Green land grabs on steroids

Using bees to block human activities on land 15 times bigger than Virginia – or even more

Paul Driessen

Special interest environmental groups got stung recently by an 8-0 U.S. Supreme Court opinion that held private landowners cannot be compelled to forego future economic uses of their property and at their own expense convert their land into suitable habitat for an endangered frog. Now radical greens are eyeing even bigger land grabs.

The Natural Resources Defense Council has sued the Department of the Interior for failing to designate “critical habitat” for the “endangered” rusty patched bumblebee. It’s the latest of many Endangered Species Act (ESA) lawsuits, abusive sue-and-settle litigation, and other actions involving insects, and it led to an eleventh-hour Obama Administration endangered designation for the rusty patched bee.

Interior points out that extremely limited knowledge about RPBs makes critical habitat determinations impossible. The NRDC counters that Interior must designate habitats based on “best available evidence.” The problem is, available information is so inadequate, conjectural, false or falsified that it must absolutely not be used to justify the astounding potential impacts of RPB habitat designations. 

Groups that have bee-friended them claim RPBs were “once common” in many Northeastern and Midwestern states. However, back then bees and other insects were studied for taxonomic purposes – not to assess species’ diversity and populations. So no one knows how many there used to be, or where.

The activists also claim RPB populations declined rapidly beginning in the mid-1990s, because of habitat loss, disease, climate change and especially the use of crop-protection pesticides. That’s not what they were saying a few years ago, before wild bees replaced honey bees in anti-pesticide campaigns.

Back in 2013, when it petitioned the FWS for RPB endangered status, even the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation said the bee’s apparent decline was due to habitat loss and multiple diseases that spread from domesticated honeybees to wild bees.

“The exact cause for the loss of the rusty patched is unclear,” says University of Virginia biology professor T’ai Roulston. “But it’s almost certainly related to disease,” especially a fungal gut parasite that “can shorten the lives of worker bees and disrupt mating success and survival of queens and males.”

Habitat loss is clearly another factor. Over the past half-century, cities and suburbs expanded, and farmers increasingly emphasized large-scale monoculture crops like corn and canola for food and biofuels. That reduced underground RPB nesting sites and the varieties of flowers that wild bees prefer.

The Obama FWS ignored these facts, arbitrarily downplayed its earlier disease and habitat loss explanations, and began blaming pesticides, especially advanced-technology neonicotinoid pesticides, which became a scapegoat for wild bee health problems after it became obvious to everyone that fears of a honeybee apocalypse were unfounded. A busy, understaffed Department of the Interior let the last-minute Obama era RPB endangered species designation take effect in early 2017.

Little evidence supports the pesticide claims, and much refutes them.

For example, a wide-ranging international study of wild bees, published in Nature Communications, found that only 2% of wild bee species are responsible for 80% of all crop visits. Most wild bees never even come into contact with crops or the pesticides that supposedly harm them.

Even more compelling, the Nature study determined that the 2% of wild bees that do visit crops – and so would be most exposed to pesticides – are among the healthiest bee species on Earth. 

Other studies found that neonic residues are well below levels that can adversely affect bee development or reproduction. That’s because most neonics are used as seed coatings that are absorbed into plant tissue as crops grow. They protect plants against insect damage – targeting only pests that actually feed on the crops – but are largely gone by the time mature plants flower. Neonics are barely detectable in pollen.

None of these facts will matter, however, once the FWS starts designating RPB critical habitats. The agency and environmentalists will be able to delay, block or bankrupt any proposed or ongoing project or activity within a habitat if they can make any plausible claim that it might potentially harm the bee. Building new homes or hospitals, laying new pipelines, improving roads and bridges – a farmer’s decisions about plowing fields, planting crops or using pesticides – could all be subjected to litigation.

The potential geographic reach of these critical habitat designations is enormous.

RPBs are likely to be found “in scattered locations that cover only 0.1% of the species’ historical range,” the FWS has said. That doesn’t sound like much. However, 0.1% of the bee’s presumed or asserted historical range is nearly four million acres – equivalent to Connecticut plus Rhode Island.

Even worse, that acreage is widely dispersed in itty-bitty parcels across 13 states where amateur entomologists have supposedly spotted rusty patched bumblebees since 2000. That’s some 380 million acres: 15 times the size of Virginia! That is green land grabs on steroids, and it’s just the beginning.

No one knows just where those parcels might be. So environmental groups could pressure and sue government agencies to halt projects – or agencies could do it at their own volition, to delay or block gas pipelines, for example – while large areas are carefully examined for signs of rusty patched bumblebees.

