Pombo Opens Hearings To Gut Endangered Species Act

[hatrack]

"For the first time since seizing control of a key congressional committee last year, a Tracy congressman today will hold hearings to launch his latest drive to water down the nation's most powerful wildlife protection law. Rep. Richard Pombo is among the Endangered Species Act's fiercest critics and for the past year has been the head of the committee that oversees that law.

Today's hearing will focus on the act's requirement that the federal government protect habitat along with endangered species. The bill by Rep. Dennis Cardoza, D-Merced, would force the government to more thoroughly consider the economic consequences of critical habitat before designating that habitat for protection. Pombo also wants to move a separate bill that would raise the scientific standard that federal agencies must meet before taking actions on behalf of imperiled wildlife.

Neither of those provisions is as ambitious as the sweeping reforms Pombo pushed nearly a decade ago after the GOP won control of the House of Representatives. At that time, Pombo was one of two congressmen selected by the GOP leadership to propose revisions to the law, but what they came up with proved so sweeping and controversial that efforts to amend the law were killed.

EDIT

Pombo says the law too often put the interests of animals over people, but some of the examples he cites where that conflict has caused problems are disputed by government officials and scientists. One example frequently cited by Pombo involves a disastrous Delta flood near Marysville in 1997. According to Pombo, work was delayed on a weak levee over concerns for a protected beetle called the valley longhorn elderberry beetle. Interior Department officials during the Clinton administration discounted that version of the story at the time, saying the flooding was due to near-record rainfall and aging levees. More recently, a spokesman for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers repeated that point. "Their feeling (the Army's civil engineers) is the issue of the beetles and all is really kind of irrelevant," said corps spokesman Dave Killam."

EDIT

[wysimdnwyg]

1. Oh, sure...

As long as we're not directly killing the animals, that's enough. Who gives a crap if we make it so they have no place to live. That's not the same as outright killing them, so it's OK.

What a dick.
:mad:

[Red_Viking]

2. Slippery slope

We're on it.

It's all well and good to sit back and be disgusted and think what kooks these people are. Truth is, they're setting the pace for our demise, and there doesn't seem to be much we can do about it.

What amazes me is that people continue to believe we have the right to f*ck with anything we want to, especially if we can turn a buck. It's apparently beyond their understanding that our planet is an ecosystem made up of so many varying pieces. Screw with part of it, and you affect the whole thing.

Mother Nature will only let us go so far. We're in for a rude awakening. Hope these douchebags are reincarnated as elderberry beetles. :)

RV

[blindpig]

3. who is this guy?

and whose money is he taking? Is he a cheap jack shill or some sort of brainless christofascist anthropocentric ideologue? Either way I'd like to kick his ass. Every species lost is gone forever and our world diminished. A pox on his house.