v The Endangered Species Act
The  Endangered  Species  Act

Introduction:

The Endangered Species Act (ESA) is one of the weapons of radical environmentalists, and is among the most wasteful and most counterproductive laws on the books.  It started out as an innocent-sounding means of protecting plants and animals that were nearing extinction, but it has turned into a tool for exerting political leverage.  Like so many other laws, this one has had many unintended adverse consequences.  The application of the ESA has apparently resulted in a number of violations of Fourth Amendment property rights, especially in the western half of the United States.  A quick search of the internet for the topics of private property rights and water usage rights will reveal a number of battles in rural America between farmers trying to use their land as they see fit, and various government agencies enforcing the ESA.

The cost of complying with government regulations has become enormous.  According to Professor Thomas Hopkins of the Rochester Institute of Technology, businesses and private citizens spend more than $600 billion every year complying with government regulations.  Hopkins estimates that environmental regulations make up more than one quarter of that cost, approximately $168 billion.*

Ironically, many of the environmentalists who are really gung-ho about the ESA are the same people who place more value on the words of Charles Darwin than the Word of God.  One would think they'd be delighted when "survival of the fittest" is allowed to run its course, and the weak and vulnerable species die out!  Instead, they place their faith and trust in the federal government, hoping to reverse this natural process at the taxpayers' expense.

The ESA seeks to solve an open-ended problem that probably can't be solved anyway, since the forces of nature are far greater than the power of the most overdeveloped government agency.  Plants and animals have always faced danger… from each other!  But the ESA is a problem because it has been implemented in a way that makes its supporting bureaucracies permanent, and the cost of enforcing the act are constantly expanding.  A 1990 General Accounting Office report found that more than 80 percent of all listed species were declining despite protection under the act.*  Listing the Northern spotted owl in 1990 led to tens of thousands of job losses and is expected to cost the economy $21 billion to $46 billion.*  And even when actual recovery has occurred, species frequently are not delisted.  This failure to acknowledge success aggravates public frustrations generated by the cost and inflexible processes of ESA.*

For the purpose of this discussion, I think there are two types of environmentalists:  Type 1 environmentalists only care about gathering political power and tax-sheltered donations  They support an ever-expanding federal government because they feed on politics.  Type 2 environmentalists are people who mean well, and will do whatever they can to preserve and protect plants and animals, but they have been badly misinformed by the Type 1 people.  This page is here for the benefit of the people who get faulty information from the mainstream press, which tends to be sympathetic to Type 1 environmental activists.

The ESA has the unattainable goal of protecting all species from extinction at any cost.*  But it just can't be done.  The forces of nature are far more powerful than anything the government can do for a mere $600 billion a year.  The ESA is not just an inconvenience, it is a means of bypassing the democratic process to grab and exert political power.

Moreover, the ESA is utterly futile:  In order to prove that a species is extinct (or even endangered), you must be able to prove that you know the location of every specimen of that species.

In addition, the furor over endangered species fails to weigh the value of a kangaroo rat (for example) against the value of a human life and that human's job.

In the United States, according to the U.S. government, there are 69 species of endangered mammals, 75 species of endangered birds, 304 species of other animals, and 598 species of endangered plants.  [Source]  Some environmentalists say that "tens of thousands of species disappear every year."  But such a statement is absurd, and the people who make such claims are evidently hoping that nobody will test their claims against the facts.

This topic is related to others on this web site, including the study of Environmental False Alarms,  Animal rights vs human rights,  the banning of DDT,  and the Abuse of government power.


An excellent overview of the Endangered Species Act:
 The failure of endangered species regulation on private land.  The Endangered Species Act (ESA) was enacted with much fanfare and little controversy in 1973.  At the time, few anticipated how broadly the law would affect both government and private activities.  Yet ever since its celebrated passage, the nation's premier wildlife conservation law has been a source of conflict and controversy; it has been rightly described as "one of the most contentious of our federal environmental laws."  The ESA is a focus of controversy in part because of its strength.  Indeed, the ESA may be the most powerful environmental law in the nation.  For all the Act's strength, it has not been particularly effective at conserving species.  Although it is the "most comprehensive of all our environmental laws," it is not, by any measure, the most successful.

Dodo of the Year.  Good news:  It is not a felony if a bird happens to land on your property and dies.  At least not yet.  That's the ruling out of North Dakota, where a federal court last week dismissed a complaint by the Obama Justice Department against three oil companies under the Migratory Bird Act.

Government control of trees on private property:
 $1.6 million fine for cutting down trees.  A Florida couple was fined $1.6 million for cutting down mangrove trees on their property without proper state and city permits.  Roger and Myrna Byrd of Jupiter removed 109 mangroves, a tree Florida has protected since 1985, in late 2010, The Palm Beach Post reported Wednesday [1/25/2012].

Obama Has No Credibility on Energy.  One of the less known issues that hampers the development of energy in the West is that of endangered species. ... A look at the map of areas being considered for Sage Grouse habitat shows areas in which Sage Grouse have not been seen in over a decade, but is considered as "suitable".  There is also land in northeastern Utah being evaluated as to whether or not it is suitable for the Mexican Wolf.  Mexican Wolf?  I didn't even know they had wolves in Mexico, let alone that they are capable of migrating almost to Wyoming. ... With 300 species about to be added to the Endangered List in the United States, and the potential for any given stretch of land to be listed as suitable for them, and thus off-limits to energy companies, there is practically no end to the roadblocks that could be used to thwart development.

The Editor says...
 Obviously the ESA is "used to thwart development."  Development means capitalism, and environmentalism is vigorously opposed to capitalism.  The animals are mere pawns:  They are used for emotional appeal in the superficial news media.  The actual endangerment of the 300 additional species is quesionable, since many of these animals are indistinguishable from their cousins.  And even if the Wyoming Mexican Wolf is wiped out, people are more important than animals.  For centuries, civilized countries have marvelled at the veneration of (sacred) cows in India, but in the United States, in the last 50 years, we have begun to place an exaggerated value on every toad and bug and scavenger in the wild west.

Bonneville Power Administration's (BPA) Wind Issue.  While many system operators have been forced to draw upon fossil fuel back-up units when power is most needed because wind was not available, BPA has had to deal with too much wind power conflicting with its hydroelectric generation of renewable electricity.  To balance supply and demand, BPA displaced nearly 100,000 megawatt hours of wind energy between May 18 and July 10 of this year [2011] (over 5 percent of the amount produced by wind power connected to its grid) in favor of hydroelectric power in order to protect the salmon in the Columbia River.  While BPA could have reduced the power output of its hydroelectric dams by routing excess water through a spillway, it chose not to because BPA believed it would have violated the Clean Water Act and the Endangered Species Act.  Water passing over a spillway picks up nitrogen gas, which is harmful to salmon.

More information (none of it favorable) about wind energy.

National Park Service has new land-grabbing tool.  Big Green has an unlikely new sales pitch to convince Congress to fund ever-expanding land grabs by the National Park Service — save wildlife migration.  A map overlay showing all the U.S. wildlife migration paths would blot out nearly half the nation — a very clever diagram for empire-building bureaucrats.  The obscure but well-heeled Wildlife Conservation Society (2010 assets $764 million) unveiled the idea last week in "Spectacular Migrations in the Western U.S.," a 45-page report on the purportedly urgent need for a widespread network of wildlife migration corridors to avert countless extinctions.

Big Green's endangered species money machine.  Karen Budd-Falen is a fifth-generation rancher in Wyoming.  She's also a strong-minded lawyer who tracks millions in legal fees paid to Big Green environmental groups by federal agencies in lawsuits to save endangered species — and she makes the records public.  They show that the Endangered Species Act has been hijacked by those same Big Green groups that use it in the courts as an ideological weapon against development — and to enrich themselves.  Stories of such things as wind farm projects thwarted by a field mouse are no longer uncommon, but investigations of how environmental lawyers turn the ESA into a private money machine are almost nonexistent.  Budd-Falen has pioneered that niche with high-detail profiles.

Do Lighting Standard Delays Threaten Consumer Choice?  When considered carefully, the lighting efficiency standard contains a paradox:  It has had the effect of multiplying consumer choice, but by means of a mechanism that will actually limit choice, once it is fully implemented.  Nor is this just a US concern.  One reason we're seeing so many new lighting technologies on store shelves is that incandescent lights are being phased out in much of the developed world.  As shown in Exhibit 17 of a recent report by McKinsey & Company, the phaseout of incandescent lighting is even farther along in the EU and Japan, with Russia and Brazil also winding down sales of these lights.

Environmentalists Block Fire Retardant use to Protect Wildlife.  Nearly 47 million acres of American forests are now off-limits to slurry drops to fight fires because of a successful lawsuit by environmentalists who say the retardant kills fish and endangered species.  The Forest Service decision that was due before Dec. 31 says the new directions for the use of the fire retardant will help them protect water sources as well as plant and wildlife.

Not every "extinct" species really is extinct.
 Bumblebee boffins rediscover long-vanished species.  Scientists have rediscovered an extremely rare species of bumblebee in the US, which hasn't been seen since 1956.  The find has prompted a lot of excitement due to the concern about bee species disappearing around the world.

Another example:
 'Extinct' Galapagos Tortoise Turns Up on Distant Island.  A type of giant tortoise, observed in the Galapagos Islands in 1853 by Charles Darwin but thought to have been extinct for 150 years, is apparently alive and well.  This news, from a team of biologists at Yale University, would be welcomed by conservationists, and it adds an ironic twist to Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection.

The Inconvenient Truth about Species Extinction.  "Overall, species loss is now occurring at a rate 1,000 times greater than the natural background rate," says Al Gore in the Academy Award-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth. ... To illustrate the vacuousness of comparing modern extinction rates to the so-called background extinction rate, we need only to apply Gore's "1,000 times" claim to some hard data, which we can find in a recently published paper in the journal Diversity and Distributions.  The authors of this paper analyzed the "actual historical record of extinctions" and found that a total of 190 birds and land-dwelling mammals have gone extinct since the year 1500.

Texas official applauds dunes sagebrush lizard ruling.  Texas Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson said Thursday he is pleased with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's decision to delay a ruling of whether the dunes sagebrush lizard should be placed on the endangered species list.  The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said it will need more data before determining if the lizard, which resides in the Permian Basin, is endangered.

City might pursue litigation in dunes sagebrush lizard case.  With the final decision on the dunes sagebrush lizard just more than a month away, city of Midland leaders are considering filing a lawsuit if necessary.

Obama Ethics: Safer to Be a Golden-Winged Warbler than a Baby Human.  With his finger firmly on the pulse of what is most concerning to Americans, the president has announced that he will soon be extending endangered species status (and the requisite mountain of rules and regulations that accompany the designation) to a list of over 500 plant and animal species.  And besides being great news for the soon-to-be-protected slow-moving Gopher tortoise, this move will undoubtedly benefit a national economy already stunted by oppressive bureaucratic micromanagement.  One can fairly imagine how much easier life is about to get for the people of Hawaii, for instance, when they receive new federal guides on how to identify the 99 new native plants they must avoid trampling or trimming.

Delta Water Rules Smelt of Extremism.  If you want to understand the fundamental things wrong with our nation and California, in particular, you ought to peruse the 140-page opinion recently issued by Judge Oliver Wanger in the "Consolidated Delta Smelt Cases."  It describes many of the most frustrating elements in our society — abuses of federal authority, bureaucratic micromanagement of our lives and political zealotry masquerading as science.  The case also shows the indifference to the insanity by most Americans, who wouldn't know a Delta smelt from a cod fillet.

Record Number of Sea Turtles Counted in Texas.  A record number of nests of endangered Kemp's Ridley sea turtles has been counted along the Texas Gulf Coast this year, putting to rest fears that last year's BP Gulf oil spill would further jeopardize the endangered turtles.

