Protecting endangered species from harmful ruling
Dec 11, 2008
A lawsuit is being filed by conservation and fisherman groups, represented by Earthjustice, in response to the Bush administration's desperate weakening of environmental regulations.
Conservation Northwest as part of a coalition of conservation and fisherman groups has stated our intent to sue the Bush administration for illegally weakening the Endangered Species Act. The lawsuit comes in response to a last desperate rule finalized by the outgoing government that modifies the Endangered Species Act to allow federal agencies to self-review projects with no input from wildlife scientists.
What's it all mean?
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Not only did the move by the Bush Administration violate the Endangered Species Act, but it also violated federal law by skirting the public review process. Public hearings and email comments were both disallowed, while the 235,000 comments that managed to make it through were reviewed for a meager four days. Of these comments, 200,000—over 85 percent—of the comments opposed any weakening of the Endangered Species Act.
Federal agencies have an inherent conflict of interest in determining the environmental impacts of their own projects. Essentially all endangered and threatened birds, fish, and wildlife in the US will be less-protected after the rule change, including Washington natives like grizzly bears, lynx, salmon, wolverines, gray wolves, and others.
This latest ruling by the Bush administration is one of a series of so-called "midnight rulings" being pushed through near the end of Bush’s term to weaken environmental regulations, including opening 2 million acres of public land to oil-shale production, making it easier for coal companies to blast off mountaintops, and the attempted delisting, and removal from federal protection, of gray wolves from the Endangered Species Act.
