Endangered Species Scandal

[freeztar]

And the good news keeps on coming...

 

“This is a giant step backward. Under the rule finalized today, more than 750 wolves – over half of the region’s wolf population – could be killed, even though this wolf population is still protected by the Endangered Species Act.

Wolves in the Northern Rockies Lose Important Protections - Defenders of Wildlife

 

Has the Fish and Wildlife Service ever heard of biological modeling? :shrug:

 

This has been going on for a while btw. Here's a good document that explains the issues in more detail:

http://www.fws.gov/pacific/news/2006/documents/IDWolfMOA.pdf

[Turtle]

Well, some more fun news from the good ol USofA:

 

Roger Wilco. Damn the whales, full speed ahead. :hihi:

 

Newsvine - Navy Resumes Sonar Training Off Coast

...The anti-submarine warfare exercises use mid-frequency active sonar. Critics say sonar has harmful effects on marine mammals' date=' possibly by damaging their hearing. Some allege the sonar causes whales and other mammals to beach themselves.

 

A federal judge this month temporarily lifted certain measures designed to lessen the impact of sonar on whales.

 

The decision came a day after President Bush exempted the Navy from an environmental law in an effort to allow the service to continue anti-submarine warfare exercises. He said the exercises were in the interest of national security. ...[/quote']

[freeztar]

And the beat goes on...:lol:

 

The US Fish and Wildlife Service was supposed to make that decision in January but postponed the ruling by a month, saying that the matter needed more examination. Environmentalists have accused the Government of delaying the polar bear's designation deliberately for fear of complicating the sell-off.

 

Native Alaskans and environmentalists will be in court to try to halt the sale, while Senator John Kerry, the Democratic presidential candidate in 2004, is trying to push legislation through the Senate to insist that the bear's status is settled before the auction can begin.

 

Brandon Frazier, of the International Fund for Animal Welfare, said: “An endangered listing can affect the sell-off of the oil-drilling rights. That's why the decision on the polar bear has been delayed. They are trying to wait it out, get the lease sale through and then make the decision.”

A black-and-white issue — polar bears v oil - Times Online

 

What do you think, is it a government conspiracy?

[freeztar]

Roger Wilco. Damn the whales, full speed ahead. :evil:

 

Newsvine - Navy Resumes Sonar Training Off Coast

 

Well, thankfully the honorable judge struck back. :lol:

 

In a sharply worded decision that will keep the Navy from continuing a series of 14 planned exercises, U.S. District Judge Florence-Marie Cooper wrote that the Navy and the administration had improperly declared that an emergency would be created if they had to accept court-mandated steps to minimize risk to whales and other sea mammals. Because no real emergency exists, she said, the White House cannot override her decisions and those of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit.

 

Accepting the Navy's arguments, she wrote, would produce "the absurd result of permitting agencies to avoid their [environmental] obligations by re-characterizing ordinary, planned activities as 'emergencies' in the interest of national security, economic stability or other long-term goals."

washingtonpost.com - nation, world, technology and Washington area news and headlines

[freeztar]

Is November here yet?

 

Conservation groups claim that Bush appointees have been deliberately making it harder to designate animals and plants as endangered, and have launched a series of lawsuits. Administration officials admit that there are about 280 species waiting to be added to the list.

 

George Bush's father designated 231 species as endangered or threatened in his single term. In Bill Clinton's eight years 521 species were designated as endangered. Bush has designated 59 in seven years, and none in the last two since Dirk Kempthorne became secretary of the interior, the department responsible.

 

Conservation groups such as the Sierra group said Kempthorne, a former senator and head of a housing development group, was biased in favour of commercial interests.

 

The DOI is claiming that it doesn't have the necessary funding and that it is bogged down with lawsuits. It's ironic that if they did their job correctly, they wouldn't have lawsuits and would thus have more funding. :)

[freeztar]

The Associated Press: Delay in ruling on endangered right whales criticized

 

The documents, which House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) released yesterday, show that the White House Council of Economic Advisers and Vice President Cheney's office repeatedly questioned whether the rule was needed. Waxman, who sent a letter to the White House asking for an explanation, said the exchange "appears to be the latest instance of the White House ignoring scientists and other experts."

 

In one document, the Council of Economic Advisers questioned "the reliability of analysis in the published literature on which NOAA is basing its position." The council conducted its own analysis and concluded that "the relationship between [vessel] speed and [whale] injury . . . may not be as strong of a relationship as is suggested in published papers."