Obama Administration Expanding the Reach of ESA.  With a Friday [7/30/2011] deadline to act on more than 700 pending cases, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service already has issued decisions advancing more than 500 species toward potential new protections under the Endangered Species Act.

Judge questions honesty of Interior Department Scientists.  U.S. District Court judges aren't known for using inflammatory language in deciding the weighty issues that come before them on the federal bench.  So it was remarkable to read the scorching indictment of a federal environmental agency and two of its scientists last week by Judge Oliver W. Wanger.  The case concerns how the government should manage California water supplies and at the same time seek to preserve the delta smelt, an allegedly endangered species of minnow-like fish.

Grizzly shooting pits Idahoans against Uncle Sam.  U.S. prosecutors charge a man who said he was protecting his family.  State residents and officials are outraged.

U.S. may declare an extremely rare manzanita endangered.  The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposes the status for the Franciscan manzanita, only one example of which is believed to be growing in the wild. ... The manzanita, also known as Arctostaphylos franciscana, was believed to be extinct until 2009, when a sharp-eyed botanist saw the lonely plant on a traffic island in the middle of a busy highway, part of a major construction project near the Golden Gate Bridge.

America is Under Attack.  As early as 1946, the left began a strategy to use people's concern for the environment to impose government control over land use.  They tricked people into accepting laws that on the surface appeared designed to protect some aspect of the environment, but always, with vague or ambiguous language, or clauses hidden deep within the legalese and gobbledygook, gave government the power to regulate and control our property, our businesses, and our lives.  Today, we see this manifest in the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act, and the totally misnamed Environmental Protection Agency.

A reptile messes with Texas.  A five-inch reptile has enough power in its tiny claws to hurl thousands of Americans into unemployment lines.  It shows how the greenie Obama administration places a higher value on sand-dune lizards than it does on domestic energy production and jobs.  Federal bureaucrats with the Fish and Wildlife Service want to put this critter, also known as the dunes sagebrush lizard, on the Endangered Species List.

Gov't Paying Farmers, Ranchers $112M to Protect Bird Too Numerous to be Threatened.  The U.S. Department of Agriculture is paying $112 million in tax money to farmers and ranchers in 11 Western states to restore the habitat of the Sage Grouse, a bird that has not been listed as either threatened or endangered under the federal Endangered Species law because the government says there are too many of them.

Job-Creating Keystone Pipeline Affects Endangered Beetle, Says State Dep't.  In its Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) on the Keystone XL pipeline, which would create thousands of jobs and transport 830,000 barrels of oil a day from Canada to Oklahoma and Texas, a State Department official said its investigation found "no significant impact to most resources" along the path of the 1,700-mile project.  But the State Department also said the pipeline could adversely affect the American Burying Beetle, an endangered species.

The Editor says...
 When gas is $10 a gallon, nobody will care about the welfare of any stinkin' beetle.

New Flower Species Protections Pit Energy Industry Against Conservationists in Colorado.  The recent placing of three Colorado wildflowers on the federal endangered and threatened species lists will make it harder to exploit untapped fuel resources in the Rocky Mountain State, a group representing the energy industry tells Fox News, an assertion the government denies.

Scientists Expose Inside Job Behind Endangered Species Scam.  History tells us that listing a critter as an endangered species does little for the species and can do a great deal of harm to the local economies — the spotted owl and the delta smelt are two oft-cited cases.  But there is not a big body of evidence showing how these listing decisions were made.  It was just assumed that the species plight warranted protection.  But that was before the listing proposal for the dunes sagebrush lizard threatened a large segment of U.S. domestic oil production and the economies of Southeastern New Mexico and West Texas.

All for the sake of the Delta Smelt.
 California's water wars.  California's water wars aren't about scarcity.  Even with 37 million people and the nation's most irrigation-intensive agriculture, the state usually has enough water for both people and crops, thanks to the brilliant hydrological engineering of past Californians.  But now there is a new element in the century-old water calculus:  a demand that the state's inland waters flow as pristinely as they supposedly did before the age of dams, reservoirs and canals.

Welfare of pronghorn still trumps border enforcement.  As I reported back in February, the Interior Department has been using a 1964 environmental law to block the Border Patrol from building communications towers along the southwestern border in Arizona.  The towers are part of a virtual fence that would be used to intercept illegal immigrants, drug smugglers and human traffickers who are increasingly using protected federal wilderness areas to sneak over the border.  Five months later, nothing's changed.

The Greens Just Love Us to Death.  [Scroll down]  Nor have Greens given up on the Endangered Species Act which has not truly saved any species in the course of spending billions to protect, for example, a spotted owl that needed no protection whatever or gray wolves that were doing quite well in Canada and Mexico when not wandering across our borders.  What the ESA did accomplish, however, was to thwart all manner of development, whether it was a new hospital or the irrigation of farms rumored to grow crops people wanted to eat.  The latest proposed use of the ESA is to shut down one of the most productive oil reserves in the U.S. to protect a lizard!

Lizard Controversy in W. Texas, New Mexico Oil Patch.  [Scroll down to page 9]  A three-inch-long, sand-dwelling lizard threatens one of the nation's most prolific oil-producing regions.  The dunes sagebrush lizard may soon be added to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service's (FWS) Endangered Species List, a development that is looked upon with horror by many residents of the oil-rich Permian Basin in West Texas and southeastern New Mexico.  If the lizard is added to the list, the Endangered Species Act will impose on the 17-county Permian Basin severe land-use restrictions that will curtail oil exploration and drilling.

Chesapeake Crab Population Continues Its Recovery.  [Scroll down to page 7]  Despite a harsh winter this year, the Chesapeake Bay's blue crab population continues to make a comeback, government wildlife officials report.  This year's annual winter dredge survey showed the blue crab population at its second-highest level since 1997, well above its target for a third year in a row.  The survey estimated 461 million blue crabs currently in the bay.  That's nearly double figures for 2007, when population outlooks were bleak.

GOP lawmakers take aim at Endangered Species Act.  The Endangered Species Act has long had its foes, particularly in the West.  But in recent months, the law has taken an unprecedented hit from Congress.  Republicans, led by Rep. Mike Simpson of Idaho, successfully used a budget bill signed into law by the president to return to the states of Idaho and Montana the ability to manage their wolf populations.

Little lizard could cause big disruptions for Texas drillers.  Deep in the West Texas sand dunes is something that some say could threaten the state's oil and gas production:  A tiny lizard.  But it's not just any lizard:  It's a dunes sagebrush lizard, also known as the sand dune lizard.

More Enviro-Anomalies.  [The obscure dunes sagebrush] lizard, supposedly dying out, has a habitat that stretches across southeastern New Mexico and west central Texas, smack-dab in the middle of the longest-exploited and most productive oil field in America, the Permian Basin field.  The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is trying to get this lowly lizard listed as an endangered species, claiming that oil and gas development is ruining the lizard's habitat.  Of course, if the feds declare this banal reptile "endangered," all drilling companies in the affected area will immediately come under the iron fist of the Fish and Wildlife Service, which will demand that they work without "harming" the habitat (viz., sand dunes) of the mundane creature.  Fish and Wildlife will accordingly threaten the drillers with massive fines for disturbing those dunes.  By the way, nobody knows the size of this repellant reptile's population to begin with, which raises the question of how exactly we know that it is endangered.

Salazar's War On Jobs.  The plight of the prairie chickens, smelt fish and dunes sagebrush lizards is not just a policy cause for environmentalists anymore, but the weapon of choice in a war on jobs by the Obama Administration, say critics in Congress.  The policies in effect at the Interior Department, now led by Secretary Ken Salazar, are supposed to protect endangered species against certain annihilation.  But they're also turning farmlands into dust bowls and running oil and gas development off the land, out of the water and out of the country.

Environmentalism vs. Border Control: A Complex Battle of Survival.  Federal agents must abandon their vehicles and chase drug smugglers and illegal aliens on foot through 40 acres near the Mexican border because of a pond that is home to the endangered desert pupfish.  It's part of the agreement between the Homeland Security and Interior departments on how best to protect the ecosystem, frustrating lawmakers who say it also prevents agents from conducting routine patrols.

Targeted by the EPA.  A three-inch lizard scuttled into the spotlight in December after the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposed moving it onto the Endangered Species List.  The dunes sagebrush lizard's habitat covers just eight counties on the Texas-New Mexico border, right in the heart of the Permian Basin, a major oil-producing region.  Particularly in Texas, industry leaders and local businesses see the action as hostile — another Obama administration environmental policy targeting their successful, energy-sparked economy.

Crazifornia: Delta smelt refuse to die in pumps.  In Tracy, California, where the massive California Water Project pumps stand ready to move up to 15,450 cubic feet of Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta water southward every single second, it's been a busy spring.  The pumps have been a mere shadow of their old selves ever since U.S. District Court Judge Oliver Wanger began ratcheting them down in 2007 in response to environmentalist lawsuits brought under the auspices of the Delta smelt.

Listing of lizard may shut down Texas oil.  You can't make this up.  First, a Spotted Owl destroyed the timber industry of the Pacific Northwest, then a minnow turned the most productive agricultural land in the world into a dustbowl, and now, as energy prices spike and the economy sputters, they're going after Texas with a scurrilous reptile.  Specifically, the Dunes Sagebrush Lizard.

Will A Lizard Stop West Texas Oil?  After the harm done by the spotted owl and delta smelt, the listing of a tiny reptile as endangered may be the latest salvo in the war on domestic energy.

Meet the sand dune lizard.  He's also known as the Dunes Sagebrush Lizard; this endearing little critter is native to the American Southwest.  Specifically, eastern New Mexico and West Texas. ... You see, the favored habitat of the Dunes Sagebrush Lizard also happens to be a favored habitat of the Domestic Production Crude Oil Rig:  the US Fish and Wildlife Service plans to declare the former to be an endangered species, and you know just how this story ends, right?

Endangered tortoises delay Mojave Desert solar plant.  The Obama administration has halted the building of two-thirds of a massive solar project in San Bernardino's Mojave Desert as a new federal assessment found that more than 600 endangered desert tortoises would die as a result of construction.

Runaway Trains of Bureaucracy.  Government programs succeed through failure.  A program that actually "solved" whatever problem prompted its creation would be wiped out.  A bureaucrat who runs a tight ship, and brings his operation in under budget, will be "rewarded" with a smaller budget.  Every single organ of our federal government is working tirelessly to solve a problem that is much worse than originally anticipated, and therefore requires increased funding.  When was the last time you heard of a big federal program that was shut down ahead of schedule and under budget, because it completed its mission?

The Cost Of Green.  The green lobby assured everyone it knew what it was doing when it got a judge to cut water to Central Valley farmers to save the delta smelt.  But while the Valley economy is now ruined, it hasn't helped the smelt.

Beating Big Green at the trial lawyer game.  "Congress intended endangered species to be afforded the highest of priorities."  That 1978 Supreme Court decision in the notorious snail darter case stopped Tennessee's $100 million Tellico Dam.  Thereafter, the Endangered Species Act would trump all else.  The ESA is not about plants and animals despite its name.  It's about habitat — that's land and water, public or private.  Harm habitat in your own backyard and under ESA's Section 11(b) you could get a year in federal prison and a $50,000 fine for each violation.

