Senate wants to significantly weaken the Endangered Species Act in the name of business profits
A Senate hearing to “modernize the Endangered Species Act” unfolded Wednesday just as supporters of the law had feared, with round after round of criticism from Republican lawmakers who said the federal effort to keep species from going extinct encroaches on states’ rights, is unfair to landowners and stymies efforts by mining companies to extract resources and create jobs.
The two-hour meeting of the Environment and Public Works Committee was led by Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), who said last month that his focus in a bid to change the act would be “eliminating a lot of the red tape and the bureaucratic burdens that have been impacting our ability to create jobs,” according to a report in Energy and Environment News.
The Endangered Species Act is a 43-year-old law enacted under the Nixon administration at a time when people were beginning to understand how dramatically chemical use and human development were devastating species. It has since saved the bald eagle, California condor, gray wolves, black-footed ferret, American alligator and Florida manatee from likely extinction.
But members of the hearing said its regulations prevented people from doing business and making a living. In a comment to a former U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service director who testified at the hearing, Sen. James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.), repeated a point made by Barrasso that of more than 1,600 species listed as threatened or endangered since the act’s inception, fewer than 50 have been removed.
Referring to research published in the journals Science and Conservation Biology that the rate of extinction across species is 1,000 times the rate before human expansion, Carper asked the panelists whether they believed the finding that Earth is on the verge of a sixth mass extinction.
Two in three Americans want the Endangered Species Act strengthened or left alone, according to a 2013 poll.
"Oil companies may be keen to gut and repeal this vital protection for imperiled wildlife, but the American people don't want our nation's most effective conservation law shredded to profit the petroleum industry." say Biologists
Source
A Senate hearing to “modernize the Endangered Species Act” unfolded Wednesday just as supporters of the law had feared, with round after round of criticism from Republican lawmakers who said the federal effort to keep species from going extinct encroaches on states’ rights, is unfair to landowners and stymies efforts by mining companies to extract resources and create jobs.
The two-hour meeting of the Environment and Public Works Committee was led by Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), who said last month that his focus in a bid to change the act would be “eliminating a lot of the red tape and the bureaucratic burdens that have been impacting our ability to create jobs,” according to a report in Energy and Environment News.
The Endangered Species Act is a 43-year-old law enacted under the Nixon administration at a time when people were beginning to understand how dramatically chemical use and human development were devastating species. It has since saved the bald eagle, California condor, gray wolves, black-footed ferret, American alligator and Florida manatee from likely extinction.
But members of the hearing said its regulations prevented people from doing business and making a living. In a comment to a former U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service director who testified at the hearing, Sen. James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.), repeated a point made by Barrasso that of more than 1,600 species listed as threatened or endangered since the act’s inception, fewer than 50 have been removed.
Referring to research published in the journals Science and Conservation Biology that the rate of extinction across species is 1,000 times the rate before human expansion, Carper asked the panelists whether they believed the finding that Earth is on the verge of a sixth mass extinction.
Two in three Americans want the Endangered Species Act strengthened or left alone, according to a 2013 poll.
"Oil companies may be keen to gut and repeal this vital protection for imperiled wildlife, but the American people don't want our nation's most effective conservation law shredded to profit the petroleum industry." say Biologists
Source
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