Reform the Endangered Species Act!

By Bonner Cohen, Ph. D. May 21st, 2025 @ CFACT, 0 Comments

The Endangered Species Act today serves the anti-capitalist gadflies of the Left far better than it protects wildlife.  Read CFACT’s official submission focusing on reforming the definition of “harm.”

Public Comments Processing, Attn: FWS-HQ-ES 2025-0034, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, MS: PRB/3W, 5275 Leesburg Pike, Falls Church, VA 22041-3803

RE: Proposal to Rescind the Regulatory Definition of “Harm” in Endangered Species Act Regulations

May 19, 2025

Attention Reviewing Team,

The Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) is a 501 (c) (3) nonprofit organization founded in 1985 that focuses on free-market solutions to environmental and natural resources-related issues. CFACT appreciates the opportunity to submit public comments on the proposal of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) and the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) to rescind the regulatory definition of “harm” in Endangered Species Act (ESA) regulations.

Background and Position

We support the FWS/NMFS proposed rulemaking that would rescind the regulatory definition of “harm” under regulations supporting the ESA. As the proposal points out, the current regulatory definition dates to Babbitt v. Sweet Home Chapter of Communities for a Great Oregon (1995). That ruling upheld the FWS’s regulatory definition of “harm” under the broader category of “take” – as in to “take” a species — under the ESA. As a legal term, “take” has a centuries’- old pedigree, which — in the context of the ESA – means to “kill” or “capture” a wild animal. “Harm” in the definition of “take” would thus mean the killing or injuring of wildlife. Like the other nine verbs defining “take” in the text of the ESA – harass, pursue, hunt, shoot, wound, kill, trap, capture, and collect – “harm” refers to a conscious act, undertaken willfully for the express purpose of taking a species.

However, under the current, expanded definition of “harm,” as upheld in the Sweet Home decision, the ESA’s reach has expanded far beyond what the statute’s text lays out. In the 1995 Sweet Home case, several parties sued then-Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt’s characterization of “harm” as including “significant habitat modification or degradation where it actually kills or injures wildlife by significantly impairing essential behavioral patterns.” ¹ Even though the plaintiffs pointed out that Congress, in writing the 1973 ESA, made no reference to “significant habitat modification or degradation,” the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Secretary Babbitt under the 1984 legal precedent of Chevron deference, that is, “deference to an agency’s reasonable interpretation of an ambiguous statute.” ² Chevron deference, however, was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court last year in Roper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo.

A regulatory definition based on a legal doctrine that has since been overturned by the Supreme Court is a regulatory definition crying out for elimination.

“This definition has proven problematic for energy producers, agriculturalists, and foresters whose privately owned land may include suitable habitat for endangered or threatened species, even though the species itself may not actually be found there,” notes Jennifer Friedel in a commentary for Southern Ag Today. ³

“An extreme example of this came to a head in 2001, when owners of a Louisiana tree farm brought suit against FWS for designating 1,500 acres of a privately owned farm as critical habitat under the ESA because two historical breeding sites for the protected Mississippi gopher frog were located there, even though the frog had not been observed there in nearly 40 years,” she pointed out.

Toward a Better Way to Recover Species

It is also not necessary to replace the regulatory definition of “harm” with anything else. The definition of “take” in the ESA more than suffices to protect threatened and endangered species. The standard by which the effectiveness of the ESA should be judged is recovery of species at risk. This can best be achieved by cooperative arrangements between FWS/NMFS and landowners and other businesses whose location overlap the habitat of endangered species. The current, expanded definition of “harm” can turn farmers, ranchers, fishermen, and others against species, because their livelihoods may be put at risk by ESA-related restrictions.

Cooperation, not confrontation, is the way to bring about species recovery. Eliminating “harm” from the definition of “take” will remove one of the perverse incentives that has made implementation of the ESA so problematic and contributed to the statute’s poor record of recovering species. In 2023 – 50 years after enactment of the ESA – wildlife researcher Rob Gordon pointed out that “of 1,667 threatened or endangered species, there are only 62 officially ‘recovered’ species. Of these, 36 – nearing 60% — are not real conservation ‘success stories.’ These ’recoveries’ are hollow, as they are inaccurate proclamations attributable to an erroneous original determination that the species was endangered or threatened.” ⁴

This poor record of performance shows why the ESA, and its supporting regulations, need to be updated. Eliminating the counterproductive definition of “harm” altogether is one way the statute can be made to better serve both species and humans.

Thank you very much.

Bonner Russell Cohen, Ph. D, Senior Policy Analyst, Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, Washington, D.C.

Supreme Court’s WOTUS ruling will shake things up across the board

By Bonner Cohen, Ph. D. June 23rd, 2023 44 Comments @ CFACT

Editor's Note:  As you can see this was published a little over a year ago, but in light of the SCOTUS ruling on the Chevron Doctrine, and Trump's almost sure election, I think it's a good idea to remind everyone why his efforts to dismantle the deep state and their corrupt and disgusting schemes they've employed to destroy Americans and the Constitution.  RK 

Last month’s landmark Supreme Court ruling in Sackett v. EPA not only narrowed the scope of the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) authority to regulate wetlands, but it will also have reverberations far beyond the Clean Water Act (CWA).

What began as an effort by Michael and Chantell Sackett to build their dream home on their 0.63-acre lot near Priest Lake in northern Idaho morphed into a 16-year legal battle that ended in a victory for the couple and a defeat for EPA when the High Court ruled that their property was not a wetland and thus not subject to EPA regulation under the 1972 CWA. But in decreeing that the only wetlands EPA could regulate were those with a “continuous surface flow” to a navigable water, such as a lake or river, the court rendered a judgment that will affect other federal environmental statutes as well.

Removing the need for many projects to obtain permits under Section 404 of the CWA, which governs dredge-and-fill discharges, will erase important triggers for National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and Endangered Species Act (ESA) reviews, according to George Glicksman, a law professor at George Washington University.

Effects on NEPA and the ESA

“The programs are intertwined in ways that aren’t immediately obvious,” he told Greenwire (June 15). As Greenwire explained:

“Both NEPA and the ESA require federal action to trigger a review, which in turn forces developers to consider their project’s effect on the environment and vulnerable species. Otherwise, a Section 404 forms this federal connection. But without a Clean Water Act permit, that federal nexus – in some cases – disappears.