Save the Fish, Starve the Humans.  Saving a two-inch "endangered" fish has cost hundreds of thousands of jobs in California 's Central Valley and turned parts of it, some of the most productive agricultural land in the U.S., into a dust bowl. ... University of California (Davis) Prof. Peter Moyle started the Save the Delta Smelt campaign.  The professor admits that the smelt has no commercial value, that its life cycle is just one year, and that, even in optimal conditions, it's prone to extinction anyway.  Nonetheless, it must be saved at any cost.  That's the mandate of the Endangered Species Act.  Moyle was successful in convincing the EPA to list the Delta Smelt as endangered in 1993.  Several court cases later, the obscene cost of saving a fish the professor says has only been in the Sacramento River delta for 8,000 to 10,000 years is now apparent.

Manatee count reaches record numbers.  Biologists with the Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission counted 4,840 manatees during their annual survey in January, by far a record for the once-endangered species.  The high count is especially encouraging in view of the record number of manatee deaths resulting from cold weather last year  — a total of 767 were recorded dead statewide.

Obama's war on the private sector continues.  On Dec. 14, the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) announced that the dunes sagebrush lizard "faces immediate and significant threats due to oil and gas activities and herbicide treatments."  As a result, it proposes that the lizard be listed as "endangered" — under the Endangered Species Act — which starts the clock for a 60-day public comment period.  Hoping no one would notice, the FWS announced the proposal during the throes of the holiday season.  We the public need to take notice.

Can a State Bypass the EPA?  In 2010, the EPA granted exactly two new coal mining permits in West Virginia.  There are fifty outstanding permits, because according to the EPA, bugs are more important than jobs.  Mayfly populations are disrupted when coal companies dig beneath the surface of the earth, which the EPA says affects the amount of food and thus the populations of indigenous fish.  Other research has indicated that as soon as those bugs leave, other ones take their place, and fish populations are unaffected.  As the result of this standoff, coal cannot expand in Appalachia, and some of the highest paying jobs in the state remain unfilled.

Here Comes The Sun.  Government will shut off water to farmers to protect a 3-inch bait fish for ecological reasons.  Yet it has no problem uprooting a threatened species to make room for a trendy green energy project.

A human balance needed for the environment.  Everybody wants clean air and water.  Everybody wants to conserve America's abundant natural resources. ... But who wants to turn one of the world's most fertile farming regions, an area that long fed millions of Americans and provided jobs for countless workers, into an arid wasteland, all on behalf of a small fish?

Manmade famine in America.  It seems inconceivable, but people in America are going hungry en masse due to a famine caused by political authorities.  Fresno, California is not yet a sister city of Kiev, Ukraine, but the two cities, capitals of rich agricultural regions, share a history of mass hunger caused by central governments indifferent to the suffering of their people, in the pursuit of ideological goals.

Back from the dead:  One third of 'extinct' animals turn up again.  Conservationists are overestimating the number of species that have been driven to extinction, scientists have said.  A study has found that a third of all mammal species declared extinct in the past few centuries have turned up alive and well.  Some of the more reclusive creatures managed to hide from sight for 80 years only to reappear within four years of being officially named extinct in the wild.

Administration releases climate strategy for plants, wildlife.  The Obama administration Monday [9/27/2010] released a strategy for assessing the effects of climate change on at-risk plants and wildlife.  The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service strategy sets out a plan for prioritizing research and its response to climate change, calling for a coordinated effort by federal agencies, states and conservation groups to identify the most vulnerable species.

Spotting of red fox could ignite endangered species battle.  The rarely seen Sierra Nevada red fox could be the next candidate for federal protection, and perhaps political controversy, now that one has been photographed prowling near Sonora Pass, Calif.  California state law currently covers the fox.  The federal Endangered Species Act does not.

Obamnesty First, Security Second?  Every nation has a right to protect its borders, and our commander in chief has a duty to protect ours.  Refusal to do so for political reasons is unconscionable.  Our border states should not remain exposed to the escalating violence of a Mexican drug war that has already claimed the life of one Arizona rancher.  The murderers of Robert Krentz escaped to a protected pronghorn antelope area that the Interior Department of Secretary Ken Salazar had placed off limits to U.S. border patrol agents in order to protect endangered species.

Border Patrol Charged Millions for Habitat Damage, Republicans Say Enough 'Extortion'.  Republican lawmakers are calling on the Interior Department to stop charging what they describe as "extortion" money from the Border Patrol — millions of under-the-radar dollars meant to cover environmental damage stemming from their everyday duties along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Buying Votes With Water:  The water spigots are back on, at least temporarily, in California's Central Valley.  Turned off to protect a tiny fish, they happen to be in the districts of two congressmen "undecided" on health care reform.

Water for Votes and Other Atrocities.  Obama has now joined the likes of all other despots who have ever walked and practiced their tyrannies upon planet Earth. ... Obama turned off the spigots in California's Central Valley in order to destroy crops, fruit trees, farmers' livelihoods etc.  in that once extremely fertile and productive area and to give him a large hammer to use against all of us who eat food and drink water.  Obama affected this by design and on purpose first and foremost to observe whether or not he could get away with it...

On Earth Day, Did You Thank a Hunter?  Ten cents of every dollar I spent on my hunting and fishing toys funds Federal and State "conservation" programs.  From my guns and ammo to my duck calls and decoys, from my rods and reels to my lures and gaffs, from my trolling motor to the very fuel for my outboard — ten cents of every dollar in this ghastly expenditure funds habitat for Spotted Owls, Red Cockaded Woodpeckers, Bald Eagles, Ospreys, Manatees, Snail darters, Black-Footed Ferrets, California Condors, Florida Panthers and Sea Otters.

48 Hawaiian Species Listed As Endangered, Putting 40 Square Miles of Kauai Off-Limits.  Wildlife officials lauded Washington's "holistic approach" to conservation in Hawaii after the Obama administration declared 48 species as endangered and announced plans to set aside more than 40 square miles on Kauai as critical habitat to allow the plants and animals to flourish.

Energy Industry Relieved Sage Grouse Won't Be Listed As Endangered.  An Interior Department announcement Friday [3/5/2010] that it won't list sage grouse as an endangered or threatened species opens the way for continued development of the West's wind energy and oil and gas industries.

Westerners grouse over more proposed land restrictions.  Congressional Western Caucus members are squawking about Interior Secretary Ken Salazar's proposal to further restrict public use of federal lands by listing the Greater Sage Grouse as an endangered species.

Arizona Spends $1.25M to Save 250 Squirrels.  Arizona is spending $1.25 million to build bridges for endangered squirrels over a mountain road so they don't become roadkill and then monitor their health.  The money is being spent, officials said, because cars kill about five of these squirrels each year.

The next day...
 Arizona Cancels $1.25M Bridge for 250 Squirrels.  Arizona abruptly canceled plans today [6/18/2010] to spend $1.25 million to build bridges for a colony of 250 squirrels so they would not have to cross a rural road and could avoid becoming road kill.  John Halikowski, director of Arizona's Department of Transportation, halted the bridge project that was being paid for with federal highway funds.  "ADOT will not spend funds simply because they are available," he said in a statement.

In Pursuit of Death.  Over the last two decades, activists in the news media and popular culture have managed to mainstream radical environmentalism, leading to a "green veto" over the use of natural resources, as well as land and development policy for the nation.  Major projects are routinely halted over dubious claims of damage to habitats or endangered species.  The costs of EPA-mandated impact studies alone are daunting enough to nix needed projects before they begin.  Environmentalism is no longer just a collection of disaffected youth, misguided conservationists, and touchy-feely, back-to-nature types; this once-harmless eccentricity has unveiled a dark side.

Grape Growing Collides With Fish Protection in California.  Grape growers in Northern California's cool, fertile Sonoma County wine region are stomping mad at a new plan to limit the amount of water vineyards can pump from local rivers and streams to protect crops from frost — a proposed regulation meant to safeguard coho salmon, a species on the brink of local extinction.

Green Termites.  Under the surface and out of the spotlight, green termites are busily chewing away at the foundations of our capitalist economy.  Environmental activists have flooded the system with mass petitions for endangered species listing ... In June 2007, a petition was filed with Fish and Wildlife's New Mexico office to review 475 species, and in July 2007, a separate petition was filed with the Denver office to review 206 species.  The petition for each species must be researched and reviewed, requiring enormous amounts of time and resources for mass applications.

Where Are The Corpses?  The record of continental (as opposed to island) bird and mammal extinctions in the last five centuries was analyzed to determine if the "species-area" relationship actually works to predict extinctions.  Very few continental birds or mammals are recorded as having gone extinct, and none have gone extinct from habitat reduction alone.  No continental forest bird or mammal is recorded as having gone extinct from any cause.

U.S. flooded with endangered species requests.  When WildEarth Guardians filed two petitions in the space of a month to list 681 species under the Endangered Species Act, it came as a shock to biologists at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.  Organizations normally seek protection for just one animal or plant at a time.  The Center for Native Ecosystems, another group active in petitioning under the Endangered Species Act, has filed requests involving 27 species over the last 10 years.

Human needs should come first in environmental policy.  Ever hear of the Yellowstone Sand Verbena? ... Or how about the Meltwater Lednian Stonefly, which is only found in Glacier National Park in Montana?  That one will be gone by 2030, thanks to global warming, assuming global warming is a reality, as claimed by some scientists.  Or it may be frozen by the new little ice age predicted by other scientists.  These are two of 29 species — including 20 plants, six snails, two insects and a fish — the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service says may require federal actions to avoid extinction under the Endangered Species Act.

Congress killing us softly with laws and red tape.  For the past 20 years, I have advised landowners, homebuilders and energy companies on the intricacies of the Endangered Species Act and the Clean Water Act.  Both are complex statutes supplemented by dense volumes of regulations and administered by confusing agencies that have state and local counterparts applying state and local versions of the similar laws and rules.  The costs of these regulatory regimes are enormous, but dimly, if at all, understood by the public.  The highest-sounding rhetoric surrounds both laws, but, even as they accomplish important environmental goals, they also operate to batter tens of thousands of Americans every year.

What Is A Species?  The U.S. red wolf known as Canis rufus has been the subject of an enormous project to save it from extinction.  Meanwhile, Canadian scientists argue that Canis rufus is just an isolated southern population of Canis lycaon, a Canadian wolf that is not endangered.

Playing God with "Endangered" Species.  Let's get to the nitty-gritty of the Endangered Species Act.  Originally adopted in 1973, the framers of the Act wanted to protect species believed to be on the brink of extinction.  This is a noble idea, but 99% of all species that have existed on Earth are extinct.  At some point or other, Nature steps in to kill them off.  This is why there are no dinosaurs around except in Steven Speilberg movies and animated documentaries.  Despite ample evidence that the Act is a great waste of time and money, Congress has been funding the ESA ever since the first 109 species were listed.

Habitat and Humanity.  If there is a Don Quixote of federal laws, it is the Endangered Species Act (ESA):  For over three decades this law's regulations have endangered the species in distress that they are endeavoring to protect.

The Endangered Species Act.  Once on the list, it is nearly impossible for a species to be taken off.  Very few species (only 31) have ever made it off the list.  For example, although the bald eagle has been flourishing in recent years (three have been spotted in the Washington, D.C. area alone), the Department of the Interior (DOI) has not taken the eagle off the list because environmental groups have lobbied to keep the bird on the list.  DOI succumbs to such pleas, even when species is no longer endangered.  The 1,232 species on the list have more rights than property owners.

Warm Thoughts on Cold Weather.  Animal adaptations to cold are nothing short of amazing. Take, for example, certain species of frogs that spend the winter frozen.  These are not frogs that are chilled, but truly frozen.  Pick them up, and they are hard and cold.  Ice crystals form between their cells and throughout their body cavities.  They appear to be dead, but they are known to hop away after overwintering with body temperatures below 18 degrees.

California's Man-Made Drought.  California has a new endangered species on its hands in the San Joaquin Valley -- farmers.  Thanks to environmental regulations designed to protect the likes of the three-inch long delta smelt, one of America's premier agricultural regions is suffering in a drought made worse by federal regulations.

