The Clean Air Act dodged a bullet in last night's budget agreement when GOP-sponsored riders to the budget were removed from the final agreement. However, the Endangered Species Act wasn't so lucky. Now wolves will be dodging bullets - literally, as the budget gives the northern Rocky Mountain states the right to delist the wolf.
Many Americans love the idea of wolves free to roam around the northern Rocky Mountain states. Many ranchers in the northern Rocky Mountain states hate the idea of wolves free to roam around their land, and politicians in their home states listen to them. Senator Jon Tester (D-MT) attached a rider to a Senate appropriations bill delisting the wolf from the Endangered Species Act, with the approval of Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar. And that rider has stayed in last night's budget deal: wolf delisting pending, reports the AP.
Call it the Inconvenient Species.
Officially, Tester's budget rider returns management of wolves to state biologists and delists the animal. Unofficially, the state biologists are believed to favor about 100 animals per state - a far cry from the 1700 to 2500 presently believed.
Curiouser and curiouser, a judge has just thrown out a settlement between most environmental groups and the Fish & Wildlife Service delisting the wolf. On March 17, the Interior Department announced a settlement with ten environmental groups delisting the wolf in Idaho and Montana (but no other states). The rationale was that Tester's bill, and similar efforts, could become law, so it would be better to settle (and give humans the right to hunt wolves in Montana and Idaho) than risk a law giving humans the right to hunt wolves everywhere. Between that settlement and today's decision, the Idaho legislature approved a bill allowing the governor to declare a wolf emergency: "The only way you can manage Canadian wolves in Idaho is to get rid of 'em!" And, as night follows day, Oregon ranchers demand right to shoot wolves along with their Idaho counterparts.
Tester's original budget rider blocked judicial review of the delisting. A judge with a firm view of the rule of law has just rejected a delisting settlement. We may be heading toward a modern Marbury v. Madison (1803 case upholding judicial review of constitutionality of laws) showdown on the constitutionality of Tester's rider.
The Endangered Species Act requires a species to be listed based solely on the best scientific and commercial (trade) data. Although several species have been delisted because they recovered, this is believed to be the first time a species has been delisted for purely political reasons. The wolf may have recovered sufficiently in the northern Rocky Mountain states to warrant delisting (as the Fish & Wildlife Service decided in 2009), or it may deserve to be back on the Endangered Species List (as a judge decided in 2010), but its fate should be determined by science, not tacked as a rider to a budget bill.
Think this decision is an anomaly? Blue Dog Jim Costa (CA-20) seeks Congressional override of the Endangered Species Act for the Delta smelt and salmon - two inconvenient species standing in the way of western Fresno County agribusiness demands for more water.