Depending on the complexity of the project, NEPA, for example, can require either an environmental assessment or a much more comprehensive environmental impact statement (EIS). It can take years for federal officials to complete an EIS, prompting some developers to walk away from a proposed project out of sheer frustration. Before the Supreme Court’s May 25 ruling, an EIS, which included a project’s effect on a wetland with no continuous surface connection to a navigable body of water, prolonged the permitting process. With wetlands lacking that continuous surface connection no longer subject to CWA Section 404 permits, some environmental reviews will be shorter.

As it happens, the court’s ruling coincided with the enactment of a debt-ceiling agreement, which put time limits on the issuance of some federal permits. The result of both developments is less red tape.

Similarly, determining what constitutes a threatened or endangered plant or animal’s “critical habitat” under the ESA will become simpler in some cases because the types of wetlands subject to federal authority have been reduced.

By declaring the Sacketts’ bone-dry property a wetland, and then putting the couple through 16 years of litigation hell, EPA ultimately wound up diminishing its own authority under the CWA. As Professor Glicksman points out, the Supreme Court’s decision also affected two other environmental statutes. For decades, provisions of the CWA, NEPA, and ESA were skillfully used by regulators and special interest groups as a form of federal zoning to snuff out development not to their liking.

To be sure, the ESA is still a hopelessly cumbersome law with a terrible record of recovering vulnerable species. And NEPA still makes it difficult for the United States to carry out much-needed infrastructure projects. But the administrative regulatory state has been dealt a setback, and the country has moved a few steps closer to restoring the Constitution’s separation of powers.

Author

• Bonner Cohen, Ph. D.

  Bonner R. Cohen, Ph. D., is a senior policy analyst with CFACT, where he focuses on natural resources, energy, property rights, and geopolitical developments. Articles by Dr. Cohen have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Investor’s Busines Daily, The New York Post, The Washington Examiner, The Washington Times, The Hill, The Epoch Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Miami Herald, and dozens of other newspapers around the country. He has been interviewed on Fox News, Fox Business Network, CNN, NBC News, NPR, BBC, BBC Worldwide Television, N24 (German-language news network), and scores of radio stations in the U.S. and Canada. He has testified before the U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, and the U.S. House Natural Resources Committee. Dr. Cohen has addressed conferences in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, and Bangladesh. He has a B.A. from the University of Georgia and a Ph. D. – summa cum laude – from the University of Munich.

The Endangered Animal Act of Futility

By Alan Caruba Friday, January 24, 2014

Editor's Note:  My friend Alan passed in 2015 at age 77.  Alan was a prolific writer and a generous writer allowing me to ad a timelessness to it, and after all these years people are still hitting his Warming Signs blog articles. He would be pleased.  Here's one of them. RK 

By Alan Caruba

David W. Snook, 57, of Bridgewater, New Jersey died on Wednesday, January 15, when two deer leaped into the path of his Dodge Ram on Route 206. One of them was airborne when it smashed through the front windshield, striking him before exiting out the rear window. This caused the truck to veer into the guard rail and come to rest in a ravine.

In 2012, the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection estimated that the Garden State was home to 110,000 deer. Each year about 35,000 are killed in hunts and those of us who live here owe the hunters a debt of gratitude. In my county of Essex, home to Newark, the freeholders regularly hire hunters to cull the herd that shares its home with one of the most densely populated counties in the state.

Need it be said that the animal rights crowd is always upset about this. New Jersey also has a fairly sizeable bear population and during the hunting season, between 250 and 450 are “harvested” as the Fish and Game agency calls it. They have been found in all 21 counties of the state. And state officials now estimate that there are more coyotes in New Jersey than bears.

Suffice to say New Jersey’s animals are not suffering from a decline in species, nor facing extinction any time soon. My guess—and it’s only a guess—is that this is true nationwide. However, to justify one of the dumbest laws ever passed, the Endangered Species Act, some 1,500 species are classified with fuzzy definitions of being “threatened”, “endangered” or “recovered.”

The Act was signed into law in 1973 by Richard Nixon, who also gifted us with the Environmental Protection Agency, currently doing everything in its power to destroy the coal industry and plants that use it to generate electricity. They claim that the carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are a threat to the climate, but ignore the many other natural sources of CO2, including all seven billion humans that exhale six pounds of it a day. And that all species would die without CO2 maintaining all the vegetation on Earth.

What is never mentioned is that species extinction has been around as long as there have been species. It was not CO2 that killed the dinosaurs and 75% of other species that had dominated the Earth for 180 million years and there were no humans around to blame for the Great Permian Extinction when more than 90% of all life on Earth disappeared—animals, plants, trees, fish, and even algae. Most geological eras have come to a close with calamitous events.

In December 2013, the Obama administration granted industrial wind farm operators a 30-year permit to kill legally protected bald eagles and golden eagles without being subject to legal repercussions. Wind energy has killed 1.4 million birds and bats every year, including those regarded and protected as threatened such as California condors, bald eagles, and Indiana bats. Apparently, if you are producing 1% percent or so of electricity, it’s okay to kill these creatures. Meanwhile everyone else pays higher electricity bills.

The dirty little secret about the Endangered Species Act is that environmentalists have used it for years to deter all manner of economic development by claiming some fish or other creature was endangered if you built a hospital, new homes, or in the case of the dunes sagebrush lizard which lives in the West Texas and Southeast New Mexico Permian Basic when oil companies want to explore and extract this energy resource that will generate jobs and huge tax revenues to help reduce the national debt.

It is insanity to think humans can or should do anything to “save” various species. The most dramatic and tragic evidence of this has been the twenty-year effort to “save” the northern spotted owl. The result was to close millions of acres of federal forests in the Northwest from logging, devastating the once flourishing timber industry.

In July 2011, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced that it would permit the killing of barred owls believed to be killing the spotted owls. The sawmills that once thrived are mostly gone, along with their jobs, and revenue. The forests are overgrown and are immense fire traps. And the Fish and Wildlife Service thinks that spending $127 million might restore the spotted owl population over the next 30 years.

This kind of stupidity is criminal.

How effective has the Endangered Species Act been? As it enters its 41^st year it has “recovered” less than 2% of the approximately 2,100 species listed as endangered or threatened since 1973. A December 17 Wall Street Journal article reported that “it has endangered the economic health of many communities and created a cottage industry of litigation that does more to enrich environmental activist groups” that pays their salaries.

The Endangered Species Act is a huge failure. It should be repealed, but don’t expect Congress to do anything that sensible.

