Wednesday, April 11, 2001
By JENNIFER A. DLOUHY SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER WASHINGTON BUREAU
WASHINGTON -- President Bush is asking Congress to give his administration full authority over the listing of endangered species and to block citizens from filing lawsuits to force animals and plants onto the list.
The proposal to waive parts of the Endangered Species Act, and in effect give Interior Secretary Gale Norton sole discretion over listings, is contained in Bush's $1.76 trillion budget which was unveiled Monday.
The request drew fire yesterday from a variety of environmental groups, who warned that such a measure -- combined with a 25 percent cut in endangered species funding -- would be "an invitation to extinction."
The waiver would essentially gut the 28-year-old act by shutting off one of the main ways species are listed as endangered, Defenders of Wildlife President Rodger Schlickeisen said at a briefing yesterday with the Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council and other environmental advocacy groups.
In his budget plan, Bush asks Congress to overlook what Schlickeisen said is "perhaps the strongest single element of the Endangered Species Act," a section that allows citizens to sue if the Department of Interior is not moving quickly enough to list a species.
"That leaves the discretion with ... a secretary of the Interior who I point out through a long career has taken every opportunity to debunk the Endangered Species Act (and) speak against it and at one point even suggest that it was unconstitutional," Schlickeisen said.
"One doesn't have to wonder very much what's on Secretary of the Interior Norton's mind when she's thinking of making this proposal or what's on his (Bush's) mind when he's proposing it in the budget."
Hopefully this is the case. That it causes the extinction of the enviro-wackos. (I can hope, can't I?)
"...perhaps the strongest single element of the Endangered Species Act," a section that allows citizens to sue if the Department of Interior is not moving quickly enough to list a species."
The ecology people must be made liable and bare the financial risks associated with implementation of their (idiotic) causes to avoid frivolous lawsuits and prevent causing financial ruin to citizens as it has with the Klamath Falls farmers.