 

NOAA scientists were not swayed, writing in response, "The basic facts remain that (1) there is a direct relationship between speed and death/serious injury, and (2) at vessel speeds at or below 10 knots the probability of death/serious injury is greatly reduced."

 

A separate document reveals that Cheney's staff argued "that we have no evidence (i.e., hard data) that lowering the speeds of 'large ships' will actually make a difference." NOAA again fired back, writing that there was "no basis to overturn our previous conclusion that imposing a speed limit on large vessels would be beneficial to whales."

 

Since NOAA initially proposed the regulation, at least three right whales have died from ship strikes and two have been wounded by propellers.

 

washingtonpost.com - nation, world, technology and Washington area news and headlines

 

Can someone explain to me why Cheney and the Economic Advisors are having a scientific debate...with actual scientists!?

[Moontanman]

The Associated Press: Delay in ruling on endangered right whales criticized

 

 

 

washingtonpost.com - nation, world, technology and Washington area news and headlines

 

Can someone explain to me why Cheney and the Economic Advisors are having a scientific debate...with actual scientists!?

 

They are not smart enough to know they don't know what they are talking about? A classic case of "if you say it long enough it becomes true" Cheney and the rest of the Bush administration haven't exactly been known for their intelligence, markedly shown by whom their base support consists of.

[freeztar]

This article describes a study recently published in "Nature". I fully support what they are arguing for and frankly find it quite shocking that these metrics aren't already being used.

 

Melbourne and co-author Alan Hastings from the University of California at Davis argue that these factors must be widened in order to give a fuller picture of extinction risk.

 

They say that two other determinants must be taken into account: male-to-female ratios in a species, and a wider definition of randomness in individual births and deaths.

 

These complex variables can determine whether a fragile population can overcome a sudden decline in numbers, such as through habitat loss, or whether it will be wiped out.

 

"This seems subtle and technical, but it turns out to be important," Melbourne said in an email. "Population sizes might need to be much larger for species to be relatively safe from extinction."

 

The new mathematical tool will be most useful for biologists who want to assess the survival prospects of species such as marine fish whose numbers can suddenly fluctuate and for which data is limited, the authors say.

Extinction risks vastly underestimated: study - Yahoo! News

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One of the things the Bush administration would like to do before leaving the White House is to weaken the Endangered Species Act. I haven't reviewed the proposed changes yet, but I'm sure that there is more to this than greenhouse gases.

 

The Bush administration wants federal agencies to decide for themselves whether highways, dams, mines and other construction projects might harm endangered animals and plants. New regulations, which don't require the approval of Congress, would reduce the mandatory, independent reviews government scientists have been performing for 35 years, according to a draft first obtained by The Associated Press.

Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne said late Monday the changes were needed to ensure that the Endangered Species Act would not be used as a "back door" to regulate the gases blamed for global warming. In May, the polar bear became the first species declared as threatened because of climate change. Warming temperatures are expected to melt the sea ice the bear depends on for survival.

The draft rules would bar federal agencies from assessing the emissions from projects that contribute to global warming and their effects on species and habitats.

"We need to focus our efforts where they will do the most good," Kempthorne said in a news conference organized quickly after AP reported details of the proposal. "It is important to use our time and resources to protect the most vulnerable species. It is not possible to draw a link between greenhouse-gas emissions and distant observations of impacts on species."

 

Bush moves to weaken Endangered Species Act | www.azstarnet.com ®

[Zythryn]

:tearhair:I was so hoping we were done with the damage this administration has done.

Well, if this is something the president can do without congressional approval hopefully it will be undone (or redone?) on Jan 21st.

[freeztar]

:tearhair:I was so hoping we were done with the damage this administration has done.

Well, if this is something the president can do without congressional approval hopefully it will be undone (or redone?) on Jan 21st.

 

I was talking with my colleague about this and he said that it will not hold up in court. Furthermore, I don't think the administration can do it without congressional approval, so it probably will not become a rule. In any case, there is a sixty day comment period once the press release is issued in the Federal Register. I urge anyone concerned about this to make a comment once it becomes publicly available.

[dkv]

Animal right activists are getting angry. They have beaten the hell out of some scientists who conduct experiments on animals.

News and Views: Animal-rights extremism

Half the worlds monkeys and apes are facing extinction.

News and Views: Half the world's monkey and apes face extinction

[TheBigDog]

Half the worlds monkeys and apes are facing extinction.

All the world's species face extinction, it is just a matter of your time horizon.

 

Bill