© Alan Caruba, 2014

Could Federal courts roll back climate regulatory overreach?

By Collister Johnson July 18th, 2023 72 Comments @ CFACT

The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia has recently decided two cases which indicate that federal district courts are prepared to roll back the relentless onslaught of regulatory overreach advanced by the Biden Administration.

For years, meaningful judicial oversight of the regulatory deep state bureaucracy has been stymied by a legal doctrine known as “Chevron Deference”, named after the 1984 Supreme Court case,

Chevron v. National Resources Defense Council, which held that courts should defer to bureaucratic “expertise” when deciding cases where the underlying law and facts are ambiguous.

In American Public Gas Association v. US Department of Energy, decided July 7, 2023, the District Court specifically rejected Chevron Deference in a case involving DOE’s regulation of the commercial gas boiler market, and ruled that the DOE failed to provide “clear and convincing” evidentiary support for a rule that would have upended that market in the name of energy efficiency.

Similarly, in Maine Lobstermen’s Association v. National Marine Fisheries Service, decided June 16, 2023, the same court specifically declined to adopt “aggressive Chevron deference” and ruled that NMFS misapplied the Endangered Species Act when it passed a rule which would have effectively shuttered the lobster fishing industry in the name of saving the endangered North Atlantic Right Whale.

Both decisions required the Court to dig deep into the weeds of the market mechanics underlying two private sector markets – lobster fishing and commercial gas boiler manufacturing – in order to conclude that the bureaucrats of DOE and NMFS did not interpret facts properly in applying the underlying law. The intricacies and details of these markets are not commonly known and required detailed investigation. In the case of gas boilers, the Court was not afraid to devote pages of its opinion to the intricacies of “Monte Carlo simulation and the probability distributions” of DOE’s market demand models. Similarly, in the lobstermen case, the Court took pains to research the history of the Right Whale as a species and undertake a detailed investigation into its relationship to the NMFS rule regarding lobster fishing equipment, which would purportedly reduce Right Whale deaths.

This rejection of Chevron Deference will be critically important in upcoming cases where the plaintiffs will be seeking to have the courts employ the Endangered Species Act to halt offshore wind development. The ESA requires the government to “ensure” that the leasing of offshore federal waters is “not likely to jeopardize the continued existence” of a protected species – in this case the critically endangered North Atlantic Right Whale.

The huge Virginia offshore wind project is a case in point. In the Draft Environmental Impact Statement for that project, NOAA has admitted that “it is not possible to predict with certainty the potential long term behavioral effects on marine mammals of the project-related pile-driving or other activities [vessel movements, vessel noise, high resolution geophysical surveys, geotechnical drilling, dredging activity, and operational noise]”. “The exact level and extent of impacts on the North Atlantic Right Whale is impossible to predict with certainty”. In other words, the answer of NMFS to the question of whether the Virginia offshore wind project will jeopardize the continued existence of the Right Whale as a species is:

We don’t know.

Based on the Lobstermen’s >and American Public Gas Association cases, that defense, while forthright and accurate, would be met by the DC Circuit (and other federal courts which follow its lead) with a resounding rejection. The “we don’t know” defense not only fails to meet the “clear and convincing” standard, it doesn’t come close to meeting the “not likely” to jeopardize standard.

So from a legal standpoint, a case brought in the DC circuit by a plaintiff against NMFS, based on the ESA, challenging the Virginia (or other East Coast) wind projects would have these two powerful precedents to rely on, and the government would be burdened with an admission that it lacks critical facts to support any decision approving the project.

There is ample room for hope that the federal courts will at least slow down, if not halt, the insane rush to destabilize the US electricity grid in the name of resolving “climate change”.

Author  

 

  Collister Johnson Johnson has spent the last four decades working in the public and private sectors in Virginia, primarily in the fields of project finance and maritime transportation. He began his career in public service as Chairman of the Board of the Virginia Port Authority. He was appointed by President George W. Bush, and confirmed by the Senate, as a member of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, and most recently, as Administrator of the St. Lawrence Seaway Development Corporation. In that capacity, he became knowledgeable in the field of climate and its impact on the Great Lakes. He currently serves on CFACT's Board of Advisors. Johnson holds a B.A. degree from Yale University, and a J.D. from the University of Virginia.

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Courtroom Setback for the Climatistas?

June 16, 2023 by Steven Hayward in Climate, Environment, Judiciary

 There are a number of lawsuits in various states of play around the country with plaintiffs, typically kids fronting for environmental groups, demanding that a judge issue an injunction to curtail fossil fuels (or find energy companies liable for climate change damages), but a parallel case hit the wall at the DC Circuit Court of Appeals today.

In Maine Lobstermen’s Association v. National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), the court reviewed a proposed scheme of the NMFS to step up regulation of the lobster fishing industry under the authority of the Endangered Species Act in the northeast because lobster fishing was thought to be a growing threat to right whales.

But the NMFS was not able to attribute many deaths of right whales directly to lobster or crab fishing (maybe they should have a look at offshore wind power installations, except those are sacred as we know), and instead rested their case for increased regulation on extreme projections of possible future harms. The likelihood is that large areas of lobster habitat would be simply closed off to the lobster fishing industry (and yet likely remain available for wind power, of course).

And it is just here that the DC Circuit Court said No, by a 3 – 0 vote. It found the regulation to be both “arbitrary and capricious,” and not entitled to Chevron deference:...............To Read More.....

Is Dominion’s offshore wind project ‘arbitrary and capricious’? NOAA says YES!

By Collister Johnson |May 27th, 2023|32 Comments @ CFACT

Recently, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has been issuing a raft of “Incidental Harassment Authorizations” (IHA) to offshore wind developers. The IHAs allow the developers to “harass” marine mammals – including critically endangered Right Whales – as long as the activity is “incidental” to some form of offshore wind development approved by the authorities.

When the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA) was passed by Congress the lawmakers had in mind ‘incidental’ activities such as marine research work. Wind developers, however, have been applying for these permits as part of their “preconstruction” work – primarily sonar mapping of the ocean floor to plot the placement of connector cables and wind towers. Over the last two years, 16 of these IHA’s were approved by NOAA for developers of wind generation projects up and down the East Coast. Each of them allowed “incidental” activity only for a period of one year.

