The White House is acting immediately to eviscerate the Endangered Species Act. After a 30 day period for "public comment," a new policy will be put in place: government officials will no longer need to get the opinion of experts before approving projects that will kill endangered species.
AP IMPACT: Bush to relax protected species rules
By DINA CAPPIELLO – 4 hours ago
WASHINGTON (AP) — Parts of the Endangered Species Act may soon be extinct. The Bush administration wants federal agencies to decide for themselves whether highways, dams, mines and other construction projects might harm endangered animals and plants.
Update 08/12/08 12:36am by LithiumCola: Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse has an excellent diary up with additional details and analysis.
The White House claims that its motivation is to prevent people from using the Endangered Species Act to force changes in global warming emissions policy. If CO2 emissions are changing the Arctic climate, and that is killing polar bears, the White House doesn't want that to be an excuse to force reductions in CO2 emissions.
Now, mind you, that is the stated reason, not the hidden nefarious reason, for this evisceration of the ESA. Another Administration might consider the reason I just typed to be so heinous as to require obfuscation. Not this White House.
Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne said late Monday the changes were needed to ensure that the Endangered Species Act would not be used as a "back door" to regulate the gases blamed for global warming. In May, the polar bear became the first species declared as threatened because of climate change. Warming temperatures are expected to melt the sea ice the bear depends on for survival.
Amazingly, Administration officials are saying that government officials have become such experts in endangered species and environmental effects on them, that the officials no longer need input from scientists.
Under current law, federal agencies must consult with experts at the Fish and Wildlife Service or the National Marine Fisheries Service to determine whether a project is likely to jeopardize any endangered species or to damage habitat, even if no harm seems likely. This initial review usually results in accommodations that better protect the 1,353 animals and plants in the U.S. listed as threatened or endangered and determines whether a more formal analysis is warranted.
The Interior Department said such consultations are no longer necessary because federal agencies have developed expertise to review their own construction and development projects, according to the 30-page draft obtained by the AP.
"We believe federal action agencies will err on the side of caution in making these determinations," the proposal said.
If you remember a four-part series on the Vice President that the Washington Post ran last year, then as you read this, the words that should be coming to your lips are "Dick Cheney."
From that 4-part series "Angler: the Cheney Vice Presidency":
Leaving No Tracks
By Jo Becker and Barton Gellman
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, June 27, 2007; Page A01
-- snip --
In Oregon, a battleground state that the Bush-Cheney ticket had lost by less than half of 1 percent, drought-stricken farmers and ranchers were about to be cut off from the irrigation water that kept their cropland and pastures green. Federal biologists said the Endangered Species Act left the government no choice: The survival of two imperiled species of fish was at stake.
Law and science seemed to be on the side of the fish. Then the vice president stepped in.
First Cheney looked for a way around the law, aides said. Next he set in motion a process to challenge the science protecting the fish, according to a former Oregon congressman who lobbied for the farmers.
Because of Cheney's intervention, the government reversed itself and let the water flow in time to save the 2002 growing season, declaring that there was no threat to the fish. What followed was the largest fish kill the West had ever seen, with tens of thousands of salmon rotting on the banks of the Klamath River.
Characteristically, Cheney left no tracks.
Speaking of the "expertise" of Bush officials, Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne offered this rationale for ignoring the effects of climate change on endangered species.
"We need to focus our efforts where they will do the most good," Kempthorne said in a news conference organized quickly after AP reported details of the proposal. "It is important to use our time and resources to protect the most vulnerable species. It is not possible to draw a link between greenhouse gas emissions and distant observations of impacts on species."
It is just not possible to draw a link between greenhouse gas emissions and "distant observations" of deaths of entire species of animals. And never you mind the collapsing ice shelves and dying polar bears.
And that, you see, is why we don't need to ask scientists.
The Washington Post also has a story about this up.