Yesterday the Department of Interior finalized a rule that allows wind farms to get 30-year permits allowing them to kill federally-protected eagles. Eagles are frequent accidental victims of power plants and wind turbines, and the government has long taken the position that it is a federal crime to kill an eagle even unintentionally. To get […]
Archive | Endangered Species
D.C. Circuit Rejects Challenges to Polar Bear Listing
This morning the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit handed down a unanimous opinion rejecting both industry and environmentalist group challenges to the Fish & Wildlife Service’s decision to list the polar as a “threatened” species. Environmentalist groups argued the FWS should have listed the polar bear as “endangered. Industry groups and their […]
Exaggerating Species Extinction – The Sequel
By Jonathan H. Adler on January 26, 2013 8:57 am in Endangered Species, Environment, Politicizing Science
In 2011 I noted a report in Nature suggesting that species extinction rates have been overestimated. A new report in Science has similar implications, suggesting that fears many species will go extinct before they are even discovered are overblown. Specifically, the study suggests many common estimates exaggerate the likely number of species and presume greater […]
Assessing Endangered Species Science
By Jonathan H. Adler on October 18, 2011 11:01 am in Endangered Species, Environment, Politicizing Science
Last Thursday, at a congressional hearing, Assistant U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Gary Frazer said that the Interior Department’s Office of Science Integrity would conduct an independent evaluation of the work of FWS biologists accused by a federal judge of being dishonest with the court and acting in ‘”bad faith.” As the Los Angeles […]
Judge Curtails Salmon Plan, Rips Fed Scientists
Today a federal judge threw out portions of the federal government’s plan to protect several fish species, including some salmon and steelhead in California, under the Endangered Species Act for the second time. The Fresno Bee reports: U.S. District Judge Oliver Wanger invalidated parts of the U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service’s so-called biological opinion, calling […]
Wind Power Clipping Wings
Wind power provides substantial environmental benefits, not the least of which is that it produces electricity without emitting greenhouse gases or traditional air pollutants. It can also be useful source of distributed power. But (like anything else) it also has its drawbacks, such as its unsuitability for baseload power and (as some environmentalists are increasingly […]
Settling on Species Numbers
Biodiversity loss may be a serious environmental problem (I certainly believe it is), but scientists have had a hard time figuring out how many species are disappearing and how fast. One difficulty is the lack of consensus on how many species there are in the first place. Approximately 1.2 million species have been identified, but […]
Failing to Save the Spotted Owl
James L. Huffman, former Dean of the Lewis & Clark Law School, examines the federal government’s flagging efforts to save the endangered spotted owl in the Pacific Northwest. Despite a 90% cutback in harvesting on federal lands (which constitute 46% of Oregon and Washington combined), the population of spotted owls continues to decline, as do […]
Exaggerating Species Extinction
By Jonathan H. Adler on May 19, 2011 10:45 am in Endangered Species, Environment, Politicizing Science
A new paper in Nature has sparked a firestorm of debate over species extinction rates. The paper, by two ecologists, shows how the use of the species-area curve produces inflated projections of species extinction rates. As an accompanying article in Nature explains: The most common method of predicting extinction rates relies on the species–area curve, […]
Endangered Species Science
By Jonathan H. Adler on May 4, 2011 11:58 pm in Endangered Species, Environment, Politicizing Science
Yesterday I appeared on NPR’s Dianne Rehm Show to discuss the Endangered Species Act. The show was prompted by Congressional passage of a budget rider removing gray wolves in the northern Rockies from the endangered species list. This was the first time Congress ordered a species delisted, and prompted complaints that Congress was intruding […]
Is FWS Asked to List Too Many Species?
The Fish and Wildlife Service claims it is overwhelmed by requests to list additional species as “endangered” or “threatened” under the Endangered Species Act. The NYT reports: The federal Fish and Wildlife Service is in emergency triage mode as it struggles with an avalanche of petitions and lawsuits over the endangered species list, the chief […]
Wind Power’s Not for the Birds
The American Bird Conservancy has renewed concerns that wind power development could threaten several bird species, according to this report. (HT: NYT Green Blog) Officials with American Bird Conservancy . . . cited data from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that estimates 400,000 birds of various species are killed by turbine blades annually. The […]
Obama Administration Defends Bush Polar Bear Position
By Jonathan H. Adler on December 24, 2010 4:48 pm in Climate Change, Endangered Species, Environment
Politico reports that the Obama Administration is defending the Bush Administration’s decision to list the polar bear as a “threatened” species, rather than “endangered” species, under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). As I discussed in this series of posts, environmentalist groups petitioned to have the polar bear listed as an endangered species due to the […]
Suing EPA Over Gulf Cleanup
The Center for Biological Diversity has filed a notice of intent to sue the Environmental Protection Agency for authorizing the use of chemical dispersants to faciliate the cleanup of oil from the Deepwater Horizon accident in the Gulf of Mexico. According to a CBD attorney, “The fact that no one in the federal government ever […]
U.S. Backs Bluefin Tuna Trade Ban
The Washington Post reports that the U.S. will support a proposal to list Atlantic bluefin tuna on Appendix I of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species. This would have the effect of prohibiting all international trade in this valued fish. A single prized specimen has sold for as much as $175,000 in Japan. […]