WASHINGTON
- February 3 - A nationwide coalition of
conservation, fishing and religious organizations is releasing a
new study entitled "Broken Promises of recovery: the Clinton
Administration's 10-Prong Attack on Endangered Species." Written by
American Lands and released in cooperation with Endangered Species
Coalition and GrassRoots Environmental Effectiveness Network
(GREEN), the report shows that the Clinton Administration's record
on endangered species is extremely poor -- and in some cases is
worse than that of prior administrations.
"The Administration has been undermining the Endangered Species
Act for years," said Daniel Hall of American Lands. "There new
refusal to accept species listing petitions across the country,
their efforts to avoid writing real salmon protection rules in the
west, and recent revelations that they denied protection to the
Atlantic salmon at the behest of a former Maine Senator are just
the latest chapter in this sad tale."
"This is the untold story -- what's really happening with
implementation of the ESA, and why wildlife populations and
ecosystems are going to continue crashing until agency officials
start doing their jobs," continued Brock Evans of the Endangered
Species Coalition.
"This administration has taken the old game of sacrificing
endangered species for politics to new levels by creating entirely
new ESA programs that put business before biology," stated Roger
Featherstone of the GrassRoots Environmental Effectiveness Network.
"'No Surprises,' HCPs, non-listing agreements, the focus on
delisting, attacks on agency whistleblowers -- it's all part of a
bigger trend.
"It's all well and good to designate new national monuments
before an election," continued Featherstone, "but this won't help
most endangered species, the majority of which depend on
non-federal lands. The administration needs to stop handing out
large-scale ESA exemptions to timber companies, developers and other
vested interests."
A new administration policy states that petitions to grant
imperiled species official "threatened" or "endangered" status will
not be accepted if the species are already considered "candidates"
for listing. The problem, point out Peter Galvin of the Center for
Biological Diversity, is that without listing petitions, the
administration tends to leave candidate species in bureaucratic
limbo. The center plans to challenge the policy.
New federal rules are also supposed to conserve West Coast
salmon and steelhead trout. According to Daniel Hall, the rules
fail to provide real protection measures, fail to give salmon a
good chance of recovery, and provide landowners with broad ESA
exemptions. "Everyone knows that top National Marine Fisheries
Service officials will only protect salmon if someone hauls them
into court," said Hall.
Atlantic salmon have continued sliding towards extinction while
the administration refused to list the fish, contrary to the
recommendations of its own biologists. A recent expose also
documented that Secretary Babbitt prevented the salmon from being
protected at the request of then-Senator Cohen of Maine.
The report, which was prepared as a discussion paper and draws
upon the experience of wildlife activists nationwide, indicates
that the administration has been:
-- Refusing to identify and "list" imperiled species as
"threatened" or "endangered," denying these species the benefits of
the Endangered Species Act (ESA);
-- Refusing to designate "Critical Habitat" areas for listed
species;
-- Refusing to develop basic protection measures for imperiled
species;
-- Allowing developers, timber companies, the Forest Service and
other federal agencies to continue destroying wildlife habitat;
-- Supporting legislation and other policies that directly
weaken the ESA; and
-- Attacking agency biologists who reveal what's really
happening.
The report is available at http://www.stopextinction.org
and
http://www.defenders.org/grnhome.html
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