Industry Groups & Republicans Cheer Obama's Endangered Species Act Overhaul

[cali]

In a move that drew rare cheers from Republicans, industry groups and states, the Obama administration yesterday announced a suite of changes that it claims would make Endangered Species Act decisions more efficient, collaborative and transparent to the public.

The joint rulemaking by the Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service appears aimed at mollifying conservatives in Congress who have pledged to overhaul the ESA.

While the 4-decade-old law has prevented more than 99 percent of listed species from going extinct, its critics in Congress say the law has failed to recover all but roughly 2 percent of them while hamstringing homebuilders, loggers, ranchers and other land users.

The new rule proposed yesterday would set a higher bar for petitions filed under the law to list new species as threatened or endangered, to change a species' status, to delist a species or to change the boundaries of critical habitat. It seeks to improve the quality of petitions so the agencies can better focus their efforts on ones that may warrant action.

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http://www.eenews.net/stories/1060018813

Obama Administration Weakens Endangered Species Act Requirements for

New Endangered Species Act regulations finalized by the Obama administration put hundreds of plants and animals at greater risk of extinction by allowing federal agencies to avoid quantifying and limiting harm to endangered species from federal projects such as timber sales, oil and gas drilling, or other activities. The change was proposed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service, which have repeatedly failed to track how projects they approve are cumulatively impacting rare and vanishing species.

“Species like spotted owls and Indiana bats are in real trouble today, not because of one single timber sale or development project, but because hundreds of such projects are being permitted every year,” said Brett Hartl, endangered species policy director with the Center for Biological Diversity. “These death-by-a-thousand cuts scenarios are a major cause of species extinction. Today’s regulation all but ensures this problem will continue by allowing federal agencies to rubber-stamp projects that individually may only inflict a minor wound, but combined with hundreds of other such projects amounts to a mortal blow.”

The new regulations issued on Friday specify that federal agencies, such as the U.S Forest Service or Bureau of Land Management, need not quantify or limit the amount of harm to endangered species that will be allowed to occur under overarching management plans, including regional forest plans, plans for individual national forests, plans for BLM resource areas and many others. This will all but ensure that cumulative impacts from individual timber sales, development projects and oil and gas drilling operations will never be considered or curbed. A 2009 Government accountability Office report found that the Fish and Wildlife Service routinely fails to track cumulative impacts to endangered species, concluding that the Service “lacks a systematic method for tracking cumulative take of most listed species.” It noted that the agency only had such a system for three out of 497 federal protected species in the western states. The new Obama administration policy essentially codifies this problem.

“Instead of addressing their inability to track harm to endangered species, and looking at the needs of those species to recover across the landscape, this finalized rule will make it easier to ignore the very impacts that cause endangered species to decline,” said Hartl. “At a minimum the Services should be required to set a cap on the maximum number of individuals that can be harmed by a particular action even at the programmatic landscape scale.”

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http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/news/press_releases/2015/endangered-species-act-05-04-2015.html

[jwirr]

1. Clive Bundy wins.

[Lint Head]

2. What is being done about the most endangered species on the planet?

Us.

[cali]

3. who is "us"? Americans? Humans in general?

strikes me that humans aren't exactly an endangered species- to put it mildly.

[Lint Head]

4. Have you heard about that little thing called climate change?

There are no periods after U or s so it means me, you and the entire human race.

Groundbreaking UN Report Warns Climate Change a Threat to Global Security and Mankind

http://ecowatch.com/2014/03/31/un-warns-climate-change-global-security-mankind/ "Mankind"

[cali]

5. why yes, I have, but I confess it entirely slipped my mind

[justiceischeap]

7. I beg to differ that humans are the most endangered species on the planet

because of just climate change. We have wars and disease and transportation, and shit tons else to add to that.

But there are animals in our eco-system that cannot live if the temperature goes one or two degrees higher--look at polar bears and ringed seals in the Antarctic--their habitat is literally melting away underneath them.

We (that's humans) benefit from biodiversity and to ask "What about me/us?" is akin to the selfish thinking that got the world into this mess in the first place. If we'd been thinking about biodiversity all along, we may not be having the problems with climate change we're now having.

[Lint Head]

8. If nothing is done about climate change nothing you

you have just said matters. I take your "selfish" comment as a personal attack. I am an animals rights advocate. The depletion of sea life and the fact there are only 5000 manatees left in Florida are signs that we are next. I do not appreciate your condescension.

