| WASHINGTON-The Endangered Species Act has long had its foes, particularly in the West. But in recent months, the law has taken an unprecedented hit from Congress. Republicans, led by Rep. Mike Simpson of Idaho, used a budget bill signed into law by the president to return to the states of Idaho and Montana the right to manage their wolf populations. Although Simpson took the lead on the language that returned the gray wolf to state management, he said he, too, has some concerns about the door that may have been opened by the move. Simpson oversees Interior Department spending as the chairman of the appropriations subcommittee that approves the agency's budget. He worries that his legislation could become a vehicle for amendments that target specific listings. Environmentalists have a point, Simpson said: Congress shouldn't meddle with the process of the Endangered Species Act. "In general I agree with them," Simpson said of the argument environmentalists have made about meddling with the Endangered Species Act. "I don't want Congress or our bill to be the delisting bill. So I'm going to try to prevent that, to some extent." But Simpson also said there's much work to be done to tackle what he thinks of as flaws in the Endangered Species Act. "My concern is that what the Endangered Species Act has become is not an act to save species," he said. "It's an act to control land and water. If it was to save species, we would be delisting these things." Exactly our concern with Forest Watch, they are using the Endangered Species Act to control the Forest Service The Endangered Species Act currently protects more than 1,300 species in the U.S. and about 570 species in other countries. It gives broad powers to nearly anyone, including citizens and government agencies, to petition for species to be protected. The law has specific statutory timelines for responding to those petitions and gives the public the ability to sue to enforce the deadlines. However, even the federal government has acknowledges that the 38-year-old law is showing its age. Recently, the Interior Department announced a proposed settlement with WildEarth Guardians to clear up a backlog of more than 250 endangered species act petitions. In recent years, the Interior Department has said that environmental groups have inundated it with petitions and lawsuits. As a result, the agency spent much of its resources on legal battles. |
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Extreme Green
ESSAY - May 31, 2011 By Ted Williams It has taken me decades to be recognized as an environmental extremist. My "attack" on Alaska Republican Rep. Don Young, a National Rifle Association board member, in Sierra magazine fomented a mass exodus from the Outdoor Writers Association of America, including 79 members and 22 supporting organizations. I serve on two foundations that award major grants to groups defending wild land from developers, and I write a muckraking column for Audubon called "Incite." Actually, I'm an extremist only as defined by people who perceive fish and wildlife as basically in the way. For those folks, all environmentalists are extremists. But radical green groups do exist, and they're engaged in an industry whose waste products are fish and wildlife. You and I are a major source of revenue for that industry. (Forest Watch too) The Interior Department must respond within 90 days to petitions to list species under the Endangered Species Act. Otherwise, petitioners like the Center for Biological Diversity get to sue and collect attorney fees from the Justice Department. The Center also shakes down taxpayers directly from Interior Department funds under the Equal Access to Justice Act, and for missed deadlines when the agency can't keep up with the broadside of Freedom-of-Information-Act requests. The Center for Biological Diversity has two imitators -- WildEarth Guardians and Western Watersheds Project. Kierán Suckling, who directs and helped found the Tucson, Ariz.-based Center, boasts that he engages in psychological warfare by causing stress to already stressed public servants. "They feel like their careers are being mocked and destroyed -- and they are," he told High Country News. "So they become much more willing to play by our rules." Those rules include bending the truth like pretzel dough. For example, after the Center posted photos on its website depicting what it claimed was Arizona rancher Jim Chilton's cow-denuded grazing allotment, Chilton sued. When Chilton produced evidence that the photos showed a campsite and a parking lot, the court awarded him $600,000 in damages. Apparently this was the first successful libel suit against an environmental group, yet the case was virtually ignored by the media. "Ranching should end," proclaims Suckling. "Good riddance." But the only problem with ranching is that it's not always done right. And even when it's done wrong, it saves land from development. Amos Eno runs the hugely successful Yarmouth, Maine-based Resources First Foundation, an outfit that, among other things, assists ranchers who want to restore native ecosystems. Earlier, he worked at Interior's Endangered Species Office, crafting amendments to strengthen the law, then went on to direct the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation. Eno figures the feds could "recover and delist three dozen species" with the resources they spend responding to the Center for Biological Diversity's litigation. "The amount of money CBD makes suing is just obscene," he told me. "They're one of the reasons the Endangered Species Act has become so dysfunctional. They deserve the designation of eco-criminals." A senior Obama official had this to say: "CBD has probably sued Interior more than all other groups combined. They've divested that agency of any control over Endangered Species Act priorities and caused a huge drain on resources. In April, for instance, CBD petitioned to list 404 species, knowing full well that biologists can't make the required findings in 90 days." Former Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt and his Fish and Wildlife Service director, Jamie Clark, together saved the Endangered Species Act from a hostile Congress. One way they did this was with brilliant habitat conservation plans that rewarded landowners for harboring endangered species instead of punishing them -- as the law had previously done. A few plans were flawed, but the Center scarcely saw one that it didn't hate. "My frustration was not so much with lawsuits about listings, which fell like snowflakes," declared Babbitt, "but with litigation boiling up around the