or to the right in a partisan tizzy? The article was remarkably free of facts about the animals, just quotes from politicians on both sides
Hi Mr Brett Buck, I'm not hoping to insult you sufficiently to change your opinion (as another AC has attempted). However, I'd like to point out that this idea that everyone's opinions, thoughts and ideas are equally valuable is bogus. I could say that more forcefully, but all the rude words have already been said.
There are opinions, thoughts and ideas that contradict known facts. I'm talking about "known facts" as in "physical reality", not just who is winning politics at the moment.
Those opinions, thoughts and ideas that are known to be bollocks can be listened to, but then the right response is to correct them and move on. It's not the right response to legislate those bollocks ideas into law.
So, sure, other people exists. But they have some amazingly stupid ideas in their heads. We should fix that rather than just accept them at face value.
conservation status is "least concern" and they're in europe and asia besides the USA.
great grouse, threatened or near threaten, okay lets watch out for that one.
but the burying beetle? world can live without it, we have 2 million or maybe 30 million species of bugs in this world, losing that one won't matter (and we're not going to lose it anyway, even with drilling, the land area its on is huge)
Maybe, but you're looking at the most corrupt (and lobbyist riddled) department in one of the most corrupt administrations in US history, and a congress that has been at best enabling, and at worst (healthcare, tax cut) encouraging.
Are they really the ones you're counting on to make wise decisions about endangered species?
I stole this Sig
Species will now be not endangered or already extinct. Finding a specimen of a species that's defined as extinct is a temporary statistical error.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
If you're so bothered by that, then why aren't you more bothered by the gutting of species protection under Trump?
I'm not bothered by dead birds. Birds are jerks.
Or are you just playing games?
The Democrats are playing games. They've screamed and yelled about saving the birds but said nothing when Obama signed an executive order allowing for the killing of protected eagles, or for holding up nuclear power expansion. If Democrats were honest about saving the birds then they'd not allowed for more kill permits on eagles and would have allowed for more nuclear power plants to be built.
The gray wolf population is doing fine, and I don't much care about an insect. Let's at least be consistent here. If the killing of protected species is wrong then Obama deserves "credit" for killing them as much as Trump. If energy is important enough to the national security of America then we can relax some rules on protected species for windmills, oil drilling, and uranium mining.
I've seen a lot of games played in the media. Homelessness has always been a problem, but nothing is said about it when there is a Democrat in the White House. When unemployment insurance collections are up this is the government helping the disadvantaged when Democrats are in charge, but a sign of a government failing the people to find work when Republicans are in a majority. We saw Trump get drilled before the election on if he'd honor the results of the election. When Clinton loses then the election was rigged and Trump is in office illegitimately. Where's the consistency? The election was honest because Obama assured us it would be. If it wasn't honest, as Democrats now claim, then who is at fault? Trump? He wasn't in any political office at the time.
The Democrats are playing games and I'm tired of the Jurassic media covering for them.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
If the species commits suicide by anthropomorphic climate change, while all the while waging war when the commandment was given "Thou shalt not kill" and when Jesus said "let ye who has not sinned cast the first stone" when questioned on punishment, how can anyone have faith they are going to heaven?. Because that whore was admonished "go and sin no more." Yet those who claim allegiance to the faiths cannot seem to comprehend their corruption of justice. While there isn't peace no one's getting saved and real people will continue to burn in fire. Logic does not seem to be religions strong point.