Feds Rush To Ease Endangered Species Rules

[nosmokes]

This is simply unconscionable.Or it would be in a real democracy.

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original-Common dreams

Published on Wednesday, October 22, 2008 by Associated Press
Feds Rush To Ease Endangered Species Rules

15 reviewers, 200,000 comments, 32 hours to go through all of them

by Dina Cappiello

WASHINGTON - Rushing to ease endangered species rules before President Bush leaves office, Interior Department officials are attempting to review 200,000 comments from the public in just 32 hours, according to an e-mail obtained by The Associated Press.

This undated photograph released by Defenders of Wildlife shows the gray wolf. Although the wolf was recently returned the Endangered Species list, the Bush administration is using underhanded tactics to push through changes. Rushing to ease endangered species rules before President Bush leaves office, Interior Department officials are attempting to review 200,000 comments from the public in just 32 hours. (AFP/Defenders of Wildlife)
The Fish and Wildlife Service has called a team of 15 people to Washington this week to pore through letters and online comments about a proposal to exclude greenhouse gases and the advice of federal biologists from decisions about whether dams, power plants and other federal projects could harm species. That would be the biggest change in endangered species rules since 1986.

In an e-mail last week to Fish and Wildlife managers across the country, Bryan Arroyo, the head of the agency's endangered species program, said the team would work eight hours a day starting Tuesday to the close of business on Friday to sort through the comments. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne's office, according to the e-mail, will be responsible for analyzing and responding to them.

The public comment period ended last week, which initiated the review.

House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Nick Rahall, D-W.Va., whose own letter opposing the changes is among the thousands that will be processed, called the 32-hour deadline a "last-ditch attempt to undermine the long-standing integrity of the Endangered Species program."

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