Obama's Failure to Help May Spring from Racism.  Why are the communities of Fresno County suffering so deeply?  Because in December 2008, the federal government decided that Fresno County, a farming-rich area which provides half of America's vegetables, no longer needed water.  The farmers whose ancestors built the canals to irrigate the Central Valley have been totally cut off from their water supply, even though they're still paying bills for it.  Hundreds of acres of prime farming land lie fallow, crops withered and dead.  All because the federal government thinks that smelt — tiny 5- to 7-centimeter fish — are more important than human beings.

It's farmers vs. fish for California water.  Supporters of California agriculture called on the Obama administration and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Wednesday to lift water restrictions that were imposed to protect the endangered delta smelt, saying the fish is putting farmers out of business.

Manmade famine in America.  It seems inconceivable, but people in America are going hungry en masse due to a famine caused by political authorities.  Fresno, California is not yet a sister city of Kiev, Ukraine, but the two cities, capitals of rich agricultural regions, share a history of mass hunger caused by central governments indifferent to the suffering of their people, in the pursuit of ideological goals.

Fresno, Zimbabwe.  Fresno, California, stands as the de facto capital of California's mighty Central Valley, the breadbasket of America. ... Yet far from being a paradise, Fresno is starting to resemble Zimbabwe or 1930s Ukraine, a victim of a famine machine that is entirely man-made, not by red communists this time, but by greens.  State and federal officials, driven by the agenda of environmental extremists, have made it extremely difficult for the valley's farms, introducing costly environmental regulations and cutting off critical water supplies to save the Delta smelt, a bait fish.  It's all driving the economy to collapse.

Did someone mention Zimbabwe?

Rewrite of Endangered Species Law Approved.  Setting the stage for the most sweeping restructuring of endangered species protections in three decades, the House Resources Committee yesterday approved legislation that would strengthen the hand of private property owners and make it harder for federal officials to set aside large swaths of habitat for imperiled plants and animals.

The Endangered Species Act is Out of Control.  Is a salmon born in a hatchery a different species from the same salmon born in the wild?  It is hard to believe, but recent Federal court rulings are claiming that otherwise genetically identical fish are separate species, forcing an appeal being announced recently to the 9th Circuit Court.  Two court decisions in the last two months show how much is at stake in these questions.

Gov't says brown pelicans are endangered no longer.  After nearly 40 years of struggling for survival, the brown pelican is coming off the endangered species list.

Nature, Not Man, is Responsible for West Coast Salmon Decline.  Seattle now has the dubious distinction of being the first large city to come under the strict regulatory scrutiny of the Endangered Species Act (ESA).  Listing these salmon as endangered is certain to inflict significant harm on the region's economy, causing billions of dollars in losses for a broad range of industries including those involved with timber, housing, recreation and agriculture, among others.  Additionally, the listings will force federal, state and local governments to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on a multitude of salmon-restoration programs that will require increases in taxes for such basic services as water and sewer.

Record Numbers of Salmon, Steelhead Pour into Columbia River.  Salmon and steelhead migrated into the Columbia River in record numbers this year, in some cases more than doubling previous records.  On August 13 a new single-day steelhead record was set for the third day in a row at the Bonneville Dam on the Lower Columbia River.

Center for Biological Diversity Declares Legal War on Global Warming U.S. Economy.  The CBD, the folks who successfully petitioned and sued the Fish & Wildlife Service to list the polar bear as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act (ESA), announced last week the opening of a new Climate Law Institute (CLI) that will "use existing laws and work to establish new state and federal laws that will eliminate energy generation by the burning of fossil fuels — particularly coal and oil shale."  CBD says it has dedicated an "initial $17 million" to the project.

U.S. Supreme Court to Decide Whether ESA Listing Exceeds Federal Power.  The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to decide whether the Interstate Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution gives the federal government authority to regulate Alabama sturgeon under the Endangered Species Act.  A lawsuit contending the federal government overstepped its bounds in seeking to regulate Alabama sturgeon was filed by attorneys with the Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF), an organization that litigates on behalf of property owners against government overreach.

Fed rule halts red snapper fishing.  Come Jan. 4, better throw back that red snapper, at least in federal waters.  Having one onboard will be illegal.  Federal regulators announced an interim rule Thursday [12/3/2009] that bans commercial and recreational fishing for red snapper in federal waters off Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia on the Atlantic coast.

Environmentalists sue to protect California delta fish.  Environmentalists want to reverse a 2003 decision by the Bush administration that eliminated federal protection for a small California fish.  A complaint filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in San Francisco says the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service ignored findings that the Sacramento splittail population was declining.

GOP hits Pelosi for mouse funds.  The tiny mouse that became a hotly disputed symbol of wasteful spending in the $787 billion economic stimulus bill has returned to pester House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.  The Obama administration revealed last week that as much as $16.1 million from the stimulus program is going to save the San Francisco Bay Area habitat of, among other things, the endangered salt marsh harvest mouse.

Judge overturns Bush administration change to rule protecting spotted owl habitat.  A federal judge has struck down the Bush administration's change to a rule designed to protect the northern spotted owl from logging in national forests.  U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken ruled from Oakland, Calif., on Tuesday [6/30/2009] that the U.S. Forest Service failed to take a hard look at the environmental impacts of changing the rule to make it easier to cut down forest habitat of species such as the spotted owl and salmon on 193 million acres of national forests.

The Coming of the Fourth American Republic.  The appropriations committees and their pork barrels are the most obvious example of rule by special interest, but not always the most important.  Whole departments are dedicated to special interests — Labor, Education, Energy.  Money is important, but regulation is every bit as useful, especially because regulations can shift property rights from third parties without going through the budget process.  For example, environmentalists successfully combined a vaguely worded Endangered Species Act with control of the Fish and Wildlife Service to shift the costs of their no-development ethic onto random land-owners, regardless of costs, benefits, or fairness.

Blue whales returning to former Alaska waters.  Blue whales are returning to Alaska in search of food and could be re-establishing an old migration route several decades after they were nearly wiped out by commercial whalers, scientists say.  The endangered whales, possibly the largest animals ever to live on Earth, have yet to recover from the worldwide slaughter that eliminated 99 percent of their number, according to the American Cetacean Society.  The hunting peaked in 1931 with more than 29,000 animals killed in one season.

Pelosi's Quandary:  Jobs or Cross-eyed Mosquitoes?  Until now, Speaker Nancy Pelosi has been adamant in insisting that funds from a $25B package intended for making automobiles more environmentally friendly NOT be used to help bail out the auto industry.  With her crazy liberal perspective, Pelosi has consistently favored the needs of insects and polar bears over hard-working Americans who need jobs.

Court rejects lawsuit over polar bears.  The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday ruled against an environmental group that had sued the federal government for allowing oil industry activities to occur in areas that polar bears also use.  The bears are listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.

Did someone mention polar bears?

Camera convicted him but raised battle over privacy.  Farmers beware:  Big Brother may be watching.  Eastern Shore soybean farmer Steve VanKesteren learned that the hard way when he was charged with taking two red-tailed hawks, a violation of the federal Migratory Bird Act.  The evidence against him was a video recording showing him dispatching the birds with an ax.  Game wardens had put a hidden camera in a tree, pointed at VanKesteren's soybean fields, after receiving a complaint about protected birds getting caught in predator traps.

The Editor asks...
 Where are all those people who were so upset about domestic surveillance a few years ago?

Gray wolves to lose endangered status.  The Bush administration will remove wolves in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan, Idaho and Montana from the endangered species list.  Environmentalists hope Obama will reverse the action, or they'll sue.

Bush revises protections for endangered species.  Just six weeks before President-elect Barack Obama takes office, the Bush administration issued revised endangered species regulations Thursday to reduce the input of federal scientists and to block the law from being used to fight global warming.  The changes, which will go into effect in about 30 days, were completed in just four months.  But they could take Obama much longer to reverse.

Obama overturns Bush endangered species rule.  President Obama on Tuesday overturned a last-minute Bush administration regulation that many environmentalists claim weakened the Endangered Species Act.  The regulation, issued a few weeks before George W. Bush left office, made it easier for federal agencies to skip consultations with government scientists before launching projects that could affect endangered wildlife.

Obama reverses Bush change to Endangered Species Act.  Reversing a last-minute Bush administration rule change, President Barack Obama said Tuesday [3/3/2009] that he'd require federal agencies to consult with government wildlife experts about whether new government projects such as highways or dams would harm endangered or threatened species.

Dems' Climate Change Power Grab Hidden in Spending Bill.  Using a massive $410 billion spending bill as a cloak, Democrat leaders in Congress have been caught attempting to create almost limitless new federal powers to regulate climate change without any public notice, public comment, or public debate.  The provision slipped into this bill would allow the Department of Interior to regulate all greenhouse gas emissions across the entire country based on the listing of the polar bear as "threatened" under the Endangered Species Act (ESA).

Researchers Fear Southern Fence Will Endanger Species Further.  The debate over the fence the United States is building along its southern border has focused largely on the project's costs, feasibility and how well it will curb illegal immigration.  But one of its most lasting impacts may well be on the animals and vegetation that make this politically fraught landscape their home.

Environmental laws put gaps in Mexico border security.  In the battle on the U.S.-Mexico border, the fight against illegal immigration often loses out to environmental laws that have blocked construction of parts of the "virtual fence" and that threaten to create places where agents can't easily track illegal immigrants.

'Survival of the fittest' is thwarted again...
 Feds:  Kill sea lions to protect salmon.  A federal agency recommended killing about 30 sea lions a year at a Columbia River dam where the marine animals feast on salmon migrating upriver to spawn.  By many estimates, the sea lions devour about 4 percent of spring runs.  Fishermen and Columbia River tribes have urged action for years against the sea lions at Bonneville Dam.

Sea lions' death warrant?  Federal officials have called for killing about 30 sea lions near Bonneville Dam each year to keep them from gobbling a rising share of Northwest salmon that the government spends millions of dollars to protect. … The strategy would authorize state officials to shoot or trap and then kill as many as 85 California sea lions each year, or as many as necessary so they eat no more than 1 percent of salmon passing through Bonneville Dam.

And again...
 Kill all wild horses in Australian national park:  environmentalists.  Environmentalists called Wednesday [1/16/2008] for hundreds of wild horses to be shot dead to prevent a unique Australian national park becoming a "horse paddock," with little room for native species.

Group will sue to list walrus as threatened.  A conservation group gave notice Tuesday [5/27/2008] that it will sue to force federal action on a petition to list the Pacific walrus as a threatened species because of threats from global warming and offshore petroleum development.

Groups seek drilling halt near sage grouse habitat.  Two conservation groups have asked the federal government to impose new restrictions on oil and gas development in the West to protect the greater sage grouse, a popular game bird on the decline.  Scientists contend sage grouse breeding areas are suffering in the face of accelerating oil and gas exploration in Wyoming, Montana, Colorado, Utah and other Western states.  West Nile virus, drought and residential development also have taken a toll on the bird, which is being considered for the endangered species list.

The Editor points out the obvious...
 Here's another possibility to consider:  Perhaps the "popular game bird" is on the decline because people are shooting them, which has nothing to do with the presence of oil wells.

What's Wrong with the Endangered Species Act and How to Fix It.  The Endangered Species Act (ESA), passed in 1973, was designed to recover species to a level at which they are no longer considered endangered and therefore do not require the Act's protection.  Unfortunately, the law has had the opposite effect on many species.  The ESA can severely penalize landowners for harboring species on their property, and as a result many landowners have rid their property of the species and habitat rather than suffer the consequences.

