A House committee gave preliminary approval last week to a bill that would reverse Trump administration changes to the Endangered Species Act, after a heated debate between members over which side had the best interest of the act at heart...The bill passed the House Natural Resources Committee on a party-line vote after close to an hour of debate.
Grijalva, who chairs the committee, said one of the rules his bill targets is the administration’s decision to exclude climate change when officials are considering how a species might fare in the future and whether it should be listed as endangered or threatened.
“They undermine the protection for critical habitats, they dramatically limit the scope of what can be considered future threats,” Grijalva said. “Climate change under the administration’s new definition of foreseeable future can’t be considered and to some extent does not exist.” But Gosar said Trump’s rules help make a flawed Endangered Species Act “more transparent (and) efficient,” noting that it has failed to improve the status of the vast majority of species it aims to protect.
“Since the passing of the Endangered Species Act, only 3% of species that had been listed under the act have been delisted,” Gosar said. “If only 3% of patients admitted to a hospital walked out healthy, that hospital would be shut down immediately.”...Other committee members challenged that figure, saying it does not take into consideration how other species have improved. Rep. Ed Case, D-Hawaii, said 99% of the listed species are recovering because of the Endangered Species Act.
“Yes, it does cause people to have to go through some hoops,” Case said of the law. “That’s as it should be if the end goal is to preserve our endangered and threatened species.”...
MORE
“Yes, it does cause people to have to go through some hoops,
Some "hoops"? How about losing the use of your property, businesses destroyed, jobs lost and rural economies threatened. Those are damn big "hoops".
1 comment:
Claiming 3% of the listed species have been "saved" by ESA is a gross exaggeration. The favorite species to use as examples are the Bald Eagle, Peregrine Falcon, and Brown Pelican. Employees of USFish and Wildlife Service and other agencies seem to believe that putting the name of a species on a piece of paper in Washington DC is all that is needed to save the plant or animal from extinction. It doesn't help the species but greatly helps the agencies receive much larger amounts of money. Those birds did decline following WWII but the loss of reproduction was the plastic manufacturing effluent dumped directly into water ways. Stopping point source pollution accidentally saved those bird species and the ESA did not help them at all. The examples of falsely claiming credit for any species recovery is just about equal to the number of species that have recovered.
Post a Comment