Anti Darwinism in decline under Bush

Washington Post:

With little-noticed procedural and policy moves over several years, Bush administration officials have made it substantially more difficult to designate domestic animals and plants for protection under the Endangered Species Act.

Controversies have occasionally flared over Interior Department officials who regularly overruled rank-and-file agency scientists' recommendations to list new species, but internal documents also suggest that pervasive bureaucratic obstacles were erected to limit the number of species protected under one of the nation's best-known environmental laws.

The documents show that personnel were barred from using information in agency files that might support new listings, and that senior officials repeatedly dismissed the views of scientific advisers as President Bush's appointees either rejected putting imperiled plants and animals on the list or sought to remove this federal protection.

Officials also changed the way species are evaluated under the 35-year-old law -- by considering only where they live now, as opposed to where they used to exist -- and put decisions on other species in limbo by blocking citizen petitions that create legal deadlines.

As a result, listings plummeted. During Bush's more than seven years as president, his administration has placed 59 domestic species on the endangered list, almost the exact number that his father listed during each of his four years in office. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne has not declared a single native species as threatened or endangered since he was appointed nearly two years ago.

In a sign of how contentious the issue has become, the advocacy group WildEarth Guardians filed a lawsuit Wednesday seeking a court order to protect 681 Western species all at once, on the grounds that further delay would violate the law. Among the species cited are tiny snails, vibrant butterflies, and a wide assortment of plants and other creatures.

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Developers, farmers and other business interests frequently resist decisions on listing because they require a complex regulatory process that can make it difficult to develop land that is home to protected species. Environmentalists have also sparred for years with federal officials over implementation of the law.

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As listings have slowed, lawsuits challenging the administration's practices have skyrocketed, according to the biodiversity center, which specializes in endangered-species issues. There have been 369 listing-related suits against Bush, compared with 184 against Clinton. "The Bush administration has effectively killed the listing program," said Suckling, whose group's petitions and suits have driven 92 percent of the listings under Bush.

The Justice Department would not release figures on how the government has fared defending endangered species suits or how much it has cost taxpayers. Officials acknowledge they have not done well in the courts: Hall said he is frustrated that judges demand a higher burden of scientific proof to deny a listing or to take a species off the list than to list a species.

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This is a law that is not needed. The fittest species will survive and those that are not should not be missed. Whether a snail or a snail darter survives is just not important. These groups should not be permitted to compel others through the force of government to take care of their special critters. If they want to give the critters special treatment they should come up with the money to buy the land they want restricted use on. No doubt most of the people pushing these listings believe in the theory of evolution, yet for some reason they want to outlaw it in application.