Who Pays for the Delhi Sands Fly?  How successful have the Feds been at recovering species?  Not very.  Since 1973, only 40 species have been removed from the endangered and threatened species list and only 15 of those have been de-listed because their populations had recovered.  The other de-listed species either went extinct (nine species) or shouldn't have been listed in the first place (16 species).  Only about one percent of listed species have been declared no longer in endangered or threatened by extinction.  Despite this sorry performance, the activist group Endangered Species Coalition hails the ESA as "one of our nation's strongest environmental laws."

Endangered Species Act Needs Dose of Sanity.  If there is a Don Quixote of federal laws, it is the Endangered Species Act (ESA):  For over three decades this law's regulations have endangered the species in distress that they are endeavoring to protect.  The House last Thursday took the first step toward injecting a dose of sanity into species recovery efforts by passing the Threatened and Endangered Species Recovery Act (TESRA), a bill that fixes the perverse incentives in the original legislation that pit property owners against wildlife.

How to Fix the Endangered Species Act:  On average, humans are natural-born animal-lovers, and we quite naturally want to do what we can to protect them and their habitat.  Alas, the Endangered Species Act has never been an effective way to do that.  Using the ESA, the federal government tried to protect endangered species in its usual "command and control" manner, punishing people who discovered their land harbored a rare and vulnerable animal by imposing restrictions on how the land could be used.  Under the ESA, most folks are better off looking the other way — or worse, finding ways to make the endangered species leave or "disappear."

Three Things to Know About the Endangered Species Act:  (#2) The Endangered Species Act punishes landowners for good environmental stewardship.  Private property owners who care for their land, and maintain habitat for endangered species, find themselves subject to severe land use restrictions.  This creates a perverse incentive for landowners to rid their property of species and habitat in an effort to avoid land use restrictions and potentially devastating losses in property value that accompany them.

Endangered Species Day Highlights Need For Reform.  Early last month, Congress passed a resolution designating [May 11 as] Endangered Species Day.  National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA) Senior Fellow H. Sterling Burnett suggests the day would be a perfect time to end the perverse incentives that pit property owners against wildlife.

The Endangered Species Act is a Broken Law.  Just last week, the Endangered Species Act was declared "broken" by the senior Bush Administration official in charge of overseeing the law's enforcement.  This assessment comes as no surprise to anyone knowledgeable of how the ESA is implemented by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.  The fact is that "ESA policy" is often based on politically motivated pressure from eco-activists in the environmental community and within the agency itself.

Loons and Bears Versus Eskimos and Oil:  "A petition seeking Endangered Species Act protection for a rare loon that breeds in Alaska's National Petroleum Reserve has been accepted for review by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service," noted a May 29, 2007 Associated Press article.  "Conservationists hope an eventual listing of the yellow-billed loon will curb petroleum development in the 23-million acre reserve that covers much of Alaska's North Slope."  So, at a time when a $100 barrel of oil makes economies around the world quiver, the "conservationists" are more interested in a yellow-billed loon than in your ability to drive to work, pick up the kids at school, or just go anywhere in your car.

Did someone mention the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge?

Government run amok:  [Scroll down] I realized this a few years ago when I came across a story concerning Taiwanese immigrant Taung Ming-Lin, a farmer in Kern County, Calif., who was arrested for allegedly running over an "endangered" kangaroo rat while tilling his own land.  His tractor was seized and held for over four months, and he faced a year in jail and a $200,000 fine. ... As time has passed, it is now clear that what happened to the farmer in Kern County was not an anomaly, but part of a developing pattern of government invasion of private rights.

Conservation group seeks protections for Alaska ribbon seals in effort to protect environment.  Frustrated by a lack of regulations limiting global warming, a conservation group wants ribbon seals listed as threatened or endangered because their habitat — sea ice — is disappearing amid climate change.  The Center for Biological Diversity on Thursday filed a 91-page petition with the National Marine Fisheries Service seeking to list ribbon seals as threatened or endangered.

Federal Judge Sides With Desert Tortoise.  A federal judge in San Francisco is refusing to allow cattle grazing and off-road vehicle use on 4-million acres of California desert, which is set aside as "critical habitat" for the desert tortoise.  It is not enough to consider the survival of the desert tortoise, the judge said in her ruling.  She said the Fish and Wildlife Service must also consider "recovery" of the species — boosting the population, in other words, to the point where it can be removed from the endangered species list.

 Editor's Note:   That will probably never happen.  Read the next article.

More Specious Species Claims.  Well over 1,000 species have been declared threatened or endangered since the ESA was enacted in 1973.  Since then, only 27 species have been removed from the list — 27 out of over 1,000.  Yet of the 27, seven were delisted because they went extinct.  The Interior Department acknowledges that an additional nine were "data errors" and never should have been listed in the first place.  The remaining eleven are officially listed as recoveries, yet the ESA cannot be credited with saving a single one.  Those species either never deserved to be listed as endangered, or recovered due to factors beyond the ESA's control.  Thus, in [its first] 25 years, the ESA failed to recover a single species.

Commonly Asked Questions About the Endangered Species Act:  Simply stated, the Endangered Species Act is the most powerful environmental law ever enacted.



The Polar Bear is used for emotional leverage

As I have noted on another page, many people take sides on political issues based on the emotional rhetoric in TV sound bites or catchy bumper stickers, without taking the time to do a little research and discover the cold hard facts.  The notion that "global warming" is melting polar ice, and that polar bears are thereby endangered, is a work of fiction that is now being used to restrict business and industry in all 50 states.

The Polar Bear And The ESA:  Backdooring Global Warming Regulations.  The federal Endangered Species Act has long been known as extremely burdensome to practioners and the landowners they represent.  If the polar bear is listed, a new set of industries will feel those burdens directly.

The Bear Facts:  The International Union for the Conservation of Nature has just put the polar bear on the endangered species list because it is supposedly "facing extinction" — mainly, it claims, as a result of global warming.  But statistics show the polar bear is not facing extinction, not by a long shot.

Senate Keeps Focus on Polar Bear.  Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) said the Department of Interior has been "foot-dragging" on listing the polar bear as an endangered species and has asked the department's secretary to appear before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

There's no need to 'save' the polar bear.  Environmental groups are pushing to list the polar bear as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act, and the Bush administration is considering their demands.  It might make sense — if the polar bear were endangered.  But the worldwide population of these bears has more than doubled since 1965, to an estimated 20,000-25,000 today.  Far from being threatened, by all accounts the bears are thriving.  So what's behind the push to "save" the bears?  A desire to ban energy exploration in much of Alaska, and a threatened species tag is just the ticket to make it happen.

How the Endangered Species Act Could Accomplish What Al Gore Couldn't:  As I noted a fortnight ago, the listing of the bear is just the first step in an elaborate dance that will result in the imposition of extraordinarily expensive and delay-inducing permitting requirements on any industrial or commercial activity that (1) requires a federal permit of any sort and (2) emits greenhouse gases.

ESA Listing for Polar Bears Unsupported by Sound Science.  "The leftist Center for Biological Diversity conceived abuse of the Endangered Species Act for creating in the public mind a false crisis over polar bears that will force radical social changes it has been unable to obtain through the democratic process. … The intended outcome is the crippling of the U.S. economy through fossil fuel starvation, increased dependence on insecure energy sources, and a green path to serfdom…."

US government sued over failure to protect polar bears.  The US government agency responsible for compiling the country's list of endangered species will face a new legal challenge today over its failure to protect the polar bear.  Environmental groups are set to sue the Bush administration in a federal court in California, claiming the Fish and Wildlife Service is now in breach of its own mandate.

Judge says U.S. must decide whether polar bears are endangered species.  A federal judge in Oakland has ordered the Interior Department to decide by May 15 if the polar bear should be protected as an endangered species because of melting sea ice due to global warming.  U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken decided, in a ruling released today, that government failed to meet the deadline of Jan. 9, a legal requirement under the Endangered Species Act.  She dismissed the Bush administration's plea to give it until June 30, saying officials offered "no specific facts that would justify the existing delay, much less further delay."

The Editor says...
 Notice that all it takes is one federal judge to override our elected officials.  That's dangerous.  And really, the polar bears must be dropping like flies if a decision has to be made in a couple of weeks.  Obviously, the judge has bought into Al Gore's "planetary emergency" canard.

Officials say polar bears to be protected species.  The Interior Department has decided to protect the polar bear as a threatened species because of the decline in Arctic sea ice from global warming, officials said Wednesday [5/14/2008].  Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne scheduled a news conference to announce the action.  It comes a day before a court-imposed deadline on deciding whether the bear should be put under the protection of the federal Endangered Species Act.

Unbearable Legislation.  The decision announced yesterday by the Secretary of the Interior, to list the polar bear as "threatened," removes all doubt that the Endangered Species Act is broken and in need of urgent repair.  It is the environmental movement that must take responsibility for breaking it.  A sensible discussion of the polar bear requires acknowledging a simple fact:  that the polar bear is merely a proxy for something else.

Bear Baloney:  The case started with a lawsuit filed by Greenpeace and the Natural Resources Defense Council in 2005.  To settle it, the Fish and Wildlife Service, the Interior division that administers the Endangered Species Act's land-animals provisions, proposed in December 2006 to list the bears as threatened.  The environmental groups argue that warming will melt sea ice, on which the bears often live, and that this loss of habitat will doom the bears to extinction.  In other words, they don't claim a current threat, but one decades down the line.

The Endangered Values List.  Environmentalists have now succeeded in placing the polar bear on the Endangered Species List despite the fact that, according to The International Union for Conservation of Nature, their population has almost doubled from 10,000 in 1965 to over 20,000 in 2006.  This action will restrict the production of oil and natural gas in Alaska even further.

March of the Polar Bears.  A preventive war worked out so well in Iraq that Washington last week launched another.  The new preventive war — the government responding forcefully against a postulated future threat — has been declared on behalf of polar bears, the first species whose supposed jeopardy has been ascribed to global warming.

Sue, Sarah, Sue.  The polar bear … marks the first species on the "threatened" list whose supposed predicament is linked directly to global warming.  The current Alaskan polar-bear population may be near an all-time high.  But Interior Department computer models — such as they are — project widespread melting of the polar ice the bears need to hunt.  And that's a big problem, given the near-limitless powers embedded in the Endangered Species Act.

The Carbon Curtain:  Czech President Vaclav Klaus warns that environmentalism is becoming a new totalitarianism.  There is still a bear in the woods, but it's no longer the Russian bear.  This time, it's a polar bear.

Polar Bears Endangered — By Greenie Bureaucrats.  There [are] roughly twice as many polar bears in the world today as thirty years ago.  But on May 14th U.S. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne, invoking the U.S. Endangered Species Act, proclaimed polar bears as a "threatened species."  In 1972 the creatures had already lost value in the U.S. when the Marine Mammal Protection Act prohibited their hunting in Alaska.  (And no, it's not the hunting ban that caused their increased numbers; they proliferated equally in Canada which continued the polar bear season.)

Alaska's 'Frustrated' Governor Palin On Our 'Nonsensical' Energy Policy.  We believe that listing polar bears as such is a significant threat to development, because most live on the North Slope.  (But) the biggest problem with the ruling is that we are the only state that is impacted.  Most polar bears (are found) in Canada.  We've got other places in the world once again telling us Alaskans how to live, and whether we can develop.  We've coexisted with bears for decades to no detrimental effect.  Our bear population is thriving.  This listing is nothing but interference from outsiders who insist on keeping Alaska from developing our resources responsibly.

