This is from Townhall
Supreme Court's Latest Decision Is a Blow to Environmentalists But a Win For Property Rights
The Supreme Court on Tuesday made a decision that was a blow to environmentalists. The Court unanimously ruled that the Fish and Wildlife Service can't designate land as a "critical habitat" for an endangered species if the species no longer lives in the environment. The case was brought about by Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF) and landowner Edward Poitevent who had 1,500 acres of his land in Louisiana designated as a “critical habitat” for the endangered dusky gopher frog, even though the frog hasn't lived in the area since 1965. The land has been in Poitevent’s family since the Civil War. In the 1990s, the Weyerhaeuser Company acquired the Poitevents’ lease for its timber operations. That all changed in 2011 when he was told that his property was a "backup" property for the endangered species. The only other location where the frogs were found was in a single pond in Mississippi, about 70 miles away from Poitevent's property. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service told him that his property was the only other habitat that they could identify. What's shocking is the government said that in order for the frog to survive on his land, trees would need to be replaced and brush would need to be burned. "By locking down land on behalf of a frog that doesn’t live there, the feds froze an estimated $34 million in economic activity. Nor can Edward use his own land for anything else in the future—a literal death knell to his property rights," Pacific Legal Foundation said in a press release. Not only that, but Poitevent would be on the hook for making necessary landscape changes to make it inhabitable for the frog. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the unanimous decision, saying, “Only the ‘habitat’ of the endangered species is eligible for designation as ‘critical habitat,'” Roberts wrote. However, he noted the 5th Circuit did not define the term “habitat” in its decision, and sent the case back to the appeals court with instructions to do so. The Supreme Court also said the Fifth Circuit needs to take into account the financial burden that's being placed on the land owner. “I am really overjoyed that an eight to nothing court agreed with me that the service’s de “I am really overjoyed that an eight to nothing court agreed with me that the service’s decision was absurd and nightmarish for property rights in the United States,” Poitevent told The Daily Caller News Foundation. “We all actually thought something like this would happen, but what’s really stunning is this is an eight to nothing decision." cision was absurd and nightmarish for property rights in the United States,” Poitevent told The Daily Caller News Foundation. “We all actually thought something like this would happen, but what’s really stunning is this is an eight to nothing decision."
Make up your own mind, the decision is embedded below
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1iiX_veUDQM4M1b-zi1iNrQf0nkfYd9ge/view?usp=sharing
1 comment:
This is an encouraging start to the much needed reform or repeal of the ESA.
This case involves habitat designation that failed to fully identify the Primary Constituent Elements (PCE) as required by USFWS protocols. If the agency had followed its own procedures they would have stated that the habitat attributes will not support the life history functions of the amphibian and do not meet the biological needs of the species. In spite of the obvious and clearly identified failure to reject the area because it would not provide every necessary PCE the agency said it was critical habitat anyway. They had to lie to justify their decision. Agency employees made a decision that would cost both the land owners and taxpayers millions of dollars with no possible return on the expense except for job security for various government officials. Those federal employees should be held accountable for such an arbitrary, capricious, and self serving decision.
This doesn’t just happen in swamps. After transplanting Sierra Nevada Bighorn Sheep into an area south of Bridgeport California in 1986, the animals repeatedly suffered die offs from severe winter weather, malnutrition due to deep snow, and predators. Survival in these mountains requires migrating in the winter to elevations at or below 5,000 feet above sea level but the lowest elevation in this particular area is 6,500 feet above sea level. The Sierra Nevada Bighorn Sheep was listed as endangered in 2000 and a Recovery Plan completed that designated a portion of Mono County as the Northern Recovery Area. In 2007 the USFWS used clearly fallacious assumptions to designate critical habitat for this species.
This is another example of the agency failure to state that the most basic of PCE components are not available and that makes the area unsuitable as habitat. The biologists knew this and had written about it and then proceeded to transplant bighorn sheep into an area where they could not thrive and reproduce. Along with winter kills the bighorns experienced losses due to predation by mountain lions. When the USFWS designated the species as endangered there were fewer bighorns than had been originally translocated and that is still true. The biologists’ best efforts had failed.
In 2007 the biologists designated critical habitat near Lee Vining and Bridgeport where they had already demonstrated that the PCE’s for year round habitat were not available. Specifically there was no low elevation winter range for the animals and the biologists knew full well that was true but drew a critical habitat line around the area anyway. Their failure to follow their own procedure has resulted in high winter mortality rates of adult sheep and high lamb mortalities if a ewe was lucky enough to survive the winter.
It has been thirty years since the initial transplants into what is now designated as the Northern Recovery Unit and they have only kept a small herd of bighorns in the area by transplanting more after each die off. After thirty years there should well over 2,000 bighorn sheep in the area if the habitat was in fact bighorn sheep habitat; failure of the bighorn sheep to survive is a direct measure of the deficiencies of the bighorn sheep biologists’ habitat designation. Every bighorn sheep transplanted into the northern area in Mono County CA is likely to die and that is acceptable to the biologists just so the USFWS keeps budgeting money for the Sierra Nevada Bighorn Sheep recovery program.
The one thing they have accomplished is the destruction of domestic sheep grazing in the area designated as habitat. That has cost several ranches large amounts of money and has severely damaged the local economy of Mono County and adjacent Lyon County Nevada.
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