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Trump rolls back endangered species protections

The Trump administration on Monday announced it has finalized a controversial rollback of protections for endangered species, including allowing economic factors to be weighed before adding an animal to the list.

The Interior Department regulations would dramatically scale back America’s landmark conservation law, limiting protections for threatened species, how factors like climate change can be factored in listing decisions and the review process used before projects are approved on their habitat.

“It means that in all likelihood that the federal government itself and individuals will be damaging the habitat and likely increase the timetable and likelihood of a species going extinct,” David Hayes, executive director of the State Energy and Environmental Impact Center and a former deputy of Interior, said in a previous interview with The Hill.

Going forward, the Endangered Species Act will no longer offer the same protections for threatened species — those at risk of becoming extinct in the foreseeable future — as those that are already endangered.

“These changes crash a bulldozer through the Endangered Species Act’s lifesaving protections for America’s most vulnerable wildlife,” Noah Greenwald, the Center for Biological Diversity’s endangered species director, said in a statement.

Monday’s rule finalizes an earlier proposal from the Interior Department and prompted threats of lawsuits from many environmental groups who say the changes will gut the law.

The Endangered Species Act, first passed in 1973, is considered a success globally, surpassing protections for flora and fauna in many other countries. Environmentalists see it as one of America’s premier environmental laws.

But in the U.S it has been a target of industry, heavily criticized by some developers and lawmakers for working almost too well, making it difficult to encroach on habitat even once a species rebounds. Many would like species to be more easily removed from the list.

Interior described the new regulation as a modernization of the act “designed to increase transparency and effectiveness and bring the administration of the Act into the 21st century,” the agency said in a press release.

But environmentalists argue many of Interior’s changes will weaken protections for threatened and endangered species.

One big change from the administration is how far in the future it will look to determine how at risk a species is of becoming threatened or extinct. Critics say such a move will stop Interior from considering how climate change will impact vulnerable species.

“We will look out into the future so far as we can reliably predict and not speculate,” Gary Frazer, the associate director for endangered species at the Fish and Wildlife Service, said in a call with reporters. “This might be climate-induced changes in a physical environment.”

Though whether to list a species as threatened or endangered would still have to be a science-based decision, the economic impacts of a decision could also be shared publicly.

That could include how protecting a species or its habitat might hinder the operations of the oil and gas industry, foresters and many other operations that work on or near federal lands.

Hayes said the Endangered Species Act specifically bars such economic factors from being considered.

“We can expect if this goes final and if the court allows this to happen that industry will feed all kinds of sky is falling economic projections to the Fish and Wildlife Service and that information would be released at the same time a listing is proposed,” Hayes said. “The reason for it is obviously to influence the decision.”

The announcement was hailed by a number of industry groups, ranging from oil and gas companies to utilities and ranchers.

The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association referred to the decision as "long-awaited regulatory relief," while the American Petroleum Institute said it would lead to "the reduction of duplicative and unnecessary regulations that ultimately bog down conservation efforts."

Updated at 12:31 p.m.

https://thehill.com/policy/energy-enviro...ies-protections

smdh


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His presidency can’t end soon enough.


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EPA dropped salmon protection after Trump met with Alaska governor

The Environmental Protection Agency told staff scientists that it was no longer opposing a controversial Alaska mining project that could devastate one of the world's most valuable wild salmon fisheries just one day after President Trump met with Alaska's governor, CNN has learned.
The EPA publicly announced the reversal July 30, but EPA staff sources tell CNN that they were informed of the decision a month earlier, during a hastily arranged video conference after Trump's meeting with Gov. Mike Dunleavy. The governor, a supporter of the project, emerged from that meeting saying the president assured him that he's "doing everything he can to work with us on our mining concerns."
The news came as a "total shock" to some top EPA scientists who were planning to oppose the project on environmental grounds, according to sources. Those sources asked to remain anonymous for fear of retribution.
The copper-and-gold mine planned near Bristol Bay, Alaska, known as Pebble Mine, was blocked by the Obama administration's EPA after scientists found that the mine would cause "complete loss of" the bay's fish habitat.

