Cetacean Society International

Help Stop the Assault on America's Wildlife

With less than 160 days left in power, the Bush/Cheney Administration has launched an unprecedented backdoor assault on America's endangered species.

Don't let them get away with it. Urge your Representative and Senators to do everything in their power to stop the Bush/Cheney Administration's eleventh-hour assault on America's wildlife.

For more than 30 years, the Endangered Species Act has protected wildlife at risk of extinction. Now the Bush/Cheney Administration wants to eliminate vital checks and balances that are crucial to protect our polar bears, wolves and the nearly 1,400 other wildlife species now safeguarded by this landmark law.

Announced earlier this week, the Bush/Cheney proposal would severely limit scientific review by the Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service of projects that could harm imperiled wildlife. And it would explicitly limit the ability of these expert agencies to consider how greenhouse gas emissions from such projects could impact polar bears, wolverines and other wildlife that may go extinct due to global warming.

Instead, agencies proposing projects such as highways, dams, mines, oil or gas drilling and virtually any other activity would be allowed to decide for themselves whether a project is likely to impact any of the nearly 1,400 species currently protected by the Endangered Species Act -- without the crucial independent review now provided by scientific experts at the Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service.

Many of these agencies do not even have biologists or other qualified staff to make such a determination.

Even worse, the new regulations would impose a brief 60-day review period, making it even less likely that anyone involved in the process will have the time or expertise to fully evaluate the potential harmful effects of a given project on sensitive wildlife or the habitat it needs to survive.

Help stop the Bush/Cheney Administrations assault on protections for our endangered species. Please take action now: contact your Representative and Senators.

From Defenders of Wildlife.

Posted: 16 August 2008