plans." Clark offered this: "Back then, the suits came mostly from CBD. Now I think CBD and WildEarth Guardians are trying to see who can sue most. Bruce (Babbitt), who was committed to saving endangered species, gave me the air cover I needed. I have yet to see that kind of commitment in this administration. The Service isn't making progress. Citizens need to be able to petition for species in trouble, but this has become an industry." Acquiring the public's attention seems to motivate real environmental extremists almost as much as acquiring the public's money. Recently, the Center petitioned the Environmental Protection Agency to ban the manufacture and sale of lead ammunition and fishing weights. There are lots of inexpensive, non-toxic alternatives. And lead projectiles for hunting and lead sinkers small enough to be ingested by birds do need to be banned. But the Center for Biological Diversity sought a ban on everything -- no exception for the military, outdoor or indoor target shooting, or deep-sea sinkers that ostriches couldn't swallow. It seems inconceivable that the Center didn't know its petition was going nowhere. But for a year its name has been all over the news, and now, predictably, the Center is suing EPA. The Center for Biological Diversity gives every environmentalist a bad name. Ted Williams is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a service of High Country News (hcn.org). He writes in Massachusetts. http://www.hcn.org/wotr/extreme-green |
| Comments from others Jun 14, 2011 11:17 AM An interesting enough article. Not particularly new ideas, but it, along with some of the comments, got me to thinking. I used to be more of an environmental extremist in my views -- things were much more black and white, and painted in right and wrong terms. Building on the Simpson example above, it was wrong for Simpson to be killing any owls. Period. It was right for the government, or various groups to shut down logging. Period. Then, on my first job out of University in 2001 where I worked on the long-running carnivore monitoring project in the Sierra Nevada I saw that *gasp* some of the wood boxes we used to tote our species detection devices around in where made from Simpson cut and Simpson milled plywood. How could this have happened? I thought the people on my field crew and the scientists running the project shared by beliefs? How could we be using wood from these heartless savages hell-bent destroying the forests for a profit?? I was heart sick. Now, 10 years later I live in Alberta where I’m finishing my MSc degree aimed at understanding changes in habitat use and occupancy of marten triggered by energy development. And I work *double gasp* in the energy industry! I don’t think of myself as part of the environmental establishment, nor do I think of myself as a sell-out. Though I’m sure others do. Instead, I think of myself as a scientist interested in better understanding how ecosystems respond to human land use, and how to develop multi-stakeholder management plans that minimize those impacts. And right now I feel I can make the biggest difference on the industry side of the fence. Regardless, over my years of observation I have clearly seen that an un-compromising stance and laying blame at others does little to fix problems or help conservation issues. It seems to me there’s a lot of pushing on the part of the “extremist” set to get the “establishment” to do their jobs or to get various companies to fall in line with some particular view. So I guess I’ll push back a little with this question: What’s wrong with compromising? Why, when the approach has so clearly not worked, are certain groups still so gun-hoe on making everyone else toe their line through lawsuits, publicity stunts, and other unilateral tactics? Take a step back and look around. All the issues driving species endangerment are on-going largely unaffected by these actions. Does industry drag its feet much of the time? Yup. Does government accomplish tasks in a timely fashion? Nope, not usually. But…have the purists proud to wear their extremist badges made a positive and effective change? I’m not so sure. And I’ll push a little harder with this question: if everything is so buggered up and wrong, what does right look like? What would it take for the extremist set to actually be happy about things? And what’s the game plan to get there? |
| * Kieran Suckling - a very
apt name ... sucks my tax dollars and yours to fund his diamonds and
furs. And takes away American civil liberties. * "Those rules include bending the truth like pretzel dough." Kris knows that all too well. And likely many more here. * "They deserve the designation of eco-criminals." Amen. They are criminals, it is my hope that soon they are dealt with accordingly by the authorities. * "Citizens need to be able to petition for a species in trouble, but this has become an industry." And people wonder why I refer to CBD and other hyperactive environmental groups as "Environmental Inc." This makes it very clear as to why I have done so ever since my very limited exposure to CBD during some research in past years for a certain board member who has fought them. |
| The
formal judgment confirmed a Tucson jury’s verdict, delivered on January
21, 2005, finding the Center for Biological Diversity guilty of making
“false, unfair, libelous and defamatory statements” against Jim
Chilton, a fifth generation Arizona rancher whose pioneering ancestors
drove cattle into Arizona in the 1880’s. The jury awarded Chilton
$100,000 in actual damages, and $500,000 in punitive damages because the Center for Biological Diversity defamed him and his family business in a two-page press release which included links to 21 photographs posted on the Center’s website, from July 2002 until July 2003. |
| there
are many of us out here that call the CBD, the center for biological
perversity. Something is wrong with a company whose main occupation is
suing the government into submission. |
| They are a company
that's main occupation is not only suing the Governmant into submission
but using the Tax Payer's money to do it (as does Forest Watch) |
Yet another Settlement in which "Enviromental' were able to dictate policy to the Forest Service, This settlement included a forced payment of $250,000 of your money to EarthJustice representing the various "environmental" groups Roadless Area Settlement |
| This
is an interesting interview from Range Magazine, with Kieran Suckling
director of Center for Biological Diversity. The interview is from 1999
when CBD was known as the Southwest Center for Biological Diversity Interview |