New York regulators might be especially prone to doing that, considering the governor and legislature’s unbending opposition to “climate destabilizing” natural gas, even as gas and electricity prices climb ever higher in the Empire State.

More ominously, anti-pesticide and other environmental groups want yellow-banded, western and Franklin’s bumblebees designated as endangered. These species were supposedly once found in tiny areas scattered over a billion acres in 40 US states! Other anti-pesticide, anti-fossil fuel, pro-Green New Deal activists also want beetles and other bugs designated as endangered. It’s all about control.

The ultimate effect – if not their intent – would be to let radical groups use “threatened or endangered” insects to delay or veto countless projects and activities across nearly the entire United States.

Probably most Americans would say delaying or even scuttling certain projects and activities might be warranted when the threatened or endangered species holds a position of significance in the animal kingdom, and really is down to the last of its kind.

But bees, beetles and other bugs? Especially when we don’t know how many there ever were, or where? Or what might actually be threatening their continued existence, if it really is threatened? Highly unlikely.

Just as relevant, why aren’t the same eco-activist groups expressing the same concern – or any concern, really – about bald and golden eagles, other raptor and bird species, or multiple rare bat species that are being decimated by wind turbines? Whooping cranes are teetering on the brink of extinction, and yet their Canada to Texas flyway is now home to hundreds of bird-butchering turbine rotors.

The resulting carnage is ignored by greens and regulators alike, and Big Wind operators prohibit independent biologists from entering the killing grounds to get accurate counts of bird and bat carcasses.

Many of those wondrous and vitally important species would likely be wiped out entirely if anything like the Green New Deal sprouts hundreds of thousands of 400-foot-tall onshore turbines across the USA.

The Interior Department’s Fish & Wildlife Service needs to bring further balance and sanity to the ESA, to ensure that conflicting and competing needs are examined and balanced – fully, carefully and honestly.

All this underscores why the Endangered Species Act must be revised. It also explains why radical environmentalists and their allies will fight any changes tooth and nail, along with any nominee who might try to make any changes in any Trump land use, environmental or agricultural agency or policy.

These are complex but vital policy issues, requiring rational, responsible discussions and decisions.

Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) and author of books and articles on energy, climate, environmental and human rights issues.             

The biggest land grab, ever

By Paul Driessen|11th, 2019 |Environment| 0 Comments @CFACT

 

The Natural Resources Defense Council recently sued the Department of the Interior for failing to designate “critical habitat” for the “endangered” rusty patched bumblebee, thereby reducing the bee’s chances of survival.

This is the latest of many Endangered Species Act (ESA) lawsuits and other actions involving insects and leading to an eleventh-hour Obama administration endangered designation for the rusty patched bee.

Interior points out that extremely limited knowledge about the rusty patched bee makes critical habitat determinations impossible. The NRDC counters that Interior must designate habitats based on “best available evidence.”

However, that information is so inadequate, conjectural, false or falsified that it must not be used to justify the astounding potential impacts of rusty patched bee habitat designations.

The litigious groups claim the rusty patched bumblebee was “once common” in many Northeastern and Midwestern states. However, during that “historic” era, bees and other insects were studied for taxonomic purposes — not to assess species’ diversity and populations. So no one knows how many there used to be, or where.

The groups also claim rusty patched bee populations declined rapidly beginning in the mid-1990s, because of habitat loss, disease, climate change and especially the use of crop-protection pesticides. That’s another convenient revision of history.

Not long ago, even the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation said RPB decline was due to habitat loss and multiple diseases that spread from domesticated honeybees to wild bees.

“The exact cause for the loss of the rusty patched is unclear,” says University of Virginia biology professor T’ai Roulston. “But it’s almost certainly related to disease,” especially a fungal gut parasite that “can shorten the lives of worker bees and disrupt mating success and survival of queens and males.”

Habitat loss is clearly another factor. Over the past half-century, cities and suburbs expanded, and farmers increasingly emphasized large-scale monoculture crops like corn and canola for food and biofuels. That reduced underground RPB nesting sites and the varieties of flowers that wild bees prefer.

Mr. Obama’s Fish and Wildlife Service ignored these facts, arbitrarily downplayed its earlier disease and habitat loss explanations, and began blaming pesticides, especially advanced-technology neonicotinoid pesticides, which have become a scapegoat for wild bee health problems.

Little evidence supports the pesticide claims, and much refutes them.

For example, a wide-ranging international study of wild bees, published in Nature, found that only 2 percent of wild bee species are responsible for 80 percent of all crop visits. Most wild bees never even come into contact with crops or the pesticides that supposedly harm them.

