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Monday, March 24, 2008

Bush Administration Can't Be Bothered with Endangered Species

Internal Bush administration policies are intentionally undermining the Endangered Species Act, according to a Washington Post investigation. As a result, species protection activity has all but stopped inside Bush's Department of the Interior.

One policy instructs officials at the Fish and Wildlife Service — the Interior Department agency responsible for most Endangered Species Act decisions — to basically ignore public requests for species protections:

[T]he agency limited the information it used in ruling on the 90-day citizens' petitions that lead to most listings. In May 2005, Fish and Wildlife decreed that its files on proposed listings should include only evidence from the petitions and any information in agency records that could undercut, rather than support, a decision to list a species.

Unsigned notes handwritten on May 16, 2005, by an agency official, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, attributed the policy to Douglas Krofta, who heads the Endangered Species Program's listing branch. The notes said employees "can use info from files that refutes petitions but not anything that supports, per Doug."

Although most decisions to list a species under the Act come as a result of public petitions, administrations can decide to list species on their own. During the administrations of George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, 21 percent of species listed under the Act came as a result of internal requests, according to the Post.

Maybe Bush administration officials don't know they can request species protections on their own. Maybe they just don't care. Either way, the news is not good if you are a dwindling species of animal, plant, insect, or other organism. The current Bush administration has not listed a single species as a result of internal requests, according to the Post.

The result of these obstructionist policies and general inertia has been a stark decline in the number of species granted protection under the Act. In fact, as the Post reports, "Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne has not declared a single native species as threatened or endangered since he was appointed nearly two years ago." See below for the grand totals from the George H.W. Bush, Clinton, and George W. Bush administrations; and keep in mind H.W. Bush was only in office for one term.