Just as critics of these IHAs feared, after these permits were authorized and preconstruction activity began, dozens of dead whales and dolphins started washing up on beaches from New York to Virginia. This prompted NOAA to issue a “Notice of Unusual Mortality Event”, which didn’t suspend the sonar mapping but did indicate that NOAA finally recognized, in the famous words of Apollo 11, “Houston, we have a problem”.

Now comes the granddaddy IHA application of them all:  A request by Dominion Energy for an IHA lasting five years.  Why?  Because it is seeking permission to harass marine mammals in conjunction with its effort to build a massive, 176 turbine, offshore wind project located 27 miles off the coast of Tidewater Virginia.  If approved, it would be the largest offshore wind project in the world.

To obtain this IHA, Dominion had to “open the kimono” about its project. That is, for the first time it had to describe exactly what this so-called incidental activity might actually involve.

And it is an eye-opener.

A total of 107 different ships, some as large as 538′, would ply the waters of Virginia for five years, taking thousands of trips to and from the project and the port of Hampton Roads, thus increasing substantially the probability of ship strike fatalities, the leading cause of anthropogenic marine mammal deaths.

Whales and dolphins beware: The sonar mapping would continue non-stop, often conducted “daily”. The wind tower construction and cable dredging would take place for 6 months out of the year. In toto, it amounts to a gargantuan industrialization of the hitherto open ocean waters – a monster factory (not a “farm”) larger than Yellowstone Park that would stand in the salty, corrosive waters of the Atlantic for 20 to 30 years. Then, at the end of its useful life, it will have to be torn down – “decommissioned” – with most of the remains dumped in landfills, because the bulk of the hardware cannot be recycled.

This proposed project raises an important question: What will happen to the marine environment after this factory is installed? True environmentalists especially want to know what will happen to endangered species, such as the Right Whale, only about 350 of which still exist and whose migration path lies directly within the boundaries of the project.

NOAA states on at least three separate occasions in the IHA that “no serious injury or mortality of whales is anticipated or proposed from authorization” of the project. This is a strange way to describe their conclusion of “no impact”. Not that “there will be no human caused mortality”, nor that “there will be negligible human caused mortality”. Rather, just that human caused mortality is “not expected”.

Upon further examination it appears Dominion may have opened its kimono a little too far.

Every endangered species on the Federal endangered species list is given a designation by the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS –  a subsidiary of NOAA) called the Potential Biological Removal rate (PBR). The PBR is defined by the MMPA as “the maximum number of individuals, not including natural mortality, that may be removed from a marine mammal stock while allowing that stock to reach its optimum sustainable population”.

NMFS has declared the PBR for the Right Whale to be 0.7. This means, in NOAA’s own words, that “the population cannot sustain on average over the course of a year the death or serious injury of a single individual due to human causes”.

That’s right. This massive industrialization of the Right Whale environment can not cause even one Right Whale death per year over a period of 5 years.

And here comes the stunner. Dominion recognizes the determination by NMFS that the annual human caused mortality rate for the Right Whale caused by the project is eight point one. This means that in NOAA’s own opinion there will be eight human caused dead Right Whales caused by the project every year, even though the allowable amount is zero.

The courts have found this kind of circumstance to be prima facie evidence that the regulation is “arbitrary, capricious, and an abuse of discretion”. That is, there is a fatal, internal inconsistency in this regulation which predicts one outcome (8 human caused deaths) while simultaneously mandating an outcome that is completely contrary (zero human caused deaths).

Dominion tries to save this obviously illegal result by adding language which states that the eight point one human-caused mortalities may be “from all sources combined” ( e.g. commercial fisheries, ship strikes, etc). But no amount of tortured rationale can save NOAA from its own interpretation that the project will result in human caused deaths of the Right Whale. (e.g., whale deaths caused by commercial fishing, if any, have nothing to do with the Dominion project.)

Oops. Dominion just let the cat out of the bag, and the evidence is right there in their IHA application. This project should be and will be struck down by the courts, not only because of the admitted Right Whale deaths, but also because of a host of other procedural and substantive errors committed by NOAA and BOEM while they attempt to bulldoze this project and all the other offshore wind developments through the regulatory system.

It will be good riddance. Whale-killing factories were outlawed a long time ago. This one should be too.

This article originally appeared at Real Clear Energy

Author

• Collister Johnson

  Johnson has spent the last four decades working in the public and private sectors in Virginia, primarily in the fields of project finance and maritime transportation. He began his career in public service as Chairman of the Board of the Virginia Port Authority. He was appointed by President George W. Bush, and confirmed by the Senate, as a member of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, and most recently, as Administrator of the St. Lawrence Seaway Development Corporation. In that capacity, he became knowledgeable in the field of climate and its impact on the Great Lakes. He currently serves on CFACT's Board of Advisors. Johnson holds a B.A. degree from Yale University, and a J.D. from the University of Virginia.

Concerns grow over listing lesser prairie-chicken under the Endangered Species Act

By Bonner Cohen, Ph. D. February 14th, 2023

Plans by the Interior Department’s Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) to place the lesser prairie-chicken (LPC) on the endangered species list have given rise to legislation in Congress aimed at blocking the Biden administration’s move.

The lesser prairie chicken’s numbers have fluctuated wildly over recent decades. Fearful that the small, flightless bird could wind up on the endangered species list, state and local officials have joined forces with landowners in the LPC’s habitat – which stretches from Texas to Washington state – to take steps aimed at stabilizing the creature’s population. Listing of a plant or animal under the ESA – either as threatened or endangered – triggers strict land-use restrictions that could have devastating economic consequences in areas affected by the listing.

Such is the threat an ESA listing of the bird would pose to the energy and agricultural sectors in states providing habitat for the LPC, that lawmakers in the U.S. House and Senate have introduced Resolutions of Disapproval under the Congressional Review Act (CRA).

“Placing the lesser prairie-chicken on the endangered species list should not be happening in the first place,” said Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kansas. “Farmers, ranchers, and others in Kansas and the region have been instrumental in the recovery of the species to this point while the climate activists demanding this rule have no understanding of the threat it poses to Kansas’s economy, especially in energy and ag industries.”

ESA’s Two-Percent Recovery Rate...........To Read More...

Biden Administration throws lobstermen under the bus

By Collister Johnson February 2nd, 2023 @ CFACT

 

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) is trying to extricate itself from a dilemma placed squarely in its lap by the Biden Administration.

The dilemma is how to pretend that it is doing everything it can to protect the critically endangered Right Whale, while at the same time green-lighting massive wind energy industrialization of the ocean waters off the East Coast.

