Total Bovine Poo.
This is from the LAST year of the Clinton Administration (published in NOV of 2000)
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html...dlife%20ServiceQUOTE
The Fish and Wildlife Service said today that it could add more wildlife to the endangered species list until next fall because it had to spend so much time and money defending lawsuits from environmentalists.
The decision means that about 25 species being considered for the list will have to wait until this fiscal year ends on Sept. 30, 2001
But I'm not trying (like the original poster) to be PARTISIAN about this, this was a MAJOR SNAFU in the law. It made the designation of endangered species a COURT problem. Problem is that avenue IGNORES the PRIORITY of which species need protection FIRST.
Bush, early in his admin tried to address the problem:
QUOTE (->
| QUOTE |
The Fish and Wildlife Service said today that it could add more wildlife to the endangered species list until next fall because it had to spend so much time and money defending lawsuits from environmentalists.
The decision means that about 25 species being considered for the list will have to wait until this fiscal year ends on Sept. 30, 2001 |
But I'm not trying (like the original poster) to be PARTISIAN about this, this was a MAJOR SNAFU in the law. It made the designation of endangered species a COURT problem. Problem is that avenue IGNORES the PRIORITY of which species need protection FIRST.
Bush, early in his admin tried to address the problem:
Bush administration asks Congress to set aside, at least for year, provision of Endangered Species Act that has been main tool used by citizens' groups to win protection for plants and animals; if Congress approves measure,
Fish and Wildlife Service would devote its available money next year to listing endangered-species cases it deems to be top priorities, while being specifically barred from spending any money to carry out new court orders or settlements involving other plants or animals;
Interior Dept officials defend request as necessary to let overburdened agency regain control of mission they say has increasingly been driven by courts, with dozens of cases involving more than 400 species now on dockets; As for the FWS budget Bush RAISED it his first year in office and even in the depressed economy of 2001 he put in an increase of over 200 million over the last Clinton/Gore budget.
The latest budget request for 2008 is another increase to 2.1 Billion.
See:
http://www.fws.gov/And
http://www.fws.gov/news/NewsReleases/showN...5C42AE365375C27And
http://www.fws.gov/news/NewsReleases/showN...C5FE36C20D12156Arthur
LMillet
6th July 2007 - 11:42 PM
Bush has slashed recovery related programs within the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service by 15% in real dollars between 2001 (the last Clinton budget) and 2007. If Congress enacts Bush's 2008 budget proposal, the total decline will be 28%.
Bush has the lowest rate of placing species on endangered species list in the history of the Endangered Species Act and has not listed any species in over a year. The last listing drought of this length occurred in 1981 under the Reagan/Watt administration.
Bush's 2008 budget request also includes this nasty provision: it limits the amount of funding that can be used to place species on the list, upgrade their status from threatened to endangered, or establish critical habitat for them. At the same time, it excludes any financial limits on efforts to remove species from the endangered list or downgrade them from endangered to threatened status.
Hmm...does that indicate where the administration's priorities lie? Are you sure it makes sense to suspend the Endangered Species Act rules about critical habitat in order to subject imperiled species to Bush's personal priorities? Even the Republican congress thought this went too far: Bush's 2001 proposal was rejected by both the House and Senate.
adoucette
7th July 2007 - 02:46 PM
CODE
Fish and Wildlife Service 2000 compared to 2001 budget - Difference
DISCRECTIONARY SPENDING in Thousands of dollars.
FWS, Refuge Operations & Maintenance 262,055 281,966 +19,911
FWS, Law Enforcement 39,405 52,010 +12,605
Endangered Species Operations 108,282 115,263 +6,981
US Species With PLANS (listing is one thing, putting an APPROVED PLAN in place means the govt has an OFFICIAL plan to actually DO something about it)
June 2000 (after 27 years of the ESA) there were 923 listed US species with RECOVERY PLANS
Mar 2007 There are 1,075 Species with RECOVERY PLANS
In the same time that 78 more species have been added to the list, the more important function of getting RECOVERY PLANS approved resulted in 153 more species PLANS.
Its SPECIES PLANS which SAVE SPECIES.
Not listings.
Arthur