I would like to thank Martia for allowing me to publish her work. Emphasis added by me. RK
Over a
three-year period, 2009-2012, Department of Justice data shows American
taxpayers footed the bill for more than $53 million in so-called environmental
groups’ legal fees—and the actual number could be much higher. The real
motivation behind the Endangered Species Act (ESA) litigation, perhaps, could
have more to do with vengeance and penance than with a real desire to protect
flora and fauna.
On May 7, I
spoke at the Four Corners Oil and Gas Conference in Farmington, New Mexico.
During the two-day event, I sat in on many of the other sessions and had
conversations with dozens of attendees. I left the event with the distinct
impression that the current implementation of the ESA is a major impediment to
the economic growth, tax revenue, and job creation that comes with oil-and-gas
development. I have written on ESA issues many times, most recently I wrote about the lesser prairie chicken’s
proposed “threatened” listing (which the Fish and Wildlife Service [FWS] listed on March 27) and the Oklahoma
Attorney General’s lawsuit against the federal government over the “sue and
settle” tactics of FWS and the Department of the Interior.
While at the
conference, I received an email announcing that FWS has asked a federal court
for a six-month delay in making a final determination on whether to list the
Gunnison sage grouse as an endangered species—moving the decision past the
November elections. Up for re-election, Senator Mark Udall (D-CO) “cheered” the
extension request. The E & E report states: Colorado elected leaders “fear
the listing could have significant economic impacts.”
Kent
Holsinger, a Colorado attorney specializing in lands, wildlife and water,
posited: “Senator Udall is among those lauding the move—perhaps because a
listing decision would affect his fate in the U.S. Senate. Gunnison sage grouse
populations are stable, if not on the increase. In addition, myriad state,
local and private conservation efforts have been put into place over the last
decade. Those efforts, and the Gunnison sage grouse, are at risk if the FWS
pursues listing.”
The report
continues: “WildEarth Guardians is not opposing the latest extension after Fish
and Wildlife agreed to some extensive new mitigation measures that will be made
in the interim, including increasing buffer zones around sage grouse breeding
grounds, called leks, and deferring coal, oil and gas leasing, said Erik
Molvar, a wildlife biologist with WildEarth Guardians.” It goes on to say: “But
the Center for Biological Diversity, which is a party to the settlement
agreements with WildEarth Guardians, said the latest extension is a bad move
for the grouse, which it says has needed ESA protections for years.”
Two important
items to notice in the Gunnison sage grouse story. One, the power the
environmental groups wield. Two, part of appeasing the environmental groups
involves “deferring coal, oil and gas leasing.”
It is widely
known that these groups despise fossil fuels. The Center for Biological
Diversity (CBD) brags about its use of lawsuits to block
development—but it is not just oil and gas they block, it is virtually all
human activity.
In researching
for this week’s column, I have talked to people from a variety of industry and
conservation efforts. The conversations started because I read something they’d
written about CBD. Whether I was talking to someone interested in protecting
big horn sheep, a fishing enthusiast, or an attorney representing ranching or
extractive industries, CBD seems to be a thorn in their side. All made comments
similar to what Amos Eno, who has been involved in
conservation for more than forty years, told me: “CBD doesn’t care about the
critters. They are creating a listing pipeline and then making money off of
it.” Environmental writer Ted Williams, in a piece on wolves, called CBD: “perennial plaintiffs.”
New Mexico
rancher Stephen Wilmeth directed me to a CBD profile he’d written. In it he
addressed how the CBD’s efforts targeted livestock grazing and sought “the
removal of cattle from hundreds of miles of streams.” Wilmeth states: “CBD has elevated sue and settle
tactics, injunctions, new species listings, and bad press surrounding legal
action to a modern art form. Consent decrees more often than not result in
closed door sessions with concessions or demands made on agency policy
formulation.”
In a posting
on the Society for Bighorn Sheep website titled: Legal tactics directly from
the Center for Biological Diversity, board member Gary Thomas states: “The Center ranks people second.