Even more compelling, the Nature study determined that the 2 percent of wild bees that do visit crops — and so would be most exposed to pesticides — are among the healthiest bee species on Earth.

Other studies found that neonic residues are well below levels that can adversely affect bee development or reproduction. That’s because coating seeds ensures that neonic pesticides are absorbed into plant tissues — and thus target only pests that actually feed on the crops.

None of these facts will matter, however, once the Fish and Wildlife Service starts designating the rusty patched critical habitats. The agency and environmentalists will be able to delay, block or bankrupt any proposed or ongoing project or activity within a habitat if they think it might potentially harm the bee: From building new homes or hospitals, to laying new pipelines or improving roads and bridges — to saying when, where or if a farmer can plow fields, plant crops or use pesticides.

Make no mistake, the potential geographic reach of these critical habitat designations is enormous.
The Fish and Wildlife Service has said rusty patched bumblebees are likely to be found “in scattered locations that cover only 0.1% of the species’ historical range.” However, 0.1 percent of the presumed historical range is nearly 4 million acres — equivalent to Connecticut plus Rhode Island.
Worse, that acreage is widely dispersed in itty-bitty parcels across 13 states, where amateur entomologists have supposedly spotted rusty patched bumblebees since 2000. That’s some 380 million acres: 15 times the size of Virginia.

No one knows just where those parcels might be — enabling environmental groups and government agencies to halt projects while large areas are carefully examined for signs of rusty patched bumblebees.

More ominously, anti-pesticide and other environmental groups want yellow-banded, western and Franklin’s bumblebees designated as endangered. These species were supposedly once found in tiny areas scattered over a billion acres in 40 states. Radical greens also want beetles and other bugs designated as endangered.

The ultimate effect — if not their intent — would be to let those radicals use “threatened or endangered” insects to delay or veto countless projects and activities across nearly the entire United States.

All this underscores why the Endangered Species Act must be revised. It’s also why environmentalists and their allies will battle any changes tooth and nail.

The U.S. Supreme Court recently ruled 8-0 that the Fish and Wildlife Service could not use the ESA to compel landowners to create habitat at their own expense, and forego future economic use of their private property, in order to expand an endangered frog’s range.

The court and Interior Department should now bring further balance and sanity to the act, to ensure that conflicting and competing needs are examined and balanced — fully, carefully and honestly.

This article originally appeared in The Washington Times

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Off to a bumbling start at Interior

If this is the kind of housecleaning and swamp draining we’re going to get, we’re in real trouble

 

Paul Driessen

 

Was it because there were too few senior Trump Administration officials in place to catch and stop it? Or because Department of the Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke was new on the job, and had so much on his plate, that this decision just slipped right past him?

 

Maybe it was because the new Administration faces so many battles with environmental activists already that it didn’t want another one?  Or perhaps Interior was intimidated by environmentalist lawsuits challenging President Trump’s 60-day delay of newly-issued Obama Administration regulations? 

 

Whatever the reason, Trump’s Interior Department opened a real can of worms when it let the Obama Administration’s last-minute endangered species designation for the rusty patched bumblebee (RPB) take effect March 21 – exactly 60 days after President Trump issued his regulatory Executive Order.

 

The designation has serious adverse implications for Mr. Trump’s ambitious plans for infrastructure improvements, economic growth, job creation, and reining in regulatory abuse and overreach.

 

Already, officials in the Minneapolis area have delayed a road construction project – purportedly near a patch of potential RPB habitat – while they look for signs that the bees are actually nesting there. Another Minnesota group is trying to use hypothetical threats to RPBs to delay construction of a wastewater treatment plant that would prevent pollution from reaching sensitive state waterways!

 

And this is just the beginning. It will happen again and again as anti-development agitators use this designation to theorize that construction projects and even farming operations could risk harming an “endangered” bee species or its possible habitats.

 

In issuing the “endangered” designation, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) advised that “The rusty patched bumblebee is likely to be present in scattered locations that cover only 0.1% of the species’ historical range.” Thus, government agencies need only be consulted or issue a permit for developers to “take” (disturb, harm or kill) the bees in these limited areas.

 

However, 0.1% of the RPB’s historic range is still an area of roughly 6,000 square miles: 3.8 million acres – equivalent to all of Connecticut and Rhode Island combined. And that’s just the beginning.

 

The real kicker is that no one knows where that 0.1% area might be, scattered in tiny bits and pieces all across the 13 Northeast and Midwest states where the rusty patched bumblebee has supposedly been observed (by amateur entomologists) since 2000. That’s 378 million acres: equal to the combined land area of Montana, North and South Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois and Indiana!

