What a shame that Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne had to conduct his hastily called press conference about a proposed overhaul of the Endangered Species Act by telephone earlier this week.
Had he appeared in person, reporters might have been able to note whether, when describing the leaked proposal as a “narrow regulatory change,” Kempthorne was able to keep a straight face.
Nothing about the changes sought by the Bush administration is narrow. They would strike the very heart of the endangered species protections by virtually eliminating the scientific reviews required of federal projects.
Under current law, the experts at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service determine a project’s possible harm to an endangered species.
The new rules would remove that oversight and hand authority to make the call to federal agencies that do not always employ the necessary specialists. Imagine the Army Corps of Engineers getting to decide whether a hydroelectric dam hurts fish, and you begin to get the picture.
Having failed in Congress to weaken the Endangered Species Act, critics in recent years have turned to the rule-making authority vested in the executive branch.
A similar attempt to give the Environmental Protection Agency authority to approve pesticides without consulting fish biologists landed the federal government in court. Just this week, a judge-ordered assessment reversed prior EPA assurances that three commonly used pesticides weren’t harming threatened and endangered salmon.
This time around, the Bush administration is trying hard to spin the proposed changes as an effort to “help avoid the misuse of the ESA to regulate climate change.” Kempthorne said this week he’s worried about attempts to draw links between greenhouse gas emissions and distant threatened species.
But this attempted end run around Congress is not about preventing the polar bear’s plight from blocking construction of a highway in Kentucky. It would go much further, eliminating scientific review of projects with clear impacts on the wildlife close at hand.
The Bush administration should drop the ruse. Its last-gasp assault on wildlife protections assumes that Americans don’t know any better, which is offensive.
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