Endangered Species Act Overhaul

 

After Trump Admin Rollback To Endangered Species Act, Whitmer, Govs Back Wildlife Bill. According to Michigan Advance, “Gov. Gretchen Whitmer on Tuesday was the lead a letter signed by five other Great Lakes governors to congressional leaders asking them to back the Recovering America’s Wildlife Act (RAWA). This comes after the President Trump administration issued rules in August rolling back the landmark 1973 Endangered Species Act. Among the changes announced by the U.S. Interior and Commerce departments was mandating regulators must look at economic factors when determining whether a species should be classified as endangered. Environmentalists say that allows officials to ignore the impact of climate change. Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel last month joined 18 attorneys general and the city of New York in filing suit against the Trump administration’s rule changes, as the Advance reported. U.S. Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Dearborn), who sponsored RAWA, said it would repeal all Trump administration changes to the Endangered Species Act. The group signing the letter includes GOP Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, Democratic Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers, Democratic Pennsylvania Tom Wolf, Democratic Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker and Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. The letter was sent to U.S. House Committee on Natural Resources Chair Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.) and ranking member Rob Bishop (R-Utah).” [Michigan Advance, 10/15/19 (=)]

 

Endangered Species

 

AP | BLM Plan Calls For Fuel Breaks To Battle Fires In 3 States. According to E&E News, “One option in a plan to battle devastating wildfires in southwestern Idaho, southeastern Oregon and northern Nevada creates 1,500 miles of fuel breaks up to 400 feet wide along existing roads. The Bureau of Land Management on Friday released a draft environmental impact statement for the Tri-State Fuel Breaks Project and is taking public comments through November. The agency said creating fuel breaks by clearing vegetation will help firefighters stop wildfires and protect key habitat for sage grouse and other wildlife on land also used by cattle ranchers and outdoor enthusiasts. The area contains one of the largest strongholds for greater sage grouse in the northern Great Basin but faces wildfire threats from invasive annual grasses, notably fire-prone cheatgrass. Federal officials in 2015 declined to list sage grouse as needing protection under the Endangered Species Act. But giant wildfires have affected the bird’s habitat. In the last decade, the area has seen repeated giant rangeland wildfires up to 870 square miles. The agency said that at least five of the wildfires, mainly fueled by cheatgrass, burned more than 150 square miles in the first 24 hours. Cheatgrass is an annual that quickly returns, while native, slow-growing sagebrush can take decades to recover. ‘The shrub-steppe landscapes within this area represent one of the most imperiled ecosystems in the United States,’ the bureau said.” [E&E News, 10/15/19 (=)]

 

AP | FWS Owl-Killing Experiment Raises Thorny Questions. According to E&E News, “As he stood amid the thick old-growth forests in the coastal range of Oregon, Dave Wiens was nervous. Before he trained to shoot his first barred owl, he had never fired a gun. He eyed the big female owl, her feathers streaked brown and white, perched on a branch at just the right distance. Then he squeezed the trigger and the owl fell to the forest floor, adding to a running tally of more than 2,400 barred owls killed so far in a controversial experiment by the U.S. government to test whether the northern spotted owl’s rapid decline in the Pacific Northwest can be stopped by killing its aggressive East Coast cousin. Wiens grew up fascinated by birds, and his graduate research in owl interactions helped lay the groundwork for this tense moment. ‘It’s a little distasteful, I think, to go out killing owls to save another owl species,’ said Wiens, a biologist who still views each shooting as ‘gut-wrenching’ as the first. ‘Nonetheless, I also feel like from a conservation standpoint, our back was up against the wall. We knew that barred owls were outcompeting spotted owls and their populations were going haywire.’ The federal government has been trying for decades to save the northern spotted owl, a native bird that sparked an intense battle over logging across Washington, Oregon and California decades ago.” [E&E News, 10/15/19 (=)]

 

 

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