EPA insiders tell CNN that the timing of the agency's internal announcement suggests Trump was personally involved in the decision.
Dunleavy met with Trump aboard Air Force One on June 26, as the President's plane was on the tarmac in Alaska. The President had stopped there on his way to the G20 summit in Japan.

Four EPA sources with knowledge of the decision told CNN that senior agency officials in Washington summoned scientists and other staffers to an internal videoconference on June 27, the day after the Trump-Dunleavy meeting, to inform them of the agency's reversal. The details of that meeting are not on any official EPA calendar and have not previously been reported.
Those sources said the decision disregards the standard assessment process under the Clean Water Act, cutting scientists out of the process.
The EPA's new position on the project is the latest development in a decade-long battle that has pitted environmentalists, Alaskan Natives and the fishing industry against pro-mining interests in Alaska.
In 2014, the project was halted because an EPA study found that it would cause "complete loss of fish habitat due to elimination, dewatering, and fragmentation of streams, wetlands, and other aquatic resources" in some areas of Bristol Bay. The agency invoked a rarely used provision of the Clean Water Act that works like a veto, effectively banning mining on the site.
Some current and former EPA officials say the decision to remove the Clean Water Act restriction ignores scientific evidence. The decision follows a series of regulatory rollbacks and political appointments within the Trump administration's EPA that have been criticized by former EPA administrators as favoring industry interests over the environment.
Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy met with President Trump aboard Air Force One on June 26.

The June 26 meeting between Trump and Dunleavy marked the fourth time the two had met since December.
Dunleavy has publicly supported the mining project and wrote a letter to Trump in March protesting the EPA's prior handling of the matter. He had dinner with Tom Collier, the CEO of Pebble Limited Partnership, the project's developer, in February and spoke to him on the phone in May, according to copies of Dunleavy's calendar reviewed by CNN. A member of Dunleavy's administration used to work on the Pebble project in public relations.
In response to CNN's question about whether Dunleavy asked Trump to direct the EPA to lift the restriction during the June meeting, Dunleavy's press secretary said the two discussed mining and a public land order, but he declined to provide specifics of the conversation.
Dunleavy said in a statement, "This project, like all projects, should be scrutinized and examined under a fair and rigorous permitting process prescribed by law. That was not the case under the EPA's unprecedented preemptive veto."
Neither the White House nor the EPA responded to CNN's question on whether the White House directed the EPA to lift the restriction on the mine.
The same day Trump and Dunleavy met in June, the EPA publicly announced that it would begin reconsidering whether to withdraw the Clean Water Act restriction on the Pebble Mine. EPA scientists and staff believed that they would then have weeks or months to reassess previous findings and potentially permanently stop the project, according to the sources.
Instead, immediately after Trump met with Dunleavy, EPA officials received an invitation from EPA headquarters to attend the video conference the next day, June 27.
During that video conference, EPA General Counsel Matthew Leopold said that a decision had been made to lift the restriction on the Pebble Mine proposal and that no further consideration of the matter was needed, sources said.
"I was dumbfounded," an EPA insider said. "We were basically told we weren't going to examine anything. We were told to get out of the way and just make it happen."
Leopold took over EPA responsibility for the Pebble Mine proposal since EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler, who previously worked for a law firm that provided services to Pebble, recused himself.
When CNN first asked about the June 27 meeting, EPA spokesman Michael Abboud said that Leopold told him he did not attend any meeting involving Pebble on that day, and therefore any announcement at any such meeting would lack authority.
After CNN told the EPA on Friday that evidence showed that Leopold organized and attended the June 27 meeting, Abboud contradicted his prior statement and said Leopold participated in an internal meeting that day to discuss an EPA memo as well as comment letters related to the project. Abboud said an EPA regional office decided to withdraw from the restriction on July 30.

