Endangered Ethics

Keeping up with scandals in the Bush administration is like trying to follow a tennis match with a thousands players.  Balls are being hit out of bounds from so many directions at once, you could get neck strain just trying to follow them all.  With most of the line judges intent on watching our pro-torture, anti-law Attorney General, it's little wonder that the Fish and Wildlife branch of the Interior Department has gotten little attention.  But at the risk of overloading your outrage meter, it's worth a reminder that the Republicans haven't backed off one iota on seeing that the world is safe for developers at the expense of every species up to and including man.

The most public scandal at the Interior Department is that surrounding Julie A. MacDonald, the deputy assistant secretary for fish and wildlife and parks.  Ms. Macdonald, who has no training whatsoever in biology, has continued the fine Bush tradition of bullying scientists into producing reports that toss away facts in favor of administration policy.  She's even proven willing to put a species of bird at risk for purely personal reasons.  

H. Dale Hall, director of the Fish and Wildlife Service, recounted a battle he had with Ms. MacDonald over the Southwest willow flycatcher, an endangered bird. Biologists in the field concluded that the bird's nesting range, which determines how much land the government should protect as habitat for the species, was 2.1 miles. Mr. Hall claims that Ms. MacDonald insisted on lowering that to 1.8 miles so that the nesting range would not extend into California, where her husband maintained a family ranch.

That may seem outrageous enough, but MacDonald got away with that one.  In fact, she's been able to spend years erasing facts from scientific reports.  What's gotten her in trouble was that she decided to follow one of those other standard tactics of the right -- leaking secret information to administration pals.  

The inspector general's review of Ms. MacDonald's e-mail account also showed that she had close ties to lobbying organizations that have challenged endangered-species listings and that she had "misused her position" to give them information not available to the public on Interior Department policy.

While scientists at the Interior Department have been working out plans to protect endangered plants and animals, MacDonald has been providing developers the information they needed to block, bend, or evade the rules.  

The worst thing about the MacDonald scandal?  It might not matter.  Even if Julie MacDonald is -- after years of destroying the life work of people trained in biology -- finally kicked to the curb, it won't even be a road block on the highway to ending the Endangered Species Act.

Salon.com and the radio series Living on Earth both feature work this week from freelancer Rebecca Clarren, who has another leaked document from the Fish and Wildlife Service, this one explaining upcoming changes to how the department interprets the Act.

If we thought that by getting rid of Pombo we had stopped the war on the planet, we were sadly mistaken, because the Bush administration has already proven many times that you don't have to repeal a law, you just have to stop enforcing it.  Think the "Clear Skies" program, which allows the worst polluting old coal-fired power plants to actually increase in size, completely dodging the Clean Air Act.

What's the Bush plan for the "new improved" Endangered Species Act?  

• A cap on the number of endangered species.  Meaning that for any new species to be added, one would have to be removed.
• Allowing states to opt out of enforcing the act.  Wyoming ranchers don't like wolves?  Fire away, boys!  (and hey, they're about to take wolves off the list anyway)
• Limiting the definition of endangered to only those animals likely to go extinct in the next twenty years -- meaning that an animal with a life span beyond that range wouldn't be considered endangered even it was the last living representative of its kind.

 How does Rebecca Clarren describe the changes to the Act?

They also, looks like a lot of the language is lifted directly from a very contentious bill by Pombo, a congressman from California, former congressman, that was also shot down in congress. So you're seeing the Bush administration trying to insert into regulatory changes, things that congress has already decided we, as a country, didn't want to see.

Update [2007-4-1 22:3:5 by Devilstower]:I forgot this nice little addition: under the new regulations, there would be no attempt to restore an animal to its historic range.  Wherever it was holding on at the moment would become it's natural range.