By their accounting, all human endeavors, agriculture, clean water, energy,
development, recreation, materials extraction, and all human access to any
space, are subordinate to the habitat requirements of all the world’s obscure
animals and plants. But these selfish people don’t care about any person,
plant, or animal. The Center collects obscure and unstudied species for a
single purpose, specifically for use in their own genre of lawsuits. They
measure their successes not by quality of life for man nor beast, but by
counting wins in court like notches in the handle of a gun.”
You’d expect
someone like me, an energy advocate, to dis the CBD—and I have (CBD is not too fond of me)—but how’d it get such a broad-based
collection of negativity from within the environmental community?
Ted Williams
told me: “environmentalists who are paying attention are not happy with CBD.”
He has written the most comprehensive exposé on CBD that can be found—for which
he was threatened with a lawsuit. Without Williams’ work, one has to resort to
bits and pieces off the internet to put together CBD’s modus operandi—but there
is plenty to choose from!
One of the
most interesting ones to catch my eye was a part of the post on
SheepSociety.com. There, Thomas points out the fact that the three founders of
CBD are ex-forest service workers. He states: “To donors, their motives appear
altruistic. To the informed, they look more like a 20-year quest for revenge
for their firing.”
I am fairly
well acquainted with CBD, but Thomas’ accusation was new to me—though it fit
what I knew. (One of the very first pieces I ever wrote, when I
originally got into this work seven plus years ago, was on the one and only
legal victory ever won against CBD. Arizona rancher Jim Chilton won a
defamation suit against CBD with a $600,000 dollar settlement. Nearly everyone
I talked to as a part of my research for this story mentioned Chilton’s name
with reverence.)
I dug around
and found an interesting story from Backpacker Magazine that gave credence to
Thomas’ claim. The February 2003 issue features a multi-page profile on Kieran
Suckling, co-founder and executive director. Addressing the three founders, who
were working for the Forest Service, Backpacker reports: “All three of them were
frustrated by their agencies’ inaction.” The story goes on to explain how the
threesome “hatched a plan” to petition the Forest Service and force it to list
the spotted owl.
Then, I found
a 2009 profile on Suckling in High Country News (HCN). It quotes Suckling describing how the roots of his full-time
activism started while working for the Forest Service doing spotted owl
surveys: “We had signed contracts saying we wouldn’t divulge owl locations, but
we went the next day to the Silver City Daily Press, with a map that
told our story. We were fired within seconds. That was the start of us becoming
full-time activists.”
These snippets
help explain Suckling’s animosity toward the Forest Service and other
government agencies. CBD is gleeful over its results. It has sued government
agencies hundreds of times and has won the majority of the cases—though many
never go to court and are settled in a backroom deal (hence the term: “sue and
settle”). Thomas writes: “They are extremely proud to report that
single-handedly they deplete the U.S. Fish and Wildlife’s entire annual budget,
approximately $5 million, for endangered species listings year after year by
forcing them to use their limited funds defending lawsuits instead of their
intended purpose.”
The HCN piece
describes Suckling’s approach to getting what he wants—which he explains in the New Yorker, as “a new
order in which plants and animals are part of the polity”: “The Forest Service
needs our agreement to get back to work, and we are in the position of being
able to powerfully negotiate the terms of releasing the injunction. … They
[federal employees] feel like their careers are being mocked and destroyed—and
they are. So they become much more willing to play by our rules and at least
get something done. Psychological warfare is a very underappreciated aspect of
environmental campaigning.”
“In CBD
speak,” adds Wilmeth, “the suggestion of playing by the rules equates to its
rules of manipulating positive outcomes for its mission.”
Putting the
pieces together, it does appear, as Thomas asserts, that Suckling is on a 20+
year “quest for revenge” for being fired—vengeance that American taxpayers are
funding.
Suckling is an
interesting character. The Backpacker story cites his ex-wife, who said the
following: “He’s not tethered on a daily basis to the same things you and I are
tethered to.”
