Interior Department Officially Proposes to Destroy Endangered Species Act

While the headlines are filled with terrible things, others like this never see the light of day.  This is disgusting and I refuse to believe more than 5% of the country agrees with it.

The Interior Department on Thursday [July 19, 2018] proposed the most sweeping set of changes in decades to the Endangered Species Act, the law that brought the bald eagle and the Yellowstone grizzly bear back from the edge of extinction....

....proposed revisions have wide-reaching implications, including for how the federal government will protect species from climate change. For example, the agency has proposed a new definition of how it decides whether a plant or animal is in danger of extinction.

...the logic for the.... rule was that “if you wait until the species’ numbers are actually small enough that it’s going to become extinct, it may be difficult or too late” to save it. The threatened list is designed “to anticipate a species is sort of going downhill sufficiently in advance, and protect it.”

Said differently, the Republican goal is to make it much harder to declare something as endangered.  By the time a species qualifies in their proposed definitions, it will be TOO LATE.

....eliminate longstanding language that bars considering economic factors when deciding whether to list a species.

Said differently, if protecting an endangered species means corporate overlords will lose money, screw the animals say Republican leadership.

Environmentalists expressed concern the changes will gut protections for the country’s most threatened species and cripple the agency’s ability to address climate change.

There are hundreds of animal species listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, including the Yosemite toad, the piping plover and the northern spotted owl. The protection of the owl is the source of a long-running conflict between loggers and environmentalists.

The public will have 60 days to offer comments to the proposed changes before a final plan is issued.

Source:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/19/climate/endangered-species-act-changes.html