Please Do Not Tap On the Glass

**UPDATE**Your first Take Action opportunity comes from the National Wildlife Federation. Please send a strong message to Secretary Kempthorne that we will not allow Bush/Cheney to destroy our wildlife and their habitats!

I first read this news last night on CNN.com and found another story on WaPo.

The proposed rule would hand over administration of the Endangered Species Act to individual states and individual agencies. The WaPo story reports:

… a regulatory overhaul of the Endangered Species Act to allow federal agencies to decide whether protected species would be imperiled by agency projects, eliminating the independent scientific reviews that have been required for more than three decades.

The new rules, which will be subject to a 30-day per comment period, would use administrative powers to make broad changes in the law that Congress has resisted for years. Under current law, agencies must subject any plans that potentially affect endangered animals and plants to an independent review by the Fish and Wildlife Service or the National Marine Fisheries Service. Under the proposed new rules, dam and highway construction and other federal projects could proceed without delay if the agency in charge decides they would not harm vulnerable species.

This is about oil. Don’t think for a minute this isn’t about oil.

The new rules would also limit the impact of the administration’s decision in May to list the polar bear as threatened with extinction because of shrinking sea ice.

At the time of that decision, Kempthorne said he would seek changes to the Endangered Species Act on the grounds that it was inflexible, adding that it had not been significantly modified since 1986. In a statement yesterday, the Interior Department declared that even if a federal action such as the permitting of a power plant would lead to increased greenhouse gas emissions, the decision would not trigger a federal review “because it is not possible to link the emissions to impacts on specific listed species such as polar bears.”

Kempthorne said the new regulations included that language “so we don’t inadvertently have the Endangered Species Act seen as a back door to climate-change policy that was never, ever intended.”

Bush/Cheney wants to drill in the Chuchki Sea and other wildlife refuges to keep their Big Oil buddies rolling in money. Clearly, they’ll stop at NOTHING to accomplish this goal and that includes destroying our environment, destroying natural habitat for endangered species thus making them extinct, and ruining our energy future.

WE WILL STOP THEM. You can help. There will be a 30-day public comment period and I’ll post the information here as soon as its available. This rule is not subject to Congressional approval. We are the only force standing in the way of this disaster. YOU are the public. You can comment on any proposed rule. I know the wildlife conservation NGOs will have scripts and other action alerts available soon for you to take action and let Bush/Cheney know this backdoor attempt to promote offshore oil drilling WILL NOT SUCCEED.

s.

Credit: Nitrozac & Snaggy

Filed under: conservation, endangered species, global climate change, wildlife conservation Tagged: | endangered species act