ESA Update 

April 2003

Biodiversity's Shield Now Endangered"
By Brock Evans, ESC executive director

"Nearly three decades ago, Congress overwhelmingly passed the Endangered Species Act, our most revolutionary, our strongest - and our most denounced - environmental law. Today, we must ask ourselves: what if the ESA had never existed at all?  How many species, forests, open spaces, wild places now protected, would there still be? If it falls, what will happen to what's left?  We may soon find out, because as this is written, the entire law, not to mention its funding and legal support, is under the fiercest and most sustained assault in its history."  

To read Brock's Earth Day message "Biodiversity's Shield Now Endangered" see: http://www.stopextinction.org .

From April 22, 2003 ESC GREENlines

March 2003

Bush ESA Implementation Pathetic

An analysis by the Center for Biological Diversity has found that the administration of President G. W. Bush is the first and only one to not voluntarily list any imperiled species and has actively worked to reduce or limit critical habitat designations says the Land Letter 2/20.  In its first two years, the administration has extended ESA protection to only 20 species - all the listing were the result of lawsuits - the fewest since Ronald Reagan listed 17 species in 1982 and 1983.  Of 32 critical habitat designations, all finalized under court order, the Bush administration has reduced the amount of protected habitat in three-quarters of them while increasing the size of none.

From March 3, 2003 GREENlines

Kangaroo Court Review in the Works:

As part of a Bush administration sweetheart settlement, the USFWS is "bowing to timber industry demands" and reviewing whether the northern spotted owl and marbled murrelet "still deserve the protection of the ESA" says the Seattle Post-Intelligencer 2/19.  Although the ESA requires a status review of the over 1,200 listed species every five years, few have been attempted and "when they have been done most have been perfunctory."  The service is also re-evaluating how much of the species' ancient forest habitat "needs to be left unlogged" and conservationists charge the whole process is "part of a pattern in which the Bush administration settles industry lawsuits on terms favorable to industry or finds other ways to support industry positions in court."