Legal group sues over polar-bear listing.  The Pacific Legal Foundation filed a lawsuit Thursday challenging the Bush administration's decision to list the polar bear as a threatened species, the latest salvo in the debate over global warming and its impact on Arctic wildlife.  Reed Hopper, the foundation's lead attorney on the case, said the polar-bear listing under the Endangered Species Act was the first time "that a thriving species has been listed based entirely on speculative models forecasting future events."

Atlantic solution for polar bear strays.  Polar bears that drift ashore on Iceland should be shot and not offered a safe haven, a commission has recommended.  The commission was appointed this northern summer after two polar bears landed on the northern coast of Iceland, apparently after being swept to sea on floes from Greenland, several hundred kilometres away.  Both were shot.  However the move sparked protests from conservationists and animal rights groups.

Endangered Specious.  Alaska says it will sue to challenge the listing of polar bears as a threatened species.  The designation could block vital oil and gas development.  But that was the whole point in the first place.

Alaska's Polar Bears:  Going With The Floe?  The green light given by the Fish and Wildlife Service for oil drilling off Alaska is being portrayed as an OK to hurt polar bears.  But there are so many polar bears, it's the drillers who should worry.



Polar Bear II

Global warming threatens pika, lawsuit claims.  Compared to the polar bear, the American pika is tiny.  Weighing only 4 to 6 ounces, this rabbitlike mammal with thick brown hair, which lives on boulder-covered slopes in Western mountains, could represent the latest effort to use the Endangered Species Act to combat global warming.  Environmentalists filed a lawsuit Tuesday [8/19/2008] in U.S. District Court in Sacramento to force the Bush administration to decide whether to list the pika for protection.

The Editor says...
 If it really is a "rabbitlike mammal", there should be no shortage of these critters.  Once again, it is my opinion that the environmentalists' don't care so much about cute and furry animals; they are primarily concerned with strangling capitalism by obstructing every practical source of energy.



The inconvenient truth:  Not all ecophiles are goofballs, but many show considerably less concern for humans than for the kangaroo rat, the Delhi Sands flower-loving fly and that little darling the snail darter.  Radical environmentalism is often hazardous to your health.  That's the inconvenient truth Al Gore ignores.

Eco-Freaks.  Construction on a dam in Tennessee that was 95 percent completed had come to a halt because the courts had ruled it would violate the Endangered Species Act by harming the habitat of the snail darter.  Congress voted in to make an exception to the law, but the Senate vote was actually very close.

Report pegs cost of species protection in billions.  The yearly cost of enforcing the Endangered Species Act runs into the billions of dollars, not millions as reported to Congress by government agencies, says an audit released [4/14/2004] by property rights groups.  Despite the estimated $3 billion per year spent, the government has little to show for its recovery efforts, says the Property and Environment Research Center, which conducted the study for the Pacific Legal Foundation.

"Endangered Species" Cost USA Billions.  At a time when this nation is engaged in a war, putting the lives of its soldiers in harm's way to end the threat of Middle Eastern terrorism, it would seem inconceivable that its government would also be wasting billions to protect some species of salmon or the shortnose suckerfish.  But it is.

This is the report mentioned above:
 Accounting for Species:  The True Costs of the Endangered Species Act.  The report found "limitations and inaccuracies" in the federal reporting.  For example, the only estimates provided by the Department of Energy are from the Bonneville Power Administration.  Without accurate figures for the costs of the Endangered Species Act, the ongoing public debate over whether the law is effective will be a misinformed one.

Lawsuit Targets Government Mouse Protections.  Hurricane victims and other property owners in Perdido Key, Florida, … have been prevented by the new mouse "habitat" regulations from rebuilding after their homes were destroyed by 2004's Hurricane Ivan.  In October, 2006, federal wildlife officials designated 6,200 acres in coastal Alabama and the Florida Panhandle as additional "critical habitat" for three mice on the Endangered Species Act list, including the Perdido Key beach mouse.

Using the ESA as a weapon:
 Developer says rare flower was a plant.  When the sudden appearance of an endangered flower halted a controversial housing project in the heart of California's wine country, the developer, Scott Schellinger, suspected he was the victim of a set-up.  Now, after calling in experts from the state's fish and game commission, who have backed his findings, he is claiming that the "discovery" of rare and protected Sebastopol meadowfoam on the eight-hectare site near San Francisco was the work of opponents who transplanted the flowers from elsewhere.

Trouble in Bloom at California Development Site.  Did someone in this wine country town illegally plant an endangered flower to sabotage a proposed housing development?  That is the question at the center of a quarrel folks here have dubbed "Foamgate."

Biologist Charged With Destroying Plants.  The Los Angeles City Attorney's office says the former park supervisor cut down non-native plants in one of the largest coastal wetlands in Southern California, killing a ficus tree and myoporum shrubs.  He is facing six misdemeanor charges that include injuring vegetation without permission.  Each count could bring jail time and thousands of dollars in fines.

["Injuring vegetation without permission"??  Don't forget, it's California.]

ESA Listing Not Needed for Polar Bears.  Many analysts see the proposal to list the polar bear as threatened as not so much about the welfare of the bears themselves but as an effort to force the Bush administration to adopt regulations to limit greenhouse gas emissions. … [Steven] Milloy noted, "If the administration admits that the bear is dying due to climate change, it may be forced to start energy rationing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in order to comply with the Endangered Species Act.  This is what the environmentalists filing the lawsuit had in mind all along."

Bill Delays Oil Exploration for Polar Bear Listing.  Biological Diversity is one of several environmental groups that has sued the Department of Interior for failing to meet itsdeadline for classifying the polar bear under the Endangered Species Act by Jan. 9, 2008.  If the polar bear is not listed as an endangered species, [Kassie] Siegel said her group will take the government to court.

The Mouse that Cost the Economy $100 Million May Never Have Existed.  After six years of Endangered Species Act regulations and restrictions that have cost builders, local governments, and landowners on the western fringe of the Great Plains as much as $100 million by some estimates, new research suggests the allegedly endangered Preble's mouse never existed.  Instead, it seems to be genetically identical to a cousin considered common enough not to need the federal government's protection.

What a relief!
 Rat-Squirrel Not Extinct After All.  It has the face of a rat and the tail of a skinny squirrel — and scientists say this creature discovered living in central Laos is pretty special:  It's a species believed to have been extinct for 11 million years.

Biologist withdraws claim of rabbit's disappearance.  A Montana biologist has withdrawn his claim in a recent study that a rabbit species has disappeared from the Yellowstone area.  Joel Berger, a senior scientist with the Wildlife Conservation Society, said Thursday [3/6/2008] that he has been contacted by at least six biologists and naturalists refuting his conclusions about the white-tailed jack rabbit.

Loggerhead turtles may be put on endangered list.  The federal government is considering listing loggerhead sea turtles that live along California's coast and off Hawaii as an endangered species and further protecting their habitat.  Loggerhead turtles everywhere are already classified as "threatened" under the federal Endangered Species Act, but environmentalists say a higher level of protection is needed.


What is the monetary value of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker?

Lost and found:  Reports of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker's demise were greatly exaggerated.

Woodpecker Racket:  The 2005 reported sighting of the thought-to-be-extinct Ivory-billed Woodpecker in eastern Arkansas raised hopes of bird-watchers everywhere.  But a prominent bird expert cast serious doubt on the report in 2006, characterizing it as "faith-based" ornithology and "a disservice to science."  But the debunking may not matter.  Environmental groups used the dubious sighting to convince a federal judge in July 2006 to stop a nearby $320 million Army Corps of Engineers irrigation project.

Rare Woodpecker Sends a Town Running for Its Chain Saws.  Over the past six months, landowners here have been clear-cutting thousands of trees to keep them from becoming homes for the endangered red-cockaded woodpecker.  The chain saws started in February, when the federal Fish and Wildlife Service put Boiling Spring Lakes on notice that rapid development threatened to squeeze out the woodpecker. … Hoping to beat the mapmakers, landowners swarmed City Hall to apply for lot-clearing permits.

Same story:
 Woodpecker mapping gets chain saws buzzing.  The sharp chirps of the endangered red-cockaded woodpeckers and the whine of chain saws sound discordantly in this coastal community of old pine forests.  Since word got around this spring that owners could face problems selling land or building houses where the birds lived, people have been rushing to clear undeveloped lots of pine trees and yanking the woodpecker welcome mat.

Disputed Woodpecker Halts Project.  A federal judge halted a $320 million irrigation project Thursday [7/20/2006] for fear it could disturb the habitat of a woodpecker that may or may not be extinct.  The dispute involves the ivory-billed woodpecker.  The last confirmed sighting of the bird in North America was in 1944, and scientists had thought the species was extinct until 2004, when a kayaker claimed to have spotted one in the area.  But scientists have been unable to confirm the sighting.

The Editor says...
 1944, really?  Not so fast!
"The highlight of 1967 was the discovery, in Texas, of five to ten breeding pairs of ivory-billed woodpeckers — the first confirmed sighting of this rare bird since 1950.  It was believed extinct, or nearly so, because the hardwood forest that yielded its insect diet was destroyed.  Now, it seems, the bird may be adapting to the insect supply of the more plentiful slash-pine areas."

— 1968 Reader's Digest Almanac, page 768.    

Auburn professor is confident the magnificent ivory billed woodpecker is not extinct.  Professor Geoff Hill is a careful observer and a careful talker.  He knows what he saw, but he also knows what to say about what he saw.  In 2005 and 2006, deep in the swamps of the Florida Panhandle, he made several sightings of an ivory-billed woodpecker, thought to be extinct, last proven beyond a doubt to be alive in the 1940s.

Arkansas men say the saw rare woodpecker.  Kip Davis and Jay Robison saw what they believed was an ivory-billed woodpecker on Thursday [12/14/2006], one of thousands of reported sightings piling up as leaves in an east Arkansas swamp drift down.

Ivory-billed woodpecker remains elusive.  The local search for a woodpecker officially listed as endangered and unofficially accepted as extinct has ended the same way it started:  with hope.

 Editor's Note:   Some articles about the Ivory-billed Woodpecker celebrate the "return" of the woodpecker after all these years.  There's just one technicality I'd like to point out:  Animals do not return from extinction.  If the woodpecker is still around, obviously the experts were wrong!  These birds were somewhere for decades, but nobody saw them.  This goes to show that even the experts don't know the whereabouts of every animal, and can't say with any certainty that any animal this small is extinct.  This page has information on about 50 rediscovered species that were once thought to be extinct.

$27M Woodpecker Habitat Plan Unveiled.  Federal wildlife officials say spending more than $27 million to research the suspected habitat of the ivory-billed woodpecker is worth the cost, despite conflicting views on whether the elusive bird even exists. … The agency this week released a 185-page draft plan aimed at preventing the extinction of the bird.

The bird is still the word.  August was a good news-bad news month for the ivory-billed woodpecker, the bird rediscovered in the Big Woods of the Bayou de View in 2004.

The great woodpecker hunt:  Away down in the swampy bottomlands of Dixie, the most intensive search ever for a bird is gearing up for a make-or-break season.  Big reputations are riding on the controversial quest for the ivory-billed woodpecker, the most magnificent and most elusive of America's tree-knockers.

Search for ivory-billed woodpecker to begin anew.  Last year, Allan Mueller thinks he saw the elusive ivory-billed woodpecker.  The wildlife biologist wants to make sure of it this winter.  Mueller plans to head back into the swamps of eastern Arkansas with a scaled-back search team consisting of 26 volunteers and three expert field biologists.


"Extinct" Bird Seen, Eaten.  A rare quail from the Philippines was photographed for the first time before being sold as food at a poultry market, experts say.  Found only on the island of Luzon, Worcester's buttonquail was known solely through drawings based on dated museum specimens collected several decades ago.