This is the second time the EPA under the Trump administration has sought to remove the Clean Water Act restriction and clear the way for the Pebble Mine project.
In 2017, as CNN previously reported, top EPA officials directed staff to withdraw that protection and allow the project to move forward. That decision was made within hours of a meeting between then-EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt and Pebble CEO Collier. However, in January 2018, Pruitt flip-flopped and announced that the protections would stay in place as the EPA gathered more information. The EPA said at the time that the Pebble project could still apply for a permit, but "their permit application must clear a high bar, because EPA believes the risk to Bristol Bay may be unacceptable."
When the EPA publicly announced the decision to withdraw from the Obama-era restriction on July 30, the EPA's Chris Hladick, an administrator who presides over Alaska, said the preemptive veto that previously blocked the project "does not account for the full record and does not grapple with differing conclusions" about the mine's potential environmental impacts.
EPA spokesman Abboud said in a statement to CNN, "The previous administration's preemptive veto of this project, without a permit even being submitted, was a departure from regular order and the Trump administration is seeking a return to the correct process."
Abboud added that the decision to withdraw the restriction does not guarantee that the mine will receive a permit but said the EPA will now focus on the permit-review process.
Pebble Limited Partnership praised the decision in a news release last week that said the EPA's previous objections to the project were based on "'hypothetical mining scenarios' prepared by EPA itself, and assessed in an 'alleged' scientific study." The company also said that its most recent permit application has a "substantially smaller development footprint and enhanced environmental safeguards" and that the project would employ about 2,000 people in Alaska.
The company's CEO, Collier, also "expressly thanked Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy for his leadership in encouraging EPA to withdraw" its earlier decision.
Christine Todd Whitman, who served as an Environmental Protection Agency administrator during the George W. Bush administration, said the EPA's decision to lift the restriction on the mine before the agency's scientists fully reviewed the matter could violate the Clean Water Act.
"It's politics trumping policy and good science," said Whitman, who in 2017 joined two other former EPA administrators who served under Republican presidents in opposing the mine due to its estimated environmental impacts. "If this goes forward now with all the holes and the insufficiencies ... there'll be a lawsuit, no question about that."

Bristol Bay-area tribes have protested the mine and say it would not only harm the environment, it would ruin their way of life.
"If that mine gets put in, it would ... completely devastate our region," said Gayla Hoseth, second chief of the Curyung Tribal Council and a Bristol Bay Native Association director. "It would not only kill our resources, but it would kill us culturally."

https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/09/us/epa-alaska-pebble-mine-salmon-invs/index.html

It's an odd thing. I consider myself a Christian. As such, not only am I thankfull for the creation of God's creatures, the air and water he has blessed us with, but also to show my thanks, I feel it is my duty to help protect the things God has blessed me with.

I'm not sure how people can place wealth and power over over the blessings we were given and turn around and preach to us about God.


Intoducing for The Cleveland Browns, Quarterback Deshawn "The Predator" Watson. He will also be the one to choose your next head coach.

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The lack of response to this particular Trump action speaks volumes to me about this board.


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I've said nothing up 'til now, because there's nothing left to say.




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This ish pisses me off.

Like how can anyone even justify it with a straight face?


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Teddy Roosevelt is rolling in his grave tonight.


There will be no playoffs. Can’t play with who we have out there and compounding it with garbage playcalling and worse execution. We don’t have good skill players on offense period. Browns 20 - Bears 17.

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This isn't even a L/R Lib/Con thing.
This is straight-up corporatist doctrine.
Cashmunny over a clean home/backyard for all American citizens.

Throw the bums out.


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Alaska Ballot Measure 1, the Salmon Habitat Protections and Permits Initiative, was on the ballot in Alaska as an indirect initiated state statute on November 6, 2018. It was defeated.

A "yes" vote supported this measure to establish new requirements and a new permitting process for any projects affecting bodies of water related to the activity and habitat of salmon, steelhead or other anadromous fish, and to prohibit any projects or activity determined to cause significant and unrestorable damage to such fish habitats.

