White House Proposes to Butcher Endangered Species Act

This Monday, just months before the curtains close on the Bush administration, Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne announced a proposal for the biggest overhaul of the Endangered Species Act since 1986. Kempthorne's proposed rules would excuse thousands of federal activities, including all greenhouse gas emissions, from review under the Act, letting federal agencies decide for themselves whether projects potentially devastating to the environment would indeed harm endangered plants and animals. The rules would codify Kempthorne's previously announced plan to green-light activities that add to climate change -- without inspecting their impacts on protected species like the polar bear.

History has shown that letting agencies babysit themselves regarding their own projects -- instead of consulting with government scientists, as is now required -- just doesn't work. When agencies were allowed to self-consult on logging activities in 2005, it turned out that 62 percent of those projects violated the Endangered Species Act. "These [new] regulations are a recipe for disaster for the extinction of endangered species," said Center for Biological Diversity science director Noah Greenwald. "It's a classic example of letting the fox guard the henhouse."

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