Posted by Andrew Wetzler
Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne has wildly misleading a op-ed in the USA Today about his proposed regulatory changes to the Endangered Species Act. The Secretary makes it sound like his sole concern when proposing these changes was preventing...
Posted by Andrew Wetzler in Saving Wildlife and Wild Places , U.S. Law and Policy
Like a shipwrecked sailor clinging to the storm tossed cliffs of an angry sea, many plants and animals in Virginia and Maryland, such as the seabed amarath, cling to life as they pull against the swirling drain of extinction. Today...
Posted by Andrew Wetzler in Saving Wildlife and Wild Places , U.S. Law and Policy
The Bush Administrations’ last-minute proposal to dramatically weaken Endangered Species Act protections for fish, wildlife, and plants has now been officially published in the Federal Register. Because the Fish and Wildlife Service is refusing to accept any comments by e-mail,...
Posted by Andrew Wetzler in Saving Wildlife and Wild Places , U.S. Law and Policy
They never cease to amaze. The Bush Administration apparently decided sometime last fall that it will no longer accept any public comments on proposed Endangered Species Act regulations by e-mail or fax. I stumbled on this change when looking at...
Posted by Andrew Wetzler in Saving Wildlife and Wild Places
I just came across this opinion piece touting the benefits of big-game hunting on wildlife conservation generally, and African elephants in particular. The authors write: It’s counterintuitive, of course, but an elephant well shot is a species well protected. Simply...
Posted by Andrew Wetzler in Saving Wildlife and Wild Places , U.S. Law and Policy
Ahhh, the Bush Administration. Today the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service announced that they are going to propose new regulatory changes to the Endangered Species Act that will dramatically weaken provisions of the law...
Posted by Andrew Wetzler in Saving Wildlife and Wild Places , Solving Global Warming
Greg Pollowitz has posted a reply to my critique of his post on the discovery of 125,000 western lowland gorillas in the Republic of Congo. In his original post, Pollowitz seemed to argue that this discovery should undermine our confidence...
Posted by Andrew Wetzler in Reviving the World's Oceans , Saving Wildlife and Wild Places
Sad news today that Lummi, the great-great-grandmother of a family of killer whales in Puget Sound known as the “K-Pod,” has gone missing and is presumed dead. She was believed to have been born in around 1910. When I read...
Posted by Andrew Wetzler in Saving Wildlife and Wild Places , Solving Global Warming , U.S. Law and Policy
I normally ignore the folks at Planet Gore (The National Review’s “environmental” blog). Well, ignore them is probably the wrong word. I read Planet Gore, but I just don’t bother responding to the sophomoric dialogue that passes for commentary on...
Posted by Andrew Wetzler in Saving Wildlife and Wild Places , Solving Global Warming
Yesterday the State of Alaska announced that they had filed a long-anticipated lawsuit challenging the polar bear’s Endangered Species Act protection in federal court in Washington, D.C.. Alaska’s case joins an earlier case, filed by the Safari Club and a...
Posted by Andrew Wetzler in Saving Wildlife and Wild Places , Solving Global Warming , U.S. Law and Policy
Today Exxon Mobil announced record quarterly profits of $11.7 billion (this is not just a record for Exxon, mind you, but for all of United States corporate history). Yesterday, the Pacific Legal Foundation, a property-rights law firm, filed a letter on...
Posted by Andrew Wetzler in Reviving the World's Oceans , Saving Wildlife and Wild Places , U.S. Law and Policy
The Washington Post reports that viral hemorrhagic septicemia, a disease often described as “fish ebola,” has been discovered in southern Lake Michigan and a reservoir in Ohio. Hemorrhagic septicemia is an invasive species, most likely brought into the great lakes in...
Posted by Andrew Wetzler in Saving Wildlife and Wild Places , U.S. Law and Policy
This case, like a cloud larger than a man’s hand, will hang over the northwest states of Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming until there has been a final determination of the complex issues presented.Thus begins Federal District Judge Donald Molloy’s much...
Posted by Andrew Wetzler in Saving Wildlife and Wild Places , U.S. Law and Policy
Over at the ESA blog, Keith Rizzardi has a post up about NOAA Fisheries new “incidental take permit” for listed species of salmon and steelhead in Washington. Basically, because there are both listed and unlisted species of salmon and steelhead...
Posted by Andrew Wetzler in Saving Wildlife and Wild Places
Despite the rather depressing fact that federal protections for gray wolves in the northern Rocky Mountains have been stripped away by a misguided (and illegal) federal regulation and that states like Wyoming have responded by dramatically increasing their wolf-killing programs,...