These wind projects consist of over 3,000 giant wind turbines, coupled with more than 9,000 miles of underwater cables, covering 2.3 million acres – an area larger than the states of Rhode Island and Delaware combined. This is all mandated by President Biden’s Executive Order 14008, directing all federal agencies – from the Post Office to the Department of Defense – to expedite offshore wind energy development.

BOEM’s problem is that the two objectives of protecting the whale and implementing wind energy are fundamentally incompatible. The North Atlantic Right Whale is clinging to its continued existence by a thread. Fewer than 350 of them are still alive. Their feeding, mating, and migrating patterns lie directly in the path of the areas where BOEM has determined that these monstrous, industrial strength wind towers, each taller than the Washington Monument, should be erected.

Something has to give. The square peg of offshore wind industrialization cannot fit in the round hole of endangered species protection. And BOEM has decided that the something that has to give is…the lobster fishing industry!

Yes, lobster fishing. The Biden Administration has determined that a centuries old industry employing thousands of hardy, sole proprietors should be sacrificed in favor of a new industry consisting of foreign built, highly inefficient, very expensive, taxpayer subsidized, bird killing machines.

How imperiled is the Right Whale, exactly? NOAA Fisheries has the answer. It has declared that, for the species to survive, the Potential Biological Removal for the Right Whale (the number of human caused fatalities that can occur in any given year ) is less than one. In other words, for the species to survive, there can be zero human caused Right Whale fatalities: none.

So, in order to create an ocean environment where there are zero human caused fatalities, BOEM has enacted a suite of regulations that crush the lobster industry.

For example, it has passed a regulation for offshore zones covering the entire Atlantic coast ordaining that any vessel above 35 feet in length cannot operate at speeds greater than 10 knots for the majority of the year. This new rule covers virtually the entire deep water lobster fishing fleet, most of whose ships exceed 35’ in length. Lobstermen cannot harvest lobsters economically while creeping around to and from their deep-water fishing grounds. The rule is as if the Department of Transportation declared that commercial trucks cannot operate at speeds greater than 20 mph on interstate highways.

Then there are the “entanglement” rules. On rare occasions, Right Whales become entangled in lobster trap lines. This is often fatal for the whale. So, to make sure that the mortality rate is zero, NOAA issued regulations requiring the lobster industry to retrofit its lobster trap gear to be “releasable,” meaning that if a whale becomes entangled in lobster trap lines, special devices will release them from the lobster traps to which they are attached. This rule will certainly not save the whales, but it will definitely ensure that the lobstermen’s means of harvesting lobster – the traps – become abandoned on the ocean floor.

These regulations make earning a living as a lobsterman very difficult, if not impossible. The Lobstermen’s Association has sued BOEM for relief, but the judge in the case ruled in favor of the government, based on that the specific language in the Endangered Species Act and Marine Mammal Protection Act which directs BOEM to “ensure” that the Right Whale species is protected.

But what about the offshore wind program, which has a far greater capacity for Right Whale endangerment than the lobster industry? Will it get a pass from the Biden Administration?

It sure seems that way. BOEM is marching forward with the issuance of Draft Environmental Impact Statements for both the Virginia and New York offshore wind projects. BOEM maintains that “climate change poses a significant global threat” and the solution – somehow – is to forge ahead with the construction of offshore wind factories.

Something has to be sacrificed on the altar of “climate change,” and hardworking lobstermen are the victims, collateral damage in the mindless appeasement of the wind industry and its allies.

Never mind that offshore wind projects will do nothing to improve or impact the climate. The wind energy industry, with massive amounts of money and Biden Administration gifted tax credits, thinks it can win this battle by buying off many of the major environmental groups and appeasing both wealthy suburban liberals and well-meaning but clueless urban millennials – two core constituencies of the Democratic Party.

And if destroying a centuries old industry maintained by lobstermen and their families is the price that has to be paid – well, too bad for them. They are small potatoes, mere nobodies standing in the way of a wind energy fantasy that will help Democrats maintain political power.

The lobstermen’s only salvation will be regime change at the presidential level in 2024. They deserve as much.

Author

• Collister Johnson

  Johnson has spent the last four decades working in the public and private sectors in Virginia, primarily in the fields of project finance and maritime transportation. He began his career in public service as Chairman of the Board of the Virginia Port Authority. He was appointed by President George W. Bush, and confirmed by the Senate, as a member of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, and most recently, as Administrator of the St. Lawrence Seaway Development Corporation. In that capacity, he became knowledgeable in the field of climate and its impact on the Great Lakes. He currently serves on CFACT's Board of Advisors. Johnson holds a B.A. degree from Yale University, and a J.D. from the University of Virginia.

Two Words Explain California’s Wildfire Woes: Spotted Owl

The owl became a cause célèbre for people who had never seen one and never would

By Kevin Nelson, October 13, 2022 10:41 am

Some things in life are hard to understand and explain. The theory of relativity, for example, or the origins of black holes. Other things are easy to grasp, however,  Such as: California’s wildfire woes. In the past five years summer and fall firestorms have killed dozens of people, wiped out homes, businesses and entire communities, torched millions of acres of forestlands, caused billions in property losses, and swept away untold numbers of animals and wildlife.

The cause of all this wreckage is easy to pinpoint. It’s simple as two words: spotted owl.........The fight was over protecting the owl’s habitat. After lawsuits, protests and even violence, the environmentalists won............. delivered a death blow to an entire way of life. Sawmills shut down, loggers lost their jobs, and those little backwoods lumber towns went from boom to 1930s Depression-era bust.............

At the risk of over-simplification, the prevailing forest management wisdom in the post-spotted owl era has been: Don’t touch those trees. Leave ‘em where they be, for people coming up from the city to enjoy on the weekends. And sue and regulate the hell out of anyone who dares try to make a profit by harvesting them.

You identify a “problem” and then destroy a way of life as a means of solving that perceived problem. But then your “solution” creates an even bigger mess, one that causes you to go back to the very people whose communities and livelihoods you trashed, asking them to help you with your latest bright idea. But these small town Americans have themselves become an endangered species.

Meanwhile, has anyone seen a spotted owl lately?

My Take - Was it logging that decimated the spotted owl population?  No, it was the barred owl.  Repeal the Endangered Species Act and remove enforcement authority from the Fish and Wildlife Service, or even better, eliminate the Fish and Wildlife Service.

