Environmental corruption used to thwart drilling

Stephen Moore:

Last week the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and an environmental advocacy group agreed to a legal settlement that will place nine species—including the Panama City crayfish, moccasinshell mussel and boreal toad—on the fast track for placement on the endangered species list. It is only the latest of many such listings.

The Center for Biological Diversity has petitioned Fish and Wildlife to designate some 250 species as endangered since 2008. Many of CBD's petitions—and lawsuits—are still in the pipeline. About 97% of the species that are designated as endangered never move off the list.

Next March, Fish and Wildlife will make a determination about whether to add the lesser prairie chicken, found in Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico and Kansas to the list. Harold Hamm, president of Continental Resources, says that the habitat for the prairie chicken overlaps "some of the most promising land for oil and gas leases in the country."

Many Westerners suspect that this environmental activism isn't only or even mostly about saving species and obscure subspecies. Instead, it is about restricting land use on hundreds of thousands of acres of private and state land. The concern is that if these species are listed as endangered, their habitat could be placed off limits for economic development.

In the 1980s, environmentalists successfully used a listing of the Northern Spotted Owl as threatened to cripple the timber industry in Oregon and Washington, throwing many thousands out of jobs. This is the playbook now being used by groups like the CBD—which boasts on its website of its desire to end most oil and gas production in the United States.

Since taking office, the Obama administration and its green allies inside and outside federal agencies have been making expanded use of a tactic called "sue and settle" to issue new and expensive regulations. Groups like CBD and WildEarth Guardians, for example, petition Fish and Wildlife to list a species as endangered. Other environmental groups use a similar tactic to get new water and air regulations from the Environmental Protection Agency. Then, sometimes the very same day, the environmental groups file a lawsuit against Fish and Wildlife or the EPA to force the government to act—arguing that the regulatory process is too slow.
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This is outright corruption.  Congress needs to investigate this activity and the courts should reject such settlements that don't include all parties at interest including the oil and gas industry.  The Endangered Feces  Act needs to be either repealed or amended to stop these corrupt bargains.