Scientists Nudge Fish Closer to Extinction.  Scientists trying to study the endangered Devils Hole pupfish near Death Valley inadvertently nudged the endangered fish closer to extinction.  About 80 of the inch-long silvery pupfish died in traps set last year in Devils Hole, a limestone cavern about 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, National Park Service and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service scientists said.

Another 'extinct' animal makes a comeback.  A duck that was feared to be extinct has been found alive and well in the wild after zoologists spent 18 years looking for it in the wrong sort of habitat.  The Madagascar pochard was last seen alive in 1991.  It had been given up for dead by most ornithologists.

Both Sides Await Word on Cave Bugs Case.  The U.S. Supreme Court could signal as early as today [1/24/2005] whether it will allow Central Texas cave bugs into its halls of justice, in a case that property rights advocates hope will gut the Endangered Species Act.  A decision by the Supreme Court whether to hear the case … in a dispute over six species of tiny bugs that have held up a housing and commercial development in Travis County for the past 17 years.

Florida Adopts New Standards for Endangered Species Listings:  On April 14 [2005] the FWCC jettisoned the state's preexisting means for designating species as being "of special concern," "threatened," or "endangered," in favor of international standards that rely on objective data instead of emotional public relations campaigns.

The mud puddle preservation plan.  When I was a boy growing up in California we called them "mud puddles."  If they grew large enough, grown ups called it "flooding."  But now the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), which enforces the Endangered Species Act, has adopted the bogus poetry of the environmentalist left, calling them "vernal pools."

Environmental Regulations Impede Pentagon Readiness.  The nation's ability to prepare troops for the deadly business of combat is being undermined by environmental restrictions being applied to military bases around the country.  Lawsuits brought by such groups as the Center for Biological Diversity and the Natural Resources Defense Council have sought to impose the Endangered Species Act, Migratory Bird Treaty Act, Marine Mammals Protection Act, and other environmental statutes on military bases.  The lawsuits, and the restrictions on training that result from them, have come in direct conflict with military readiness.

More about Environmentalists vs. Military Preparedness.

Farmer Fined for Shooting Non-Native Wolf That Threatened Livestock.  North Carolina farmer Richard Mann thought he was shooting a large dog that was threatening his cattle.  But when he came back the next day to bury the animal, he was confronted by federal wildlife officials who charged him with killing a red wolf — a federally-protected species.  Mann was fined $2,000 and required to perform community service by building "wolf houses" and feeding the wolves.

Activists Sue to Block ESA Wolf Delisting.  Environmental activist groups have filed suit to block a federal government plan to allow state management of wolf populations in the Northern Rocky Mountain region.  With gray wolves set to be taken off the Endangered Species list, Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming have developed programs that would allow a limited amount of hunting designed to keep wolf populations at current levels.

Michigan Says Bald Eagles, Gray Wolves No Longer Endangered There.  Bald eagles and gray wolves have made such a dramatic comeback in Michigan that the state's Department of Natural Resources (MDNR) is proposing the two species be removed from the state's Endangered Species List.  They would join nine other species under consideration for removal from the list.  Federal authorities have not considered either wolves or eagles to be endangered in Michigan since 2007.

The Endangered Spices Act:  Bad for People, Bad for Wildlife.  Residents of wildfire-prone Riverside County, California were prevented by the ESA from clearing firebreaks on their land lest they disturb the habitat of the endangered Stephens' Kangaroo rat.  When the inevitable fires came, people's homes and the rat's habitat went up in flames.

The Endangered Species Act is Not Working and Reforms are Needed.  Only eight out of the more than 1,400 listed species have recovered since the act was passed in 1973.  This is not a success story by any measure.  The far-reaching powers vested in federal agents to control landowners' use of their property have not worked to protect endangered species and may have had the opposite effect.


National Invasive Species Act

The Exotic Species War:  In the United States the public regularly reads anguished stories about the "damage" being caused by alien invaders such as zebra mussels and purple loosestrife. … In response, Congress passed the National Invasive Species Act and the executive branch has adopted a National Invasive Species Management Plan aimed at closing our borders to alien species.

Invasion of Alien Species:  How Severe A Problem?  We can never stop this problem, but we can learn to live with it if we commit ourselves to flexible informed management rather than to panic regulation and symbolic action.  We will make intelligent decisions only when the debate shifts from the unsupportable notion that "native" is always better to the all-important question of how we manage change in our natural economy.

New Report Warns Against Expansive New Regulation of 'Invasive Species'.  The report says limits would be of dubious value but would require massive new regulations on property use.  Furthermore, most "invasive species" actually are beneficial.

Invasive Species:  Animal, Vegetable or Political?  What do mute swans, kudzu, red clover, pigs, and starlings have in common?  Not much, except that they are all non-indigenous species — that is, the species does not originate from within the United States.  And that is essentially all they have in common.  Yet many government agencies, lawmakers and environmental special-interest groups would like to clump together the thousands of these species introduced within our borders and stamp out their existence.


Endangered Species:  The Endangered Species Act, designed to protect rare wildlife and plants, is up for congressional reauthorization.  It requires that species be listed as endangered or threatened solely on the basis of five scientific considerations.  It does not allow consideration of any economic factors.  The Supreme Court has interpreted the act as mandating that efforts to save a covered species must be undertaken "whatever the cost."

Can Government Really Protect Our Wildlife?  Special interest groups have convinced many Americans that the ESA has been a great success.  At the same time, they have used exaggerated claims of species extinction to convince the public that the ESA must be strengthened.  Among these are estimates that one-third of U.S. species are in danger, and that 100 species a day worldwide are going extinct.  But these claims are based on guesswork, not on facts.

The Endangered Species Act Debate:  Under the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, private property may not be taken for any public purpose without the payment of "just compensation."  Unfortunately, most environmentalists and private property owners disagree on whether the ESA is being used to take privately owned property or simply to protect a preexisting public interest in the natural flora and fauna.

Endangered Species Dangers:  The costs associated with enforcement of the Endangered Species Act are constantly increasing as the act is applied in new ways and to additional species, subspecies and distinct populations of plants and animals.

Throw Precaution to the Wind — Please!  Although the science may not be in just yet, many environmentalists say the consequences may be so dire that we need to adopt tough new regulations "just in case."

It's time for new owners.  Nearly half of America is now owned by the government.  How can free enterprise exist if government owns the land and resources?

"Saving" Salmon in the Pacific Northwest:  The ESA Hits Home.  Two elderly women in Lynwood, Washington, have been prohibited from selling an 18 acre plot of land because a tiny creek that runs through it drains into the Swamp Creek watershed, which is habitat for salmon.  Farmers in the Methow Valley have had their irrigation ditches shut off for the first time in 100 years and may lose an entire season of crops.  The city of Richland, Washington, cannot get approval to install 10 new traffic lights because of concerns over how transportation projects will affect salmon.

Salmon Recovery is Based on Junk Science.  Over the past decade, more than two dozen subgroups of Pacific Northwest salmon and steelhead have been placed on the Endangered Species List.  Yet salmon populations are surging.  For example, Sockeye runs are the highest in 15 years and spring Chinook salmon runs are the highest since 1938.

Endangered Species Act Hits Home for Klamath Farm Families.  The Klamath Basin, located on the border of California and Oregon, is a community that was created, sustained, and is now being destroyed by the federal government.  This destruction is being wrought because of federal policies concerning an appropriately named creature — the suckerfish.

Ensuring That Humans Also Are A Protected Species:  Some work on levees and other flood-mitigation efforts has been stopped due to the presence of threatened or endangered species, putting human lives needlessly at risk.  Is Congress really willing to sacrifice the lives of Americans to protect a fly because it does not have the courage to stand up to special-interest environmental extremists?

Reforming the Endangered Species Act to Protect Species and Property Rights:  "The incentives are wrong here.  If a rare metal is on my property the value of my land goes up.  But if a rare bird is on my property the value of my property goes down."

How Regulation is Destroying American Jobs:  The federal government's efforts to protect the northern spotted owl, under the Endangered Species Act and other related laws, means millions of acres of land in Washington, Oregon, and northern California have been closed to logging operations.  Tens of thousands of loggers have lost or will lose their jobs because of these regulations, and thousands more jobs have been lost in communities dependent on logging as the principal industry.

The Sad Case of the Spotted Owl.  Spotted owls, we were told a decade ago, were disappearing because big bad timber companies were cutting down "old growth" forests.  So the environmental movement rushed to the forests, hugged the trees and issued news releases to decry the evils of the logging industry.  Save the owl.  Save the trees.  Kill the timber industry.  Of course, that was exactly the point.  Kill the timber industry. … In short, American industry suffered in the name of protecting the spotted owl.  Turns out it wasn't true.

Gray Wolves to Leave Endangered List.  Wolves in the northern Rockies will be removed from the endangered species list within the next year, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said Friday [1/26/2007], a move that would open the population up to trophy hunting.

How has the ESA Impacted America?  There have been numerous examples of how the ESA has had adverse impacts throughout the country.  From Oklahoma where a thirteen mile highway project was delayed for four years because American burying beetles were found along two proposed routes, to Kentucky where loggers lost their jobs when the Forest Service shut down logging in the Daniel Boone National Forest for eight months in order to protect the red-cockaded woodpecker; people all over the country have felt the sting of the ESA's rigid enforcement.

ESA blamed for firefighter deaths:  An investigation into the July 10 "30-mile fire" in central Washington state has uncovered that the Endangered Species Act (ESA) played a central role in the deaths of four young firefighters combating the blaze.

Pombo Calls for Changes to the Endangered Species Act.  The importance of ESA reform is confirmed by many endangered species analysts.  "After three decades, and billions of dollars of spending by private parties, as well as local, state, and federal governments to comply with the Act, only 15 species out of the 1,853 species listed as endangered or threatened have been recovered," noted Daniel Simmons, a research fellow at the Mercatus Center.  "Clearly, the Act is due for a makeover."

The Endangered Species Act Reform Project:  It appears our collective long-range efforts to reform the ESA will take us down a number of side roads along the way.  The blatant, almost campaign-like overreach by federal environmental regulatory agencies to expand their jurisdiction is one of our most serious roadblocks.

Klamath water crisis was a painful betrayal.  When the federal government shut off irrigation water on April 6, 2001, to 220,000 acres of farmland and two wildlife refuges to "protect" a pair of bottom-feeding suckerfish species and Coho salmon — so plentiful [that] U.S. Fish and Wildlife workers were clubbing them to death elsewhere — it forever changed the face of controversial Endangered Species Act and people's lives.

How the Endangered Species Act affects the price of water:  Not since the snail darter has a creature so infuriated — and inspired — conservatives around the country.  The all-but-inedible, bottom-feeding suckerfish, which makes its home in a lake that feeds this normally fertile agricultural valley, has become the latest rallying cry in the battle to rewrite the Endangered Species Act.

Republicans to Planet Earth:  Drop Dead.  "For all of its power, the ESA has not worked well.  Of the 1,524 species listed as either endangered or threatened during the ESA's more than 20 years of existence, only 27 had been delisted by the end of 1995.  Seven of the 27 had become extinct, eight others had been wrongly listed and the remaining 12 recovered with no help from the ESA.  In fact, no species recovery can be definitively traced to the ESA."

Dead Snake Costs California $1 Million:  When California officials found a garter snake lying dead at a construction site, alarm bells rang and state officials scurried around while all work was shut down for over two weeks to unlock the mystery surrounding the tiny serpent's death.

The Endangered Species Act remains a dividing force:  "We believe the Endangered Species Act has been an utter and dismal failure," said Andy Caldwell, director of the Coalition of Labor, Agriculture and Business, or COLAB.  "It has failed to recover very many species at all — despite the number of years and hundreds of millions of dollars that have gone into it."