Alabama landowner heads to court over a snake that isn’t there

By Bonner Cohen, Ph. D. |October 6th, 2022| Environment, Property|73 Comments @ CFACT

No good deed goes unpunished. Where has reason gone in this country?

Gray Skipper, whose family has practiced silviculture in rural southwestern Alabama’s Clarke County for four generations, is incredulous. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) is itching to slap land-use restrictions on his property in order to protect the rare black pinesnake under the Endangered Species Act (ESA).

But there is a problem: There is scant evidence that Skipper’s land is home to a single black pine snake.

In response to a lawsuit filed by the Arizona-based Center for Biological Diversity (CBD), FWS in 2015 listed the black pinesnake, a non-poisonous creature measuring four to six feet in length, as “threatened” under the ESA. In 2020, FWS designated 324,679 acres in Alabama and Mississippi as “critical habitat” for the snake, including 93,208 acres of private land. The designation included 10,000 acres home to the Skipper family’s lumber business.

FWS says the Skipper property is “occupied” by the snake but can produce no evidence backing that up. According to a complaint filed on Skipper’s behalf by the Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF), there have been a total of five sightings of black pinesnakes on the Skipper property over the past 25 years, four of them over 20 years old and the last one in 2015. So much for the land being “occupied” by the snake.

Punishing Stewardship

The Skipper family has worked closely with various state of Alabama conservation programs since 1956, and Gray Skipper has shown himself to be a model private conservationist. But the ESA has a long history of punishing, not rewarding, environmental stewardship.

“By opening their land, maintaining original habitat and a complex forest system, encouraging wildlife, and permitting research, the Skipper’s land was identified by FWS,” PLF attorney Charles Yates was quoted in Farm Journal (Sept. 22) as saying. “Critical habitat and the Endangered Species Act treat species as liabilities — not assets. This means families that maintain habitat are punished, and FWS’ policy is self-defeating.”

“I want people to find out how power-hungry FWS is in our case,” Skipper told Farm Journal. “A landowner already doing the right thing to save a species is not the person to clamp down on, and it’s crazy because we were already doing everything they wanted based on our own concerns for the environment, including prescribed burns and leaving stumps alone, encouraging habitat. All the generations of my family have been proud to be involved in conservation and didn’t ask or expect anything back. I still believe somewhere down the line, common sense is going to kick in, but that may be too naïve on my part.”

Scott Jones, CEO of Forest Landowners Association, a nonprofit representing 5,000 forest family landowners and 50 million acres of woodland in 45 states, has joined Skipper in suing FWS over the snake. Jones says FWS makes in critical habitat designations based on soil type and tree species, not on the actual presence of the species on the designated land.

“Think of the logic,” he told Farm Journal. “FWS says the Skipper’s private land is critical habitat – as in the land is so critical for the species to survive – yet, how can the species survive on the Skipper’s land if there are no pinesnakes to begin with?”

The Snake and the Frog

The case is reminiscent of the dusky gopher frog controversy in Louisiana. In 2011, FWS designated land in Tammany Parish as critical habitat for the tiny frog, even though none had been seen in Louisiana since 1967 and the only known habitat for the roughly 100 remaining dusky gopher frogs was in Mississippi. Even worse, the land in Louisiana designated as critical habitat was no longer suitable for the frog. After an eight-year journey through the court system, the case was settled in 2019 when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled, in an 8-0 decision, against FWS, forcing the agency to withdraw the critical habitat designation.

FWS may be facing a similar face with its black pinesnake designation on the Skipper property.

Author

• Bonner Cohen, Ph. D.

  Bonner R. Cohen, Ph. D., is a senior policy analyst with CFACT, where he focuses on natural resources, energy, property rights, and geopolitical developments. Articles by Dr. Cohen have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Investor’s Busines Daily, The New York Post, The Washington Examiner, The Washington Times, The Hill, The Epoch Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Miami Herald, and dozens of other newspapers around the country. He has been interviewed on Fox News, Fox Business Network, CNN, NBC News, NPR, BBC, BBC Worldwide Television, N24 (German-language news network), and scores of radio stations in the U.S. and Canada. He has testified before the U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, and the U.S. House Natural Resources Committee. Dr. Cohen has addressed conferences in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, and Bangladesh. He has a B.A. from the University of Georgia and a Ph. D. – summa cum laude – from the University of Munich.

 

Endangered Species: Report Says Bengal Tigers in Nepal Have Killed 62 Humans in Last 3 Years

CNSNews.com Staff | July 29, 2022 

A report published in the Kathmandu Post and cited by The Guardian says that the recovering Bengal tiger population in Nepal has killed 62 human beings in the last three years. “Over the last three years there have been 104 tiger attacks inside protected areas and 62 people have been killed, according to the Kathmandu Post,” the Guardian reported today.  The Guardian story carried this headline: “Nepal’s tiger numbers recover but attacks on people cause alarm.” The subhead of the article said: “Nepalese population of Bengal tigers has nearly tripled in 12 years and conflict with humans is increasing.”.................To Read More...

Greenies Almost Have a Monopoly on Being Wrong

By Rich Kozlovich

(Editor's Note:  I originally published this on 4/3/12, but all the same issues are at play today as they were then, so I'm republishing this with updates.  RK)

As you read this please keep in mind that we hear over educated under smart people telling us that we are at a tipping point and we must ________(fill in the blank) right now or we will destroy all living things on the Earth. What they want us to do would put mankind back into the most primitive conditions imaginable. Here is an example of their insane thinking.

Bonnie Prince Charles has warned everyone over and over again that we've reached a critical tipping point regarding global warming, and in order to save the planet we must adopt a program that would seriously reduce mankind’s carbon emissions. He then promptly jetted off to spew the same nonsense elsewhere. That "critical tipping point" time has passed, and he keeps flying, and others as loony as he, take up the same cry.  But the great leveler of truth is history and reality, and they show science has been corrupted by a pseudo-pagan green ideology.

Environmentalist in and out of the government want to abandon the Keystone pipeline because of a beetle. Not because we know it will go extinct, it's because we don’t know if it will go extinct. Please read my article, More Coprolite Anyone?

It turns out that those on my side of the argument are now, and always have been…..well..…dare I think it....dare I say it? Yes, I will say it! We were right! Oops, there it is again!  Reality staring everyone in the face.