A "no" vote opposed this measure to establish new requirements and a new permitting process for any projects affecting bodies of water related to the activity and habitat of salmon, steelhead or other anadromous fish, and to prohibit any projects or activity determined to cause significant and unrestorable damage to such fish habitats.

Results:
Yes- 103,836 or 37.68 percent
No - 171,711 or 62.32 percent

Sounds like it should have been a State issue all along, not Federal.

The People Have Spoken!

https://ballotpedia.org/Alaska_Ballot_Measure_1,_Salmon_Habitat_Protections_and_Permits_Initiative_(2018)

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Originally Posted By: EveDawg
This ish pisses me off.

Like how can anyone even justify it with a straight face?


4o cent and the rest of the goper sheep have no problems doing just that. The trump era...pffft.


Some day, following the example of the United States of America, there will be a United States of Europe.

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I have been to Lake Iliamna and the surrounding area where the Pebble Mine project is proposed.

I even contacted Larry Csonka because of his outdoor show in the area.

The Pebble Mine has been voted down. But they have not given up. They continue to try and go around the will of the people. Disregarding the catastrophic consequences the mine would have on salmon fishery and local economy.

I have signed every petition available to stop the Pebble Mine. More people need to act.

Bristol Bay has the largest run of wild sockeye in the world. It is a pristine area and can not coexist with that proposed mine.

trump has zero conscious when it comes to the environment.

This has to stop. We owe future generations the right to enjoy what we have and not allow it to be destroyed.

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Birds Are Vanishing From North America

The number of birds in the United States and Canada has declined by 3 billion, or 29 percent, over the past half-century, scientists find.

The skies are emptying out.

The number of birds in the United States and Canada has fallen by 29 percent since 1970, scientists reported on Thursday. There are 2.9 billion fewer birds taking wing now than there were 50 years ago.

The analysis, published in the journal Science, is the most exhaustive and ambitious attempt yet to learn what is happening to avian populations. The results have shocked researchers and conservation organizations.

In a statement on Thursday, David Yarnold, president and chief executive of the National Audubon Society, called the findings “a full-blown crisis.”

Experts have long known that some bird species have become vulnerable to extinction. But the new study, based on a broad survey of more than 500 species, reveals steep losses even among such traditionally abundant birds as robins and sparrows.

There are likely many causes, the most important of which include habitat loss and wider use of pesticides. “Silent Spring,” Rachel Carson’s prophetic book in 1962 about the harms caused by pesticides, takes its title from the unnatural quiet settling on a world that has lost its birds:

“On the mornings that had once throbbed with the dawn chorus of robins, catbirds, doves, jays, wrens, and scores of other bird voices, there was now no sound.”

Kevin Gaston, a conservation biologist at the University of Exeter, said that new findings signal something larger at work: “This is the loss of nature.”

Common bird species are vital to ecosystems, controlling pests, pollinating flowers, spreading seeds and regenerating forests. When these birds disappear, their former habitats often are not the same.

“Declines in your common sparrow or other little brown bird may not receive the same attention as historic losses of bald eagles or sandhill cranes, but they are going to have much more of an impact,” said Hillary Young, a conservation biologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who was not involved in the new research.

A team of researchers from universities, government agencies and nonprofit organizations collaborated on the new study, which combined old and new methods for counting birds.

For decades, professional ornithologists have been assisted by an army of devoted amateur bird-watchers who submit their observations to databases and help carry out surveys of bird populations each year.

In the new study, the researchers turned to those surveys to estimate the populations of 529 species between 2006 and 2015.

Those estimates include 76 percent of all bird species in the United States and Canada, but represent almost the entire population of birds. (The species for which there weren’t enough data to make firm estimates occur only in small numbers.)

The researchers then used bird-watching records to estimate the population of each species since 1970, the earliest year for which there is solid data.

“This approach of combining population abundance estimates across all species and looking for an overall trend is really unprecedented,” said Scott Loss, a conservation biologist at Oklahoma State University who was part of the new study.

While some species grew, the researchers found, the majority declined — often by huge numbers.

