[at-l] Weary?

[rcli4 at comcast.net (rcli4@comcast.net)]

I have it somewhere.  If you really need it I can find it. 

Clyde
-------------- Original message -------------- 

> Anybody have his telephone number? 
> 
> Shane 
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> http://mailman.backcountry.net/mailman/listinfo/at-l From RoksnRoots at aol.com  Fri Sep 30 13:31:12 2005
From: RoksnRoots at aol.com (RoksnRoots@aol.com)
Date: Fri Sep 30 14:33:52 2005
Subject: [at-l] Bush Weakens Endangered Species Act
Message-ID: <1d4.45853cda.306eec80@aol.com>



       From NY Times:


          " By a vote of 229 to 193, the House of Representatives moved 
Thursday to undo some of the central provisions of the 32-year-old Endangered 
Species Act and to require that agencies enforcing the law reimburse property 
owners if the law's impact reduces the value of the land.

     Environmental groups expressed dismay at the measure, which, if enacted, 
would represent one of the most far-reaching reversals of environmental 
policy in more than a decade. Leading House Democrats also said it created an 
unlimited financial entitlement for landowners. 

       The prospects for Senate passage are cloudy at best; even the bill's 
sponsor, Representative Richard W. Pombo of California, the chairman of the 
House Resources committee, said he did not expect quick action in the Senate. 

       The vote, which came after the defeat of a rival measure that reworked 
the law but required enforceable protections for animals and plants in danger 
of extinction, was the culmination of a 12-year legislative mission by Mr 
Pombo. The Bush administration gave its formal support to the measure a few hours 
before the vote. 

       A former rancher and City Council member from Tracy, Calif., Mr. Pombo 
has made property rights and opposition to the Endangered Species Act the 
lodestar of his political career. "I'm really happy," he said after Thursday's 
vote. 

       Under his bill, the process of putting a species on the federal list 
of threatened or endangered species would become more difficult, with a new 
requirement for economic analysis of such decisions.

      But its core provision - one that was, in some respects, mimicked in 
the rival bill - eliminates the current system of designating "critical 
habitat," territory deemed critical to a species' survival. Such a designation can 
open the door to significant land-use restrictions. But environmental groups 
argue that the designation of habitat is a crucial prerequisite to the survival 
and eventual recovery of an endangered species. 

       The Pombo measure creates "recovery teams" that prepare "recovery 
plans" based on "the best available scientific data." The teams can delineate 
lands that would help a species. But as compared with the current system of 
critical habitat, federal agencies would have less obligation to take a species' 
needs into account in making land-use decisions.

       And such teams would not always be required; the law also allows the 
political leadership of the Interior Department to undertake this function. 

     The legislation also has provisions for the reimbursement of property 
owners whose land values are reduced by the law and financial incentives for 
those who work for species conservation, which several Democrats derided as 
federal payments for obeying the law.

      Mr Pombo argued that under current law, federal wildlife management 
officials had little incentive to negotiate.

     "With this bill there is a cost."  (Snip)

     But Jamie Rappoport Clark, the executive vice president of Defenders of 
Wildlife and the Director of the Fish and Wildlife Service in the Clinton 
administration, said the Pombo measure was " a deadly blow to the protections of 
the Endangered Species Act."

       "This is an irresponsible developer's dream," Ms. Clark said, and 
noted that the bill "makes it easier to use deadly pesticides" of the sort that 
were implicated in the previous declines of the bald eagle and peregrine falcon. 

      The decline of such species - a focus of Rachel Carson's book "Silent 
Spring," one of major tracts of the environmental movement - has long since 
been reversed.

      [ R&R  - This is patently misleading and false (typical Times 
politically-motivated untruth) Bird and other species have been crashing ever since 
Carson. The reason isn't pesticides - it's sprawl] 

       (Snip)

      Those supporting the rival measure, which gave federal agencies more 
power to manage land use to benefit species than Mr. Pombo's bill did, argued 
that species like the bald eagle, the manatee, the sea otter and the grizzly 
bear were saved from extinction by the act. Those in the Pombo camp argued that 
barely 1 percent of the more than 1,200 listed species had recovered to the 
extent that they could be removed from the endangered species list. 

          (Snip)


               R&R:

             You can see Pombo supports the "It isn't wilderness anyway" 
mentality...






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