 Excellent!   Up In Smoke:  The Stephen's Kangaroo Rat was listed as "endangered" by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on October 31, 1988.  This little-noticed action launched a revolution in land use in southern California that has culminated in the fires that have now claimed at least 17 lives, destroyed close to 2,000 homes, and consumed more than 600,000 acres throughout the region.

The Many Facets of The Endangered Species Act

How Protecting a Fly Hurt the Sick:  U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service bureaucrats have held up construction of a hospital in Southern California and threatened county officials with heavy fines and arrests — all in the name of saving the Delhi Sands flower-loving fly.  In 1992, less than 24 hours before San Bernardino County was to begin construction of the hospital, the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service listed the fly as an endangered species and demanded that the county set aside the entire 68-acre hospital site as a preserve for eight flies known to live on the property.

Insect Halts Building Plans Worth Millions.  Developers and environmentalists in Southern California are at odds again, this time over the fate of a tiny, and not particularly lovable, fly.  But the Delhi Sands fly is unique:  It is the only fly to have made the list of endangered species, and that fact is holding up construction projects worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

What Gives You the Right?  The notion that property rights are incompatible with protecting the environment, justice, and morality lies behind Bill Clinton's designation of National Monuments in the final months of his administration; Clinton's executive order closing roads on some 58 million acres of public lands; the extraordinary abuses of private property owners under the Endangered Species Act; and most recently the radical and dangerous proposal in the Bush energy plan authorizing the federal government's use of eminent domain to take private property to clear the way for new power lines and pipelines.

Suckers for junk science?  On May 12, 2002, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) published a Federal Register notice rejecting petitions I had filed to remove from the Endangered Species List two species of sucker fish found in the Klamath Basin.  The fish were listed as endangered in 1988, on grounds that almost immediately proved to be false.  Biologists claimed, for example, the fish had not successfully spawned in 18 years.  Yet more than 10 times the expected population was found soon after the listings, with fish from all age classes, proving the suckers had been spawning all along.

Congress scrutinizes Endangered Species Act:  Members of the U.S. Congress, with the consent of the Bush administration, are taking a renewed look at the Endangered Species Act in light of numerous cases during the Clinton-Gore administration in which the Act's definitions and guidelines were often stretched to extremes to restrict use of private property and public lands.

More Specious Species Claims:  For years critics of the Endangered Species Act (ESA) have noted how the ESA imposes draconian burdens on landowners without helping wildlife.

Bill Challenges Environmental Extremism.  After years of government-sanctioned harassment of citizens seeking to make an honest living, a House committee Wednesday [7/10/2002] is scheduled to vote on a bill to rein in the extremism of the Endangered Species Act (ESA).  The measure, H.R. 4840, would require "sound science" — solid, valid, legitimate scientific data to place a species on the endangered species list.

"Glades guru" joins opposition to feds.  An unabashed environmentalist and scientist has joined a rapidly growing coalition of residents, farmers and recreational groups in South Florida who are fighting back against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and National Park Service, as the agencies artificially flood tens of thousands of acres of prime residential and agricultural land in proximity to the Everglades National Park to "provide a crucial habitat for the Cape Sable Seaside Sparrow."

The Green Taliban Of America:  The hubris of the Greens has allowed them to dictate to everyone just how we should conduct our lives for decades.  That is why you can't build a home, an office building, a factory, a hospital or a school, without an "environmental" study.  That is why Americans have been steadily deprived of pesticides, many used safely for decades, to protect us against the diseases spread by insect and rodent pests.  That's why millions of acres of our national forests burned this year because Greens won't let them be managed through selective logging or to allow roads to be built into those forests.  The list goes on and on because the Greens have been responsible for one third of every law and regulation in the Federal Register today.

The ESA turns energy into solid waste.  On April 4, 2001, a federal judge ruled that the Bureau of Reclamation's dam operations in the Klamath Basin violated the Endangered Species Act, which protects Coho salmon.  The judge's ruling and a USFWS Biological Opinion released on April 6 that called for increased lake levels to protect shortnosed and Lost River suckerfish, prompted the Bureau to cut off irrigation water to 90% of the irrigated farmland in the Basin.  There was no warning, and no discussion.  [And certainly no referendum.]

Environmentalists Square Off in Squirrel Squabble:  When a Pacific Northwest utility company announced in January [2001] it would build the world's largest wind power plant, it came at a moment when the West was feeling the pinch of energy-starved California.  But there's a problem:  The Washington ground squirrels, which are protected under the Oregon Endangered Species Act.

Protecting the environment:  California's San Bernardino County was just about ready to build a new hospital.  That was until the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Department discovered that the endangered flower-loving Delhi Sands fly was found on the site.  The county had to spend $4.5 million to move the hospital 250 feet; it also had to divert funds from its medical mission to pay for mandated Delhi Sands fly studies.

Shattered Dreams:  100 Stories of Government Abuse.  This publication highlights how regulations that are poorly written and/or inflexibly enforced can overwhelm, intimidate, bankrupt or otherwise harm average Americans.  It features situations related to the Americans with Disabilities Act, building codes, INS, IRS, the Endangered Species Act, OSHA, Indian Affairs, zoning, property rights issues, etc.

Environmental litigation threatens endangered species:  Out of control litigation over the environment is actually threatening to do what the environmentalist movement doesn't want to see:  threaten endangered species.

Panthers and taxes:  the tools of landgrabbers.  The goals of the Wildlands Project are to convert "at least" half of the U.S. land area to wilderness, to manage "most" of the rest of the land for "conservation objectives," and to force people to live inside urban boundaries in what's euphemistically called "sustainable communities."

California's Next Crisis?:  The Golden State may soon run out of water.  The problem:  California is currently home to more than 34 million people, each and every one of whom gets thirsty from time to time.  It will have closer to 50 million in 20 years.  The state also hosts such multi-billion dollar industries as agriculture, tourism, and computer production, all of which require a steady flow of agua to stay afloat.  Rounding out the cast of characters is a hardcore environmental lobby that earnestly defends every inch of undeveloped land as indispensable for the state's ubiquitous endangered species.  They all want water, but there isn't enough to go around.


Washington, D.C. is the only city in the nation that can legally dump toxic sludge in its waterways.  The Environmental Protection Agency issues special discharge permits to the Army Corps of Engineers to transport — in the dead of night — chemically treated sludge from the Washington Aqueduct, a water purification facility, to the Potomac River, where it is dumped in violation of the Clean Water and Endangered Species Acts.  The Corps has admitted dumping as much as 241,500 milligrams of suspended solids per liter into the river.  The maximum allowed limit for most states is about 30.  The nation's power elite are content with insisting that everyone else comply with burdensome environmental regulations while they ignore them.
- Wall Street Journal (9/4/2002) 
Quoted in Waste Wire 

"Everybody Knows They're Not Really Endangered:  We just need them to stop mining."

The Endangered Species Act deserves extinction:  I often wonder why people can't just put two-and-two together to come up with four.  Take, for example, a recent decision by a New Jersey appellate court regarding alleged "endangered species."  Rejecting a plea from the New Jersey Builders Association, the court ruled, in essence, that it was more important to "save" the Pine Barrens tree frog or the bog turtle, than to provide housing for those who live in the most densely populated State in the Union.

Global Green Goals:  How Environmentalists Intend to Rule the World.  It's the smoking gun.  Restructuring the Global Economy is a detailed roadmap to a green future ruled by radical elites from new command structures to be created in the United Nations.

Environmentalism, Eco-Terrorism and Endangered Species:  While mainstream environmental groups may try to distance themselves from the Earth Liberation Front and its "eco-terrorist" methods, the truth is that ELF did directly what mainstream environmentalists have been doing indirectly for years via the U.S. government's Endangered Species Act (ESA).

After a Long Struggle, Whooping Crane Population Hits Milestone.  One of the most beloved groups of winter Texans is back, in the largest number in a century and with a record 45 youngsters in tow, including an even rarer seven pairs of twins.  They flew 2,400 miles from Canada's Northwest Territories and can be seen munching on blue crabs and bright red-orange wolfberries among the marshes of the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge.

Whooping crane no longer on brink of extinction.  After a 100-year absence, the whooping crane is on the verge of making a huge comeback.  On the brink of extinction in the 1940s, the tallest bird in North America has received an assist from the technological assets of mankind, as the Whooping Crane Eastern Partnership has orchestrated its reintroduction to the wild.

Whooping crane count in Texas up to record 270.  The whooping crane population has set another record with 270 of the endangered birds wintering on the Texas Coastal Bend.  The birds in the world's only wild flock spend each winter in the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge in Texas before returning to Canada and the Wood Buffalo National Park.

Wind Farms Threaten Endangered Whooping Cranes.  More than six decades of painstaking conservation efforts that have brought the majestic whooping crane back from the brink of extinction may come undone because of the proliferation of wind farms in the United States.

The Editor says...
 Hmmm... Six decades of conservation efforts?  That means the whooping crane problem was being addressed long before the ESA existed.

Whooping cranes are arriving in Aransas Co..  The flock is the only naturally occurring whooping crane population in the world.  Every fall it migrates south to the refuge north of Rockport with youngsters in tow.  They stay through early spring before heading back to Wood Buffalo National Park in northern Canada where they nest and raise babies.

NW Montana grizzly count nearing 550.  More than 500 "unique individual grizzlies" roam the northwestern Montana backcountry from the Canadian border to Lincoln, with Glacier National Park boasting the largest number, according to DNA studies conducted by the U.S. Geological Survey.  In 2004, the bears left behind identifying hairs at tree rubs and on barbed wire, which researchers collected. … Not every bear in the ecosystem visited the hair-collection locations, so the 545 figure is a minimum count, not a total population estimate.

Endangered Species Act endangers rights of landowners:  By stripping landowners of control over their land, the act has discouraged species protection.  [Some people believe] if you find a listed species, you should kill it, bury it and never say anything.  Less dramatically, owners of forest land cut down trees to avoid attracting the endangered red-cockaded woodpecker, which nests in old-growth trees; and adjust logging practices to discourage the habitat favored by the northern spotted owl.

Web site:  Undue Influence dot com:  Tracking the environmental movement's money, power, and harm.  "The environmental movement is not what you think it is.  It is not about the environment.  It is about power."

Here is another very interesting ESA page with a bunch of timely articles.

Ruled by scoundrels:  The more federal control over education, the worse it becomes.  The Endangered Species Act has attacked and trivialized private property rights.

Time To Hold Environmental And Climate Doomsayers To Account.  In 2009 [David] Suzuki claimed "...we have witnessed decades of decline for diverse sockeye populations from the Fraser Watershed, some of which are now on the brink of extinction."  The 2010 sockeye salmon run was the largest in almost 100 years and Suzuki is silent.  He's too busy on a book tour promoting his false legacy.  His real legacy is destroyed economies, lost jobs and hardship for people, anxious children and weakened communities.

Economic Debates on the Performance of the Endangered Species Act:  Over 50% of the money actually expended on the ESA recovery by federal and state agencies, between 1989 and 1991, was spent on the "top" ten species.  These species are also referred to as megafauna.  Scientists feel that people will part with their money for these species because they are easier for the majority of the population to identify with.  The following is a list of the actual breakdown of these ten species (Metrick and Weitzman, 1996). 
Bald Eagle                  $31.3 million
Grizzly Bear                $12.6 million
Northern Spotted Owl        $26.4 million
Least Bell's Vireo          $12.5 million
Florida Scrub Jay           $19.9 million
American Peregrine Falcon   $11.6 million
West Indian Manatee         $17.3 million
Florida Panther             $13.6 million
Red-cockaded Woodpecker     $15.1 million
Whooping Crane              $10.8 million

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