“We were stunned by the result — it’s just staggering,” said Kenneth V. Rosenberg, a conservation scientist at Cornell University and the American Bird Conservancy, and the lead author of the new study.

“It’s not just these highly threatened birds that we’re afraid are going to go on the endangered species list,” he said. “It’s across the board.”

Weather radar offered another way to track bird populations. Dr. Rosenberg and his colleagues counted birds recorded on radar at 143 stations across the United States from 2007 to 2018. They focused on springtime scans, when birds were migrating in great numbers.

The team measured a 14 percent decline during that period, consistent with the drop recorded in the bird-watching records.

“If we have two data sets showing the same thing, it’s a home run,” said Nicole Michel, a senior quantitative ecologist at the Audubon Society who was not involved in the study.

Among the worst-hit groups were warblers, with a population that dropped by 617 million. There are 440 million fewer blackbirds than there once were.

Dr. Rosenberg said he was surprised by how widespread the population drop was. Even starlings — a species that became a fast-breeding pest after its introduction to the United States in 1890 — have dwindled by 83 million birds, a 49 percent decline.

Europe is experiencing a similar loss of birds, also among common species, said Dr. Gaston, of the University of Exeter. “The numbers are broadly comparable,” he said.

The new study was not designed to determine why birds are disappearing, but the results — as well as earlier research — point to some likely culprits, Dr. Rosenberg said.

Grassland species have suffered the biggest declines by far, having lost 717 million birds. These birds have probably been decimated by modern agriculture and development.

“Every field that’s plowed under, and every wetland area that’s drained, you lose the birds in that area,” Dr. Rosenberg said.

In addition to habitat loss, pesticides may have taken a toll. A study published last week, for example, found that pesticides called neonicotinoids make it harder for birds to put on weight needed for migration, delaying their travel.

The researchers found some positive signs. Bald eagles are thriving, for example, and falcon populations have grown by 33 percent. Waterfowl are on the upswing.

For the most part, there’s little mystery about how these happy exceptions came to be. Many recovering bird species were nearly wiped out in the last century by pesticides, hunting and other pressures. Conservation measures allowed them to bounce back.

“In those cases, we knew what the causes were and we acted on that,” Dr. Rosenberg said. “They’re models of success.”

But some thriving populations are harder to explain.

Tiny warbler-like birds called vireos are booming, with 89 million more birds than in 1970 — a jump of 53 percent. Yet warblers, which share the same habitats as vireos, have suffered a 37 percent decline.

“I have no idea why vireos are doing well,” Dr. Rosenberg said. “I’d love to do a study of vireos and discover what their secret is.”

The sheer scale of the bird decline meant that stopping it would require immense effort, said Dr. Young, of the University of California, Santa Barbara. Habitats must be defended, chemicals restricted, buildings redesigned. “We’re overusing the world, so it’s affecting everything,” she said.

The Audubon Society is calling for protection of bird-rich habitats, such as the Great Lakes and the Colorado River Basin, as well as for upholding the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, which the Trump Administration is trying to roll back.

The society and other bird advocacy groups also suggest things that individuals can do. They urge keeping cats inside, so they don’t kill smaller birds. Vast numbers of birds die each year after flying into windows; there are ways to make the glass more visible to them.

To some birders, the study’s findings confirmed a dreaded hunch.

Beverly Gyllenhaal, 62, a retired cookbook author, and her husband, Anders, have spotted 256 species in parks in the eastern United States. But when she visited her mother in North Carolina in recent years, it seemed there weren’t as many birds as she recalled from her childhood there.

And when she talks to people around the United States on her birding travels, many say the same thing. “Oftentimes people will tell you, ‘It’s nothing like it used to be,’” she said.

The estimated losses have left her appalled. “If the cardinals and the blue jays and the sparrows aren’t doing well,” she said, “that’s really scary.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/19/science/bird-populations-america-canada.html

Pics, videos and more at the link.

Last edited by OldColdDawg; 09/19/19 09:24 PM.

Your feelings and opinions do not add up to facts.
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