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hatrack

(59,587 posts)
Thu Oct 25, 2018, 07:51 AM Oct 2018

Shitstain Nominates Ex-Monsanto Exec W. Zero Wildlife Background To Run Fish & Wildlife Service

But don't worry - there's a "grand pivot" to conservation coming soon from Zinke's Interior Department!

President Donald Trump announced late Monday that he intends to nominate a former agrochemical industry official to lead the Department of the Interior’s Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS). The selection of Aurelia Skipwith, who worked at Monsanto for six years, to head FWS carries on a Trump administration trend of filling top environmental regulatory positions with officials from companies regulated by the agency. If confirmed by the U.S. Senate, Skipwith’s duties will include enforcing federal wildlife laws, protecting endangered species, managing migratory birds, and conserving and restoring wildlife habitat.

Environmental and conservation groups largely condemned Skipwith’s nomination, noting that she spent the past year and a half at the Interior Department helping to oversee the administration’s dismantling of wildlife and national monument protections.

EDIT

Under current U.S. law, the Center for Biological Diversity said a president cannot appoint a person to run FWS unless the person is “by reason of scientific education and experience, knowledgeable in the principles of fisheries and wildlife management.” Skipwith’s nomination breaks with decades of tradition from presidential administrations of both parties “in that she has neither education nor experience in fisheries and wildlife management,” the environmental group said.

In spring of 2017, FWS ended the first nationwide biological reviews that assessed the impacts of pesticides on endangered species. In August, it reversed a 2014 decision prohibiting bee-killing neonicotinoid pesticides and genetically modified, pesticide-resistant crops on national wildlife refuges.

EDIT

https://thinkprogress.org/trump-nominates-former-monsanto-executive-to-lead-u-s-fish-and-wildlife-service-0ca95d6c4dbf/

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