This appeared on Junkscience.com today. Shocker: Nature Conservancy chief scientist admits ‘data simply do not support the idea of a fragile nature at risk of collapse’

"The eco-fragility trope of Rachel Carson and Al Gore is wrong, says an unlikely source. … The fragility trope dates back, at least, to Rachel Carson, who wrote plaintively in Silent Spring of the delicate web of life and warned that perturbing the intricate balance of nature could have disastrous consequences."

"Al Gore made a similar argument in his 1992 book, Earth in the Balance. And the 2005 Millennium Ecosystem Assessment warned darkly that, while the expansion of agriculture and other forms of development have been overwhelmingly positive for the world’s poor, ecosystem degradation was simultaneously putting systems in jeopardy of collapse."

"The trouble for conservation is that the data simply do not support the idea of a fragile nature at risk of collapse. Ecologists now know that the disappearance of one species does not necessarily lead to the extinction of any others, much less all others in the same ecosystem."  

"In many circumstances, the demise of formerly abundant species can be inconsequential to ecosystem function. The American chestnut, once a dominant tree in eastern North America, has been extinguished by a foreign disease, yet the forest ecosystem is surprisingly unaffected. The passenger pigeon, once so abundant that its flocks darkened the sky, went extinct, along with countless other species from the Steller’s sea cow to the dodo, with no catastrophic or even measurable effects."

The fact of the matter is the only people who were sold on this stuff are those who have an agenda and the ignorant. Being ignorant is a legitimate excuse because it means that we simply don't know.

We are all ignorant about an unending number of things. Being unwilling to find out is what makes people stupid. As for those with an agenda; they aren't ignorant, they are corrupt! They have screamed in rage about everything that makes living in an advanced society possible. They claim that modern living deprives everyone of utopia, which they can deliver by forcing everyone to ‘go green'.

Yet, all they have ever delivered is dystopia - disease, squalor, misery, deprivation, suffering and early death.

That's their history! So if they keep promoting things that leave disaster in its wake, we must conclude that absolutely is their agenda!  The greenies hate humanity!  We really do need to get that!

We also need to get this!  Everything we are told should bear some resemblance to what we see going on in reality, and reality shows us over 95% of all species that has ever lived are extinct. Extinction is the rule, not the exception. When species become biologically incompetent the cease to exist! The rest of the world goes on in spite of that.

I have asked repeatedly for someone, anyone, to tell me what terrible ecological disaster occurred when the dodo bird went extinct? There was none. I understood this and I’m just a bug man, so how did these highly educated super smart people miss it?

There is a side bar to this story that fascinates me. The very ones who insist on demanding we must spend any amount of money, and bear any and every conceivable sacrifice necessary to save every species or nature will unravel, are for the most part, neo-Darwinists. Since they believe in the blatantly ridiculous Theory of Evolution - the  survival of the fittest - then shouldn’t they want incompetent species to go extinct in order for species that are better equipped to survive to take their place?

Truth and consistency of thought is a serious problem for these people.  However, there is one consistency the left/green movement embrace.  In order to promote all the things they promote they are required to embrace cognitive dissonance!  Believing in opposing views and  believing they're all correct.   Views that can only be categorized as articles of faith to a neo-pseudo-pagan secular religion! Leftism!  No amount of valid science, history or reality can disabuse them of their positions.

Here's reality we need to embrace!  Scientific integrity has been made an oxymoron by the embrace of leftist/green ideology, in effect making them Lysenkoists. In short, the question we should be asking is this.  Does ideology make smart people dumb, or insane?

Have We Lost Our Minds?

By Rich Kozlovich

Some years back Burt Prelutsky  wrote an article entitled “Those poor, poor perverts”.   The basis of the article was a discussion as to how ridiculous are the arguments surrounding pedophiles and how they are to be treated by society.

He uses the old story of how “intellectuals” (Editor's Note: He used the word “nuts”, but they were the intellectuals of the day.  Nothing has changed!) would sit around for hours and discuss how many angels could dance on the head of a pin.

See, television did cure one thing.

The only problem is that so many of those who are in decision making positions apparently don’t waste their time on television, mores’ the pity, because they now sit around and decide how many feet away from a school a convicted pedophile may live who has been released from prison.

Prelutsky makes a point that should be obvious to the most casual observer:

 “For what reason would any sane society ever release such a person from jail? The notion that kids are safe if the creep lives 2,000 feet away from where they play is perfectly loony. What about the kids walking to and from those parks and playgrounds? “

He points out that it is like releasing all the bank robbers from the prisons and telling them they can’t live any closer that two blocks away from a bank and expecting this to be the solution to their wanting to rob banks. He goes on to say, “judges and lawmakers seem happy to ignore the rates of recidivism among rapists and pedophiles. Is there anyone else, aside from defense attorneys, who would argue that a man who’s raped a six year old child deserves a second chance?”

We have ceded our own common sense to the “experts”! Are they really all that credible?  So credible that we willingly abandon traditional values, common sense and moral balance?

Where is our moral compass?

As unpleasant an issue as this is, I use it to show a peculiar mindset that has permeated society that really is nuts. Concern about pedophiles, bank robbers and other assorted villains of society is the common concern that we all must share. We also have the added concern of those who are destructive to society in a much larger and more insidious way. The green movement! The group industry and society as a whole must have concerns about.  That's the environmental movement, and those who promote it inside and outside industry.

They promote junk science and outright fraudulent science as fact, and those who should be at the fore front standing against this nonsense turn into cheerleaders, and everyone laps it up like ice cream.

We are willing to accept nonsense from these people because the media is on their side. The EPA is clearly complicit as they continue spewing out a lava flow of scientifically dubious regulations. They support junk science through grant money.  Integrated Pest Management and Green Pest Control are these kinds of endeavors.

The green movement even has legislators held hostage to them via their monetary support.

Some years back a California congressman wanted to make changes to the Endangered Species Act…not repeal it as is really needed…..just add some sanity to it; and the Sierra Club spent a ton of money to defeat him and they did. They stated that “this was a lesson” to other legislators. This makes them more deadly to more people over a broader scope of humanity than bank robbers or even pedophiles.

Do we as an industry really believe all the nonsense they spew out? Do we really believe that we can really come to some sort of mutually acceptable final agreement with them? No matter what many of the prominent people in our industry say publicly; when I talk to them personally and off the record, they all acknowledge that it is all claptrap.

A lobbyist I have known for years makes the point that in any negotiations there must be some compromise, and I agree. The problem we seem to have is being able to understand the difference between compromise and capitulation. If during these discussions we give up something, I would like to know what the other side is giving up.