[justiceischeap]

9. It's not condescension to point out

that if we'd been thinking about biodiversity long before now, we probably wouldn't be in the position we're in.

I used to work at PETA and am vegan but I still drive a car (bad for the planet), I'm a smoker (bad for the planet), I create trash on a daily basis (bad for the planet). I could go on how my daily existence is bad for the planet even though I try and minimize my impact. Yet, suggest a meatless Monday to some people and they go ballistic. Suggest that driving a Hummer is bad for the environment and they want to run you over with the damn thing, suggest there's this thing called climate change and some people will hire scientists to deny it. The human race is it's own worst enemy. If most people would just take simple steps to lessen their own impact on the earth (or admit there even is such a thing as climate change) and we'd be off to a better start.

[bunnies]

6. What the everloving fuck?!

*smh*

[True Blue Door]

10. How is a rulemaking by the FWS and NMFS "Obama's Endangered Species Act Overhaul"?

A lot of people seem to have no knowledge whatsoever of the relationship between the White House and regulatory bodies, or the role played by regulatory bodies in implementing legislation.

Some people seem to think the President personally and malignantly micro-manages the federal government, or that he should micro-manage it on behalf of their agenda.

I don't agree with the move, but I certainly wouldn't tell the President to fire these officials over it without a much broader case being made that they consistently undermine the policies they're charged with implementing.

[cali]

11. wait? You don't think the President was aware of this kind of fundamental

change to what is an iconic piece of U.S. law regarding the environment? You don't think he was briefed about such a change and that it didn't get his approval? You actually think that this would have been done if he disagreed with?

Amazing.

[True Blue Door]

13. The legislation hasn't changed at all. It's a regulatory rulemaking.

And whether he is aware of it is irrelevant unless you have evidence he ordered it.

In fact, whether he agrees with it or not is also irrelevant, unless he disagreed sharply enough to threaten someone's job over it. Apparently not.

Do you know enough about the two regulatory bodies' management to call that judgment into question?

Advocate the issue of the regulatory rulemaking by the two regulatory bodies, but "Obama's Overhaul of the Endangered Species Act" is a false statement on multiple levels.

[cali]

14. yes, I know the basics of how regulations are issued

and just the basics, but this is a fairly big deal- like opening up the Chukchi sea to Shell. I can't buy that he wasn't aware of this ruling being promulgated.

and take it up with all the articles and news releases out there in regard to this.

[True Blue Door]

16. I'm not blaming you for the articles' flaws and inaccuracies.

But I am making a point that the article headline contributes to false impressions and lazy politics about the way governments operate that make for less effective activism.

Of course the President is aware of it, but he's not the most relevant person on the subject. The articles don't even mention who the officials are who created the rulemaking.

Neither mentions Daniel Ashe, Director of the US Fish and Wildlife Service, or his superior at the Department of the Interior, Secretary Sally Jewell. Neither mentions Eileen Sobeck, who runs the National Marine Fisheries Service, or her superior at NOAA, Kathryn Sullivan, or her superior at the Department of Commerce (interesting that a sub-agency of the Department of Commerce would take a major interest in the opinion of business, hmm?), Penny Pritzker. Neither mentions any of them, or quotes any of them, or even sought comment from any of them.

There's no examination of the process by which the rulemaking took place, nothing. And as I note (not blaming you, but the article authors), claiming that it changes the Endangered Species Act is factually incorrect.

The real problem here is that the ESA is enforced by the Departments of Commerce and Interior in the first place, which it has been since the beginning. A good solution would be shifting regulatory responsibility to the EPA, which is not a Cabinet institution and thus more directly under the control of the White House. Unfortunately, that would also mean when a Republican is in control, they could essentially order the EPA to just stand down entirely, which is practically did under Bush.

So having it managed by Commerce and Interior is a compromise.

[ananda]

12. Well, as long as Reeps and Industry like it ...

Geez

[seveneyes]

15. Paradise Bird Theory

[KoKo]

17. Sigh...reading the Headline I was HOPEFUL......reading the Details......

What, really, can one say. I know what I think...but, with so many issues on the table...it would look like a "pile on." I don't want to do that. I want to focus on "Positive" because there is just so much Negative. And, it's good that the Negative is Exposed....because it means there's so much more work to be done. But, at times, one just has to "sigh."