Tierra Curry
is another name that comes up frequently in CBD coverage. CBD’s staff section
of the website lists her as “senior scientist” and says she “focuses on the
listing and recovery of endangered species.” As Warner Todd Huston reports:
“Curry has an odd profile for an activist. She once claimed to have enjoyed dynamiting creek beds in rural Kentucky
and taking perverse pleasure at sending fish and aquatic animals flying onto
dry land and certain death. Now Curry spends her time filing petitions to
‘save’ some of the same animals she once enjoyed killing.”
Perhaps
Curry’s frenetic listing efforts are her way of doing penance for her childhood
penchant of killing critters.
The role
vengeance and penance may play in CBD’s shakedown of the American public is just
a hypothesis based on facts. But the dollars paid out are very real.
In an April 8,
2014 hearing before the House Committee on Natural Resources, fifth-generation
rancher and attorney specializing in environmental litigation, Karen Budd-Falen
talked about the need for ESA reform, as
four different House bills propose: “Public information regarding payment of
attorney’s fees for ESA litigation is equally difficult to access.” Addressing
HR 4316—which requires a report on attorney’s fees and costs for ESA related
litigation—she says: “It should not be a radical notion for the public to know
how much is being paid by the federal government and to whom the check is
written.” As she reports in her testimony, Budd-Falen’s staff did an analysis
of the 276-page spreadsheet run released by the Department of Justice (DOJ)
listing litigation summaries in cases defended by the Environment and Natural
Resources Division, Wildlife Section. She explains: “The spreadsheets are
titled ‘Endangered Species Defensive Cases Active at some point during
FY09-FY12 (through April 2012).’ Although the DOJ release itself contained no
analysis, my legal staff calculated the following statistics.” Budd-Falen then
shows how she came up with the nearly $53 million figure of taxpayer money paid
out over an approximate three-year period. However, she then shows how her own
Freedom of Information Act requests have proven “that the DOJ does not keep an
accurate account of the cases it defends”—making the actual dollar figure much
higher.
Budd-Falen has
stated: “We believe when the curtain is
raised we’ll be talking about radical environmental groups bilking the taxpayer
for hundreds of millions of dollars, allegedly for ‘reimbursement for attorney
fees.’”
Budd-Falen’s
research shows that for groups like CBD—who sue on process not on substance—it
really is about the money.
Eno believes
that for the CBD, it isn’t about the critters: “CBD endangers the endangered
species program on multiple fronts. First, their petitions and listing suits
use up significant financial and personnel resources of both Office of
Endangered Species and solicitors office in DOI. This means less funding and
personnel devoted to species recovery. Second, CBD suits antagonize and
jeopardize recovery programs of cooperating federal land management agencies,
particularly USFS and BLM. Third, their suits have hampered forest and
grassland management thereby inviting forest fires which endanger both human
and wildlife (sage grouse) communities throughout the west. Fourth, CBD suits
antagonize, alienate and create financial hardship for affected private land
owners, thereby reducing both public support and initiatives and active
assistance for listed species recovery.”
Despite
numerous attempts, the ESA has not had any major revisions in more than 25
years. The Wall Street Journal states: “The ESA’s mixed record on
wildlife restoration and its impact on business have made the law vulnerable to
critics.” Groups like CBD have twisted the intent of the law. Reform is now essential—not just to save
taxpayer dollars, but to put the focus back on actually saving the species rather
than, as Wilmeth calls it: “the bastardized application of science, policy and
education.”
The author
of Energy Freedom, Marita Noon serves as the executive director for
Energy Makes
America Great Inc. and the companion educational organization, the Citizens’ Alliance for Responsible Energy (CARE). Together they work to educate the
public and influence policy makers regarding energy, its role in freedom, and
the American way of life. Combining energy, news, politics, and, the
environment through public events, speaking engagements, and media, the
organizations’ combined efforts serve as America’s voice for energy.
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