US Wildlife Officials Aim To Remove Wolf Protections In 2020. According to The Washington Post, “The Trump administration plans to lift endangered species protections for gray wolves across most of the nation by the end of the year, the director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said Monday. ‘We’re working hard to have this done by the end of the year and I’d say it’s very imminent,’ Aurelia Skipwith told The Associated Press in a phone interview Monday. The administration also is pushing ahead with a rollback of protections for migratory birds despite a recent setback in federal court, she said. The Fish and Wildlife Service last year proposed dropping the wolf from the endangered list in the lower 48 states, exempting a small population of Mexican wolves in the Southwest. It was the latest of numerous attempts to return management authority to the states — moves that courts have repeatedly rejected after opponents filed lawsuits. Shot, trapped and poisoned to near extinction in the last century, wolves in recent decades rebounded in the western Great Lakes region and portions of the West, the total population exceeding 6,000. They have been removed from the endangered list in Montana, Idaho, Wyoming and portions of Oregon, Utah and Washington state. Federal protections remain elsewhere. A federal judge in 2014 restored protection for the animals in Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin, a decision upheld by an appeals court in 2017. Skipwith, echoing the Fish and Wildlife Service’s long-held policy, told the AP the wolf has ‘biologically recovered’ and that its removal from the list would demonstrate the effectiveness of the Endangered Species Act.” [The Washington Post, 8/31/20 (=)]

 

No Critical Habitat For This Once-Common Bumblebee. According to E&E News, “The Fish and Wildlife Service today declined to designate critical habitat for the rusty patched bumblebee, an endangered species whose extensive court record could now grow longer. Pressed by litigation to make a long-delayed decision, the federal agency determined that it would ‘not be prudent’ to identify critical habitat for the sorely depleted bee population. ‘The present or threatened destruction, modification, or curtailment of habitat is not the primary threat to the species, and the availability of habitat does not limit the conservation of the rusty patched bumble bee now, nor will it in the future,’ FWS stated. Once common throughout the midwestern and northeastern United States, the rusty patched bumblebee has since vanished from 87% of the counties it formerly inhabited. Habitat loss, pesticide use, climate change and disease have all been identified as threats to its continued existence. One prior lawsuit pressed FWS to list the bee under the Endangered Species Act, which happened in January 2017. A second suit challenged the Trump administration’s effort to delay implementation of the listing. A third sought to compel critical habitat designation (Greenwire, Sept. 25, 2019). Critical habitat is defined as habitat with ‘physical or biological features essential to the conservation of the species and which may require special management considerations or protection.’” [E&E News, 8/31/20 (=)]

 

Judge Won't Halt Construction On $2B Texas Project. According to E&E News, “A federal court is allowing work on the Permian Highway pipeline to move forward, despite evidence of the environmental risks posed by the 429-mile project. Judge Robert Pitman of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas declined on Friday to issue a preliminary injunction to prevent further construction of the natural gas pipeline across 129 water crossings. The Sierra Club had argued that the Army Corps of Engineers had violated the National Environmental Policy Act and should complete a review of the effects of the projects on endangered species and water quality (Energywire, Aug. 3). The judge, an Obama appointee, said the Sierra Club had not been able to show irreparable harm at this point, but he acknowledged that the environmental group’s allegations ‘came close’ and had ‘marshalled a great deal of evidence that demonstrates harm to the environment.’ He pointed to the fact that Permian Highway developer Kinder Morgan Texas Pipeline LLC had caused drilling fluid to leak into nearby drinking water wells after the company drilled into a void in karst, a topography formed by the erosion of soluble rocks like limestone. The developer still plans to use the same horizontal drilling method, the judge added. ‘Unfortunately granting an injunction at this stage of the Pipeline’s completion would not ‘unring the bell,’ and Sierra Club has failed to establish a definitive threat of future harm,’ Pitman wrote in an order from the court.” [E&E News, 8/31/20 (=)]

 

Newly Hatched Florida Sea Turtles Are Consuming Dangerous Quantities Of Floating Plastic. According to Phys.org, “Plastic pollution has been found in practically every environment on the planet, with especially severe effects on ocean life. Plastic waste harms marine life in many ways—most notably, when animals become entangled in it or consume it. We work as scientists and rehabilitators at The Whitney Laboratory for Marine Bioscience and Sea Turtle Hospital at the University of Florida. Our main focus is on sea turtle diseases that pose conservation threats, such as fibropapillomatosis tumor disease. However, it’s becoming increasingly hard to ignore evidence that plastic pollution poses a growing, hidden threat to the health of endangered sea turtles, particularly our youngest patients. In a newly published study, we describe how we examined 42 post-hatchling loggerhead sea turtles that stranded on beaches in Northeast Florida. We found that almost all of them had ingested plastic in large quantities.” [Phys.org, 8/31/20 (=)]

 

Op-Ed: Time To Stop Poisoning Mountain Lions And Other Wildlife. According to Los Angeles Times, “Rats are unwelcome pests in our homes, offices and neighborhoods. But the powerful chemical pesticides that professional exterminators use to kill them cause some alarming collateral damage. They end up decimating the wildlife we want to thrive. The California Legislature can step up in the next couple of days and put a stop to that. There are a number of chemicals used to get rid of rats, but the most toxic and fastest-acting pesticides are second-generation anticoagulant rodenticides. Rats ingest the poison and bleed to death. The rat dies but the toxin in its system lives on to sicken or kill the animals that consume its carcass — and even the wildlife that eat the secondarily poisoned animals. That kind of pass-along poisoning has killed pets as well as eagles, owls, coyotes, bobcats and mountain lions, according to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. In 2014, the state’s Department of Pesticide Regulation banned the sale and use of second-generation pesticides among consumers and restricted use to licensed commercial exterminators. But that restriction hasn’t been enough to stop the spread of the pesticide into the wildlife ecosystem. Assembly Bill 1788, authored by Assemblyman Richard Bloom (D-Santa Monica), would prohibit the use of these deadly poisons statewide — with some reasonable exceptions — until the Department of Pesticide Regulation can come out with a definitive study of the effects of the poison. That study could take years. Mountain lions, which have been particularly hard hit by first- and second-generation rodenticides, need protection now.” [Los Angeles Times, 8/29/20 (+)]

 

 

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