布希政府妨礙《瀕危動物法》 環保團體提告

Regulations announced by Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne last week that would exempt many federal activities, including those that generate greenhouse gases, from review under the Endangered Species Act were published in the Federal Register Tuesday.

But the regulations are being challenged in court by three conservation groups - the Center for Biological Diversity, Greenpeace and Defenders of Wildlife, who filed suit in federal court for the Northern District of California the day the regulations were announced, December 11.

Unless overturned in court, the regulations will take effect on January 11, nine days before President-elect Barack Obama is inaugurated and the presidency of George W. Bush comes to a close.

"These regulations undermine fundamental protections for the nation's endangered species," said Noah Greenwald with the Center for Biological Diversity. "We hope an Obama administration or Congress will act quickly to undo this 11th hour attempt to weaken our most important law for protecting wildlife."

The lawsuit argues that the regulations violate the Endangered Species Act and did not go through the required public review process. The regulations, first proposed on August 11, were rushed by the Bush administration through an abbreviated process in which more than 300,000 comments from the public were reviewed in three weeks, and environmental impacts were analyzed in a brief environmental assessment, rather than a fuller environmental impact statement.

Under current regulations, federal agencies must consult with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service if the agencies permit, fund, or otherwise carry out actions that "may affect" endangered species, or if the Service has already determined those actions adversely affect endangered species.

Under the new regulations, federal agencies will themselves determine whether their actions are likely to adversely affect endangered species. That finding would determine whether the agency must consult with the Fish and Wildlife Service.

The policy would also prohibit any consideration of the impacts of greenhouse gas emissions from federal projects on endangered species such as the polar bear.

The U.S. Geological Survey has published a series of reports predicting that due to climate change loss of summer sea ice, crucial habitat for polar bears, could lead to the death of two-thirds of the world's polar bears by mid-century, including all of Alaska's polar bears.

The polar bear was listed as "threatened" under the Endangered Species Act on May 14, 2008. The conservation groups' lawsuit seeks to ensure that the polar bear receives the full protections that other species receive under the law.

The polar bear is the largest of the world's bear species and is distributed among 19 Arctic subpopulations - two of which, the Chukchi and the Southern Beaufort Sea populations, are located within the United States.

"The polar bear doesn't have time for political maneuvers. Its habitat is melting away, its food is becoming scarce and the science is clear that the cause is global warming - yet the rule this administration released today affirms that little will be done to save the species from sure extinction," said Clark.

 Listing polar bears as threatened should help protect polar bear habitat from threats such as oil and gas development, which the Bush administration is aggressively pursuing in the Chukchi Sea north of Alaska and has even proposed in the pristine Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which provides the primary land denning habitat for the species, she said.