FWS keeps on keeping on… purging ESA protections. Not surprising given the previous post. Wolves, Grizzlies, Slickspot peppergrass, Fluvial graylings, the list goes on and on – We are witnessing the political dismemberment of what is supposed to be an agency guided by science – instead plundered by political obstructionists and public land profiteers.
Link restored. Arctic grayling kept off endangered list. By Nick Gevock. The Montana Standard.
This is an outrage that irritates conservationists, ranchers (who support listing the fluvial grayling), and fishers. It is part of the Bush Administration’s new illegal interpretation of the ESA that if a species exists somewhere there is no reason to protect it elsewhere in its range. Ralph Maughan
New link April 29. Good, Bad Day for Grayling. From the Trout Underground.
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Comments
Amazing. If anything needs protection it’s the fluvial grayling.
If anybody knows, please explain some things to me. My understanding is that grayling are essentially immune to whirling disease, that this species/subspecies/strain/race of grayling was/is also native to the Madison, that eyed eggs can relatively easily be made available through “micro-hatchery” operations, and I know that there was a push, about six to ten years ago, to plant them in the Madison. What happened? I know that a nut from Three Forks was raising a stink about both the planting of grayling in the Madison and the Cherry Creek renovation; but, was that enough to derail it?
Astute observers of the agency over, say, the last five-plus years may have noticed all the money FWS was throwing at private conservation efforts through its Partners for Wildlife thingee. Well the money came out of the budgets of longstanding FWS programs, like its state ecological services office. The ecological service office in Pennsylvania (State College) lost a bunch of biologists from its staff and had to close a satellite office in the Poconos (long the site of illegal wetland filling by greedy developers) because there just wasn’t any money to keep the staffers and the office open. There are many other examples of this kill-the-agency-by-starvation policy.
It’s becoming clear that the lame duck Bush Administration believes it doesn’t have to obey the law on anything. They will be gone on a year-and-a-half. Congress will not impeach Bush and Cheney because then a Democrat, Nancy Pelosi, would become President. They have a free hand.
The Administration wants to wreck as much law they dislike as they can. The courts are really the only refuge for conservationists and lots of other groups in society.
It is kind of like if the police simply stopped enforcing the laws, and if anyone wanted them enforced, they would have to apprehend the lawbreaker themselves and take them to court.
This has kempthorne’s smudgy, cowardly little fingerprints all over it.