Seventeen former Interior Department officials have penned a biting letter to Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, deriding his decision to relax regulatory rules meant to protect migratory birds and demanding that the Trump administration reconsider the move.
The 17 former political appointees and career officials, which include Senate-confirmed members of the Carter, Nixon, Ford, George H.W. Bush, Clinton, George W. Bush and Obama administrations, sent a letter to Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke asking him to reverse the department’s new interpretation of a century-old law used to prosecute oil firms and other companies for killing migratory birds.
“This legal opinion is contrary to the long-standing interpretation by every administration (Republican and Democrat) since at least the 1970s,” the group wrote in the letter, which was also sent to members of Congress.
The Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 made it illegal to "pursue, hunt, take, capture, kill, attempt to take, capture or kill, possess, offer for sale” any migratory bird, with penalties reaching into the thousands of dollars and up to a year in jail.
The act, which protects more than 1,000 species, extended to accidental and incidental killings. In December, however, Zinke decided that accidental killings would no longer be prosecuted, a move interpreted by some as a gift to the energy industry and other companies.
In the new solicitor’s opinion, Interior said applying the law “to incidental or accidental actions hangs the sword of Damocles over a host of otherwise lawful and productive actions, threatening up to six months in jail and a $15,000 fine for each and every bird injured or killed.”
Under the new interpretation, a company would be in violation of the law only when it is “engaged in an activity the object of which was to render an animal subject to human control.”
The letter-writers said the migratory act has successfully reduced bird deaths due to negligence by companies that “do not recognize the value of birds to society” and that the change by Zinke would diminish U.S. leadership.
“This is a new, contrived legal standard that creates a huge loophole” in the existing act, the letter-writers said, “allowing companies to engage in activities that routinely kill migratory birds so long as they were not intending that their operations would ‘render an animal subject to human control.’ ”
The Interior Department’s decision was just the latest in a number of actions the Trump administration has taken to weaken environmental protections it views as burdensome to industry. Many have turned back actions taken by President Obama, including a last-minute change his administration made to the migratory bird act. To wit: Interior had no comment on Friday about the joint letter released this week.
But in late December, Interior’s deputy director of communications, Russell Newell, said in an email that the opinion issued just days before President Trump’s inauguration “criminalized all actions that killed migratory birds, whether purposeful or not.”
If this news isn’t bad enough for migratory birds, a report earlier this week was another cause for concern: It turns out that some birds are likely suffering from PTSD, all thanks to our noisy urban environs.