Big Green with a Salmon Tint
The East Times and West Times (here and here) are more than fish-wrappers this morning. They're both worrying about salmon and trout -- and it's letting us know Big Green is not finished, despite its poor showing in the last election.
The more significant of the two stories is the LA Times piece, which focuses on a Bush administration proposal to cut critical habitat for two endangered fish species by as much as 80 percent. Bear with me; this really is interesting. Critical habitat is the front in the battle between the grab-everything/sue-everyone faction of the environmental movement and anyone-who-wants-to-build-anything-anywhere. It is a skirmish that shows just how intense and intelligent the radical greens are in their effort to de-populate the West. (I'll try to link that to an old Range Magazine piece later; Kieran Suckling of Center for Biological Diversity actually states de-population of LA as the goal of his litigation mill.)
The battle started about five years ago, when the Center, the Natural Resources Defense Council and other environmentalists suddenly started a wave of seemingly coordinated lawsuits demanding that critical habitat be designated for endangered species. They won every suit because the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service is required to designate critical habitat, but rightly hasn't done it becuase it's expensive to do, and it provides virtually no additional protection to the species.
Suddenly, the Service was overwelmed with litigation. It literally could do nothing else but defend itself against critical habitat lawsuits. In an effort to make it all go away, it started settling these suits outrageously. In the case of the California gnatcatcher, for example, it settled by designating critical habitat that is four times greater than the entire range of the bird -- but critical habitat is only supposed to be the habitat the species needs to survive.
In California, about 2/3 of the state was suddenly under one or more critical habitat designations -- including the huge salmon and trout designations.
A Green Touche
Only after these designations were accomplished did the greens show what they'd been up to all along. They went for a redefinition of adverse modification. Under the current definition, you can "adversely modify" critical habitat as long as it doesn't harm the species. Fair enough. The greens have been winning court cases, though, that say you can't adversely harm critical habitat if it in any way may jeopardize the recovery of the species.
Here's the net effect: They've used the courts to create huge, bogus, scientifically indefensible critical habitat designations, then made it impossible to touch a blade of grass within them -- even though most of the land in question is unoccupied by the critters supposedly being protected.
The Bush Administration has rightly said "enough is enough." The courts are making bizarre decisions, the Service is trapped in a litigation morass, the environmentalists are trying to put the West off limits ... and there's nothing in it at all that benefits the critters. This is going to be a huge battle, and you'll hear some really bizarre quotes from the greens ... but remember, they're wrong.
Oh, and quickly looking at the NY Times story, it's about the Bush Administration refusing to remove hydroelectric and flood control/water supply dams in the West in order to protect salmon that can be protected in more sensible ways. Radical greens say they're against dams because they're bad for the environment, but their true agenda is anti-growth and de-population. They want to remove dams because (1) electricity brings growth (wrong!), and if people don't have it they won't live here and (2) if there are enough floods and droughts, people won't live here. Same battle, different front.
The more significant of the two stories is the LA Times piece, which focuses on a Bush administration proposal to cut critical habitat for two endangered fish species by as much as 80 percent. Bear with me; this really is interesting. Critical habitat is the front in the battle between the grab-everything/sue-everyone faction of the environmental movement and anyone-who-wants-to-build-anything-anywhere. It is a skirmish that shows just how intense and intelligent the radical greens are in their effort to de-populate the West. (I'll try to link that to an old Range Magazine piece later; Kieran Suckling of Center for Biological Diversity actually states de-population of LA as the goal of his litigation mill.)
The battle started about five years ago, when the Center, the Natural Resources Defense Council and other environmentalists suddenly started a wave of seemingly coordinated lawsuits demanding that critical habitat be designated for endangered species. They won every suit because the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service is required to designate critical habitat, but rightly hasn't done it becuase it's expensive to do, and it provides virtually no additional protection to the species.
Suddenly, the Service was overwelmed with litigation. It literally could do nothing else but defend itself against critical habitat lawsuits. In an effort to make it all go away, it started settling these suits outrageously. In the case of the California gnatcatcher, for example, it settled by designating critical habitat that is four times greater than the entire range of the bird -- but critical habitat is only supposed to be the habitat the species needs to survive.
In California, about 2/3 of the state was suddenly under one or more critical habitat designations -- including the huge salmon and trout designations.
A Green Touche
Only after these designations were accomplished did the greens show what they'd been up to all along. They went for a redefinition of adverse modification. Under the current definition, you can "adversely modify" critical habitat as long as it doesn't harm the species. Fair enough. The greens have been winning court cases, though, that say you can't adversely harm critical habitat if it in any way may jeopardize the recovery of the species.
Here's the net effect: They've used the courts to create huge, bogus, scientifically indefensible critical habitat designations, then made it impossible to touch a blade of grass within them -- even though most of the land in question is unoccupied by the critters supposedly being protected.
The Bush Administration has rightly said "enough is enough." The courts are making bizarre decisions, the Service is trapped in a litigation morass, the environmentalists are trying to put the West off limits ... and there's nothing in it at all that benefits the critters. This is going to be a huge battle, and you'll hear some really bizarre quotes from the greens ... but remember, they're wrong.
Oh, and quickly looking at the NY Times story, it's about the Bush Administration refusing to remove hydroelectric and flood control/water supply dams in the West in order to protect salmon that can be protected in more sensible ways. Radical greens say they're against dams because they're bad for the environment, but their true agenda is anti-growth and de-population. They want to remove dams because (1) electricity brings growth (wrong!), and if people don't have it they won't live here and (2) if there are enough floods and droughts, people won't live here. Same battle, different front.
posted by Laer at 5:49 AM
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