 

That’s partly because the Obama FWS issued the endangered species designation without developing any protocols for actually identifying the ground-dwelling bee’s nesting sites. They could be anywhere in that 13-state area – which means environmentalists could delay, block or bankrupt every new power line, bridge, highway, pipeline, housing development, plowing operation or other project in the affected states. 

 

The decision gives eco-obstructionists another powerful weapon against projects they oppose. They’ve already proven they are smart, determined, coordinated, well-funded opponents of President Trump’s infrastructure, energy, job and economic improvement agendas. Why give them more power?

 

Even worse, this insect designation opens the floodgates. Whether Secretary Zinke realizes it or not, waiting in the obstructionist wings, right behind the rusty patched bumblebee, are two more bumblebee species whose potential habitats spread across 40 states. The yellow-banded bumblebee has been found all the way from Montana east to New England, and down the Atlantic coast to Virginia, West Virginia and North Carolina. The western bumblebee’s range includes the entire block of eleven western states plus parts of Alaska: nearly a billion acres.

 

Put together, we’re talking about nearly half of the United States!

 

That’s a monstrous new complication for property owners, states and communities – and for the Trump Administration’s economic plans – at the end of a long, painful decade of economic doldrums that require concerted efforts to get job and economic growth back on track. And there’s even more to come.

 

The International Union for the Conservation of Nature says over one-fourth of 47 native North American bumblebee species face possible extinction. Other radical greens now claim hundreds of wild bee species are “threatened with” or “headed for” extinction. The Center for Biological Diversity asserts that 749 wild bee species are in decline, and half of them face serious risk of extinction.

 

Real entomologists dispute this. A recent article notes that the CBD report was not peer-reviewed and presented no methodologies or data sources. It quotes Sam Droege, one of North America’s top wild bee experts, who calls the report “extremely misleading” and full of “statistical, taxonomic and natural history problems.” Assertions that some species are in decline are simply false and not based on any evidence, Droege explained. For other species, there simply is not enough data to make any accurate assessment.

 

This is the Pandora’s box that Secretary Zinke’s Department of the Interior has unleashed, by failing to keep a lid on the FWS actions or review the Obama Administration’s politically motivated, hurry-up designation. In fact, Zinke’s department had ample reason to revise the rusty patched bumblebee designation on January 9, when Team Obama announced its plans. The DOI just bumbled it.

 

When the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation originally petitioned the FWS for an RPB endangered species designation, it said the species’ decline was due to habitat loss and disease – specifically an intestinal parasite that was accidentally imported to the USA from Europe in the 1990s, during experiments on managed bumblebee hives. But Obama’s FWS arbitrarily contorted its justifications to blame pesticides (specifically advanced-technology neonicotinoid pesticides, a key target du jour of the Environmental Left) for the bee’s decline. There is virtually no evidence to support that. 

 

“The exact cause for the loss of the rusty patched is unclear,” says University of Virginia biology professor T’ai Roulston, “but it’s almost certainly related to disease: the Nosema bombi fungal gut parasite, which can shorten the lives of worker bees and disrupt mating success and survival of queens and males.”

 

Even more absurd and outrageous, the same Obama USFWS has given wind turbine companies permits to kill hundreds of bald and golden eagles – and thousands of raptors, other birds and bats, many of them threatened or endangered – every year for the next 30 years. So now the mere possibility that insect species could inhabit tiny areas across hundreds of millions of acres can be used to shut down projects, but the FWS will ignore wind turbines that are “incidentally” or “accidentally” killing eagles.

 

Now that Secretary Zinke has let the rusty patched bumblebee endangered species designation take effect, what should he do? To paraphrase the physician’s oath, “First, do no more harm.”

 

The new Interior team needs to make doubly sure that no more of these dubious “endangered species” designations slip past them, especially when the less onerous and disruptive, but still protective, status of “threatened species” is available. Secretary Zinke should also take a long, hard look at the supposed justifications for the RPB’s endangered designation, and modify or reverse it as warranted. Terminating or “clean-desking” a few Fish & Wildlife ideologues and IED makers would also be in order.

 

Meanwhile, the House and Senate should evaluate this designation and its employment, economic and land use implications, pass a “joint resolution of disapproval” under the Congressional Review Act, and send it to the White House. President Trump should sign it forthwith, and support one more vital action.

 

In the hands of agitators, ideological bureaucrats and friendly judges, the Endangered Species Act has become a powerful weapon for controlling land use and obstructing projects. Reforming the act, to curb this kind of nonsense and abuse, would be a good next step once these immediate problems are fixed.

 

Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power - Black death.