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Even in discredited retreat, Bush is eager to shred Endangered Species Act 

Daily Astorian Editorial

April 2, 2007

With a depressing 659 days to go before the next presidential inauguration on Jan. 20, 2009, the Bush administration is busily attempting to shred the Endangered Species Act as a parting gift to the club of corporate oligarchs to which the president and so many of his appointees belong.

Oil and mining companies, land speculators, cattlemen and others have been unable to push their anti-ESA agenda through Congress, even when it was still under Republican control.

The latest effort seeks to bypass Congress by writing new internal rules for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

In essence, the service is considering curtailing the ways in which federal fish and wildlife protection agencies can act, especially when federal actions threaten endangered species.

Here in the Pacific Northwest, this would for example give the Bonneville Power Administration power to decide on its own whether Columbia River dams have become "immutable" elements of the landscape, as officials unsuccessfully argued last year in U.S. District Court. It would be up to BPA and other agencies to decide for themselves whether their actions harm endangered species.

"These changes, if implemented, could well be the last straw that sends salmon over the brink to extinction, and the West Coast fishing industry along with it," according to the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations.

"That can only result in further huge economic losses for all of the Pacific salmon states, at a time when communities up and down the coast are already being hard hit."

At the same time, the proposal would limit the wildlife service's own power to decide when species are endangered, and it would delegate more power to the states. Particularly in the interior of the West where legislatures have often opposed protecting species, this would mean piecemeal dismantlement of laws whose effectiveness often depends on consistency across state lines.

H. Dale Hall, director of the Fish and Wildlife Service, which administers the Endangered Species Act, told The New York Times that the draft proposal detailing the changes was "really a beginning of a process."

This is far from reassuring. Setting aside the Bush administration's well-established record for mendacity, less than two years before the end of a presidency is no time to begin robbing a key environmental law of its potency. That such an action comes months after voters thoroughly rejected Republican candidates also argues against major changes in long-standing policies.

Fortunately, powerful committee chairman U.S. Rep. Norm Dicks of Washington state has said in the strongest terms that any significant alterations in federal endangered species protections must be made by elected officials in Congress.

The Endangered Species Act needs to be updated and refined. But the last days of a failed administration are no time to undertake such important work.

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