Garter snake deserves protection

[TechBear_Seattle]

An op-ed, but posted here for disussion of the Misadministration's use of politics rather than science (in this and so many, many other areas.) And why the (expletive deleted) did I miss this kind of news if "the media" revealed such a gross violation of federal law?

Garter snake deserves protection
NOAH GREENWALD, GUEST COLUMNIST

A few weeks ago, the media revealed illegal reversals of endangered species decisions ordered by Julie MacDonald, a political appointee in the Department of Interior. Though not a scientist, MacDonald has taken it upon herself to review, rewrite and often reverse major decisions regarding endangered species by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, for example, include an e-mail from MacDonald ordering FWS to exclude the entire Columbia River Power System, Northwest Forest Plan area, Willamette Valley, Malhuer River and other large portions of the landscape from critical habitat for the threatened bull trout, resulting in a roughly 82 percent cut in protected habitat from proposed to final.

Other documents demonstrate MacDonald or other high-level officials reversed decisions to protect the Gunnison sage grouse, California tiger salamander, roundtail chub, Gunnison's and White-tailed prairie dogs, Mexican garter snake and a Mariana Islands plant.

When Congress wrote the Endangered Species Act, it required decisions regarding endangered species to be based solely on the best available science. The ultimate survival of some of the nation's most emblematic wildlife species and the health of our ecosystems might have been sacrificed otherwise. Embattled wildlife such as the bull trout are owed a fair shake. Interior must throw out MacDonald's tainted decisions but we also need to fix the bigger problems.

(The op-ed continues at http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/296612_enviro21.html)

Noah Greenwald is a conservation biologist with the Center for Biological Diversity in Portland, Ore.

[Double T]

1. With bushco, ALL things good have been reversed by evil........

let's make certain RW neocons are NOT on the endangered species list so THEY will decline to extinction.