of course she's endangered, look at the way she dresses....

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Bush administration reinterprets species law

Officials say endangered wildlife will be helped, activists plan to sue

Gray wolves like this one in Wisconsin were cited by the Bush administration as

an example of why its reinterpretation of the Endangered Species Act will help

wildlife.

View related photos

Jayne Belsky / Wisconsin Dept. of Natural Resources via AP

 

 

 

Updated: 6:20 a.m. PT March 19, 2007

GRANTS PASS, Ore. - Tired of losing lawsuits brought by conservation groups, the

Bush administration issued a new interpretation of the Endangered Species Act

that would allow it to protect plants and animals only in areas where they are

struggling to survive, while ignoring places they are healthy or have already

died out.

 

The opinion by U.S. Department of Interior Solicitor David Bernhardt was posted

with no formal announcement on the department's Web site on Friday.

 

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Dale Hall, contacted in Washington,

D.C., said the new policy would allow them to focus on protecting species in

areas where they are in trouble, rather than having to list a species over its

entire range.

 

 

That would make it easier to take the gray wolf off the federal threatened

species list in Montana and Idaho, leaving it to the states to manage. And it

would leave it listed in Wyoming, where the state has yet to adopt a protection

plan that satisfies the federal government, Hall said.

 

" I think this will be a good tool from a biological standpoint, " he said. " I

think a lot of species might be affected in the future, especially species that

are wide-ranging. "

 

Activist: Policy is 'anti-wildlife'

But Kieran Suckling, policy director for the Center for Biological Diversity in

Tucson, said the new policy was a sophisticated effort by the Bush

administration to gut the Endangered species Act by ignoring the loss of species

from their historical range, making it easier to deny endangered species

listings.

 

If upheld by the courts, Suckling estimated the new policy would remove 80

percent of the roughly 1,300 species from threatened and endangered lists —

because most species have at least one stronghold where they are doing well.

 

" It's just so clearly illogical and anti-wildlife that I can't wait to get this

before a federal judge, " Suckling said. " They are rewarding industry for driving

populations extinct. Because as soon as you drive a population extinct (in a

certain area) it is no longer on the table. It no longer counts toward whether a

species is endangered. "

 

 

Click for related content

View select profiles of endangered species

 

 

 

Conservation groups have regularly gone to court to get the Bush administration

to protect species after Fish and Wildlife denied petitions to list them.

Protections for endangered species have stopped new housing developments,

limited logging, cut off irrigation, and forced limits on fishing.

 

At issue is the language in the Endangered Species Act that demands the

Secretary of Interior to list a plant or animal species as threatened or

endangered if it is in danger of becoming extinct throughout all of its range,

or a significant portion of its range.

 

Since at least 2000, Interior lawyers have gone to court claiming that a species

could be listed based on a portion of its range only if disappearing from that

portion of its range threatens its continued survival everywhere, Bernhardt

said.

 

Bernhardt said Interior has lost eight out of the 10 cases where they have used

that argument. The species involved were the flat-tailed horned lizard, gray

wolf, Canada lynx, coastal cutthroat trout, green sturgeon, Rio Grande cutthroat

trout, Queen Charlotte goshawk and Florida black bear.

 

" Lawyers should help their clients bat a thousand, and we're really below that

here, " he said from Washington, D.C.

 

Defining habitat ranges

The new policy defines the range of a species as the geographic area where it

currently can be found, and not places where it once could be found — such as

areas where destruction of habitat has driven it out.

 

It also gives the secretary of Interior and Fish and Wildlife broad discretion

to define what a significant portion of the range is, and allows them to

consider the biological significance of an area, not just the size of it.

 

Hall said they would not review the some 1,300 species listed as threatened or

endangered, but would evaluate petitions brought by the public.

 

" If someone feels like (listing a species) throughout their range is too much,

they can petition us to just look at the significant portion, " he said. " We

intend to use this as a move forward. "

 

Suckling said courts have consistently ruled against the Bush administration,

saying that if a species is imperiled in part of its range, it must be listed as

threatened or endangered across its entire range.

 

" Say I'm an irrigator, " Suckling said. " Say there are 10 fish in a stream.

That's a terribly low number. Someone looks at that and they would say the fish

is imperiled. I'm going to go kill those 10 fish. Now they are part of the

historical range, not the current range. It doesn't count.

 

" This policy will do more to promote the purposeful killing of imperiled species

than anything else this administration has ever done. "

 

The opinion of the Interior Department's solicitor's is online at

www.doi.gov/solicitor/M37013.pdf.

 

Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not

be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

 

I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to

tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of war, corporations have been

enthroned, and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money

power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the

prejudices of the people until all the wealth is aggregated in a few hands and

the republic is destroyed. I feel, at this moment, more anxiety for the safety

of my country than ever before, even in the midst of war. God grant that my

suspicions may prove groundless. " Lincoln in a letter to Col. William F. Elkins

on November 21, 1864