I am not talking about just being quiet for a while either. Or being quiet while their brethren from some other greenie group attacks us, which is what usually happens. There is no command and control system within the green movement. They will not only continue attacking industry they will attack their green brethren as sell outs for not being green enough.

If you give up 25% of something and they go away until next year, but they will be back the very next year demanding that you give up another 25%,  And this will go on, and on, and on until you no longer have anything to give up.

When you dance with the Devil you don't call the tune, you can't name the dance, you don't lead and you may not be able to leave the dance floor. Why don't we get it?

If you think this is an extreme and unreasonable view; ask Kentucky Fried Chicken. They backed down on point after point and the animal rights people said that this was a “good start”. There will be no end to their demands because the Neville Chamberlain “Policy of Appeasement” philosophy will not work on people with an agenda?

They are the anointed! They know best about all things. They truly believe their individual and collective intellect is far greater than all of the practical experience accumulated by mankind over the centuries. Theirs is the “vision of the anointed”, and must not be ignored, no matter the consequences.

As a result of the policies they have promoted they clearly have become the 20th century’s greatest mass murders, and are working just as hard in the 21st century to maintain that status.

Ford Motor Company found out the hard way. In a Fox News article Steve Milloy points out:

“After Ford caved into pressure from left-wing activist investors and issued a report stating that it “views stabilization of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and energy security as critical and related business issues that warrant precautionary, prudent and early action,” the enviros thanked Ford in return by accusing his company of putting “more heat-trapping pollution into our skies each year than the entire country of Mexico”; continuing to “produce more global warming pollution on average than any other automaker”; continuing to make SUVs; and fighting a California law that would require a 30 percent reduction in automobile carbon dioxide emissions by 2016.”

Let’s not kid ourselves; what they really want is Ford, and the rest of the automobile industry, out of business.

So, what do they want from us in pest control? Well, I am sure that if we would offer to kill ourselves that they would agree that this would be a nice "start"!

If you look at who has affected people’s health positively and negatively you will find that it is the pesticide application industries that have saved and extended lives, and it's the environmental movement who has taken lives.

So why do we listen to them? Why does anyone?

I am the last one to decry their desire for a simple life without all the modern conveniences; if that is what someone wants, then I say…enjoy! However, if all of these people think their ideas are so great, why are all the greenies and their supporters living in the developed world and not in the third world where their policies hold sway? If they really believe all of the stuff they spew out, they need to take a personal stand and move there.

They could really make an impact on everyone’s mind by taking their children with them also.

Certainly that must make sense to everyone! After all, why would a greenie want to expose themselves and their children to all of these terrible chemicals and advanced technology of an advanced nation?   Right?

They need to move to one of the many areas of the world where there are no roads, few cars and no running water contaminated with any chlorine or fluoride. No electricity, no vaccinations, no genetically modified foods, no fungicides, no anti-bacterial cleaners, all organic food, no pesticides, no air conditioning.

Will there be many takers? I have no doubt there would be few, if any!  You can be sure that the greenies will be as close to the modern conveniences and the society they claim to despise as surely as bank robbers will rob banks and pedophiles will hang around children.

To paraphrase the earlier question asked by Burt Prelutsky:

“For what reason would any sane society ever believe anything these people say?"

The notion that society would be better off adopting the ideas and philosophies of the green movement is perfectly loony.” And yes!  We really have lost our minds!

Let's try and get this once and for all.  The left is irrational, misanthropic and morally defective, that's history and that history is incontestable. Dystopia follows the left like Sancho Panza followed Don Quixote.  A madman!

David Bernhardt: Cleaning the Augean Stables

By Rich Kozlovich

In days gone by I would just assume everyone had at least heard of the Greek mythological Twelve Labors of Heracles I doubt that’s true today, but to the point.

The fifth task imposed by his cousin King Eurystheus was to clean the stables of Augeas in one day, which were a disaster since these stables housed 3000 oxen, and had never been cleaned, therefore these stables were full of manure. It was believed Hercules would be incapable of doing it in one day so the king agreed to give a tenth of his herd to Heracles but:

“Hercules………tore a big opening in the wall of the cattle-yard where the stables were. Then he made another opening in the wall on the opposite side of the yard.” (Editor's note:  Heracles or Hercules? either is acceptable.  I used what was presented by the authors. RK)  

"Next, he dug wide trenches to two rivers which flowed nearby. He turned the course of the rivers into the yard. The rivers rushed through the stables, flushing them out, and all the mess flowed out the hole in the wall on other side of the yard.”

 Well, the king didn’t like the fact he accomplished this task since now he had to give up a tenth of his herd. Therefore he reneged and demanded more tasks from Heracles because he was paid to do it.

It was a stupid story, and like all the Green myths is filled with irrational paradigms, but the story is instructive in this way: No matter what you do to appease tyrants, it will never be enough.  The greenies and their acolytes in government, just as corrupt King Eurystheus dealt with Heracles, it will never be satisfied. 

On Feb. 12, 2019 Coral Davenport posted this article: Top Leader at Interior Dept. Pushes a Policy Favoring His Former Client saying:

• "David Bernhardt, the agency’s acting chief, wants to roll back endangered-species protections on a tiny fish, a change that benefits few outside a California group he once represented as a lobbyist."

She then goes on to attempt to cast aspersions on Bernhardt’s integrity saying among other things:

• “Because Mr. Bernhardt’s actions would disproportionately benefit one of his former clients, independent ethics specialists said that, under the terms of the Trump administration’s ethics pledge, which Mr. Bernhardt signed, he should not have been given clearance to act. Its “revolving door” provision requires former lobbyists to recuse themselves for two years from any particular matter or specific issue on which they lobbied in the two years before joining the administration.”

So, apparently it was better that former heads of these departments and agencies worked for their clients, the green movement?   Whether they were ever paid by them or not is immaterial. They were philosophical clients.  They were worked unendingly to attain the goals of the activists over and over again as has been shown by the many “Sue and Settle” articles exposing the conspiracy between green activists and bureaucrats at the EPA, the Wildlife Services, and others.  Constantly twisting and turning simple laws into often times insurmountable and irrational regulations, never intended by Congress. 

So I say good for Trump!!!!!

At least now we know there’s someone in there that actually knows what he’s talking about, and knows first-hand the chicanery they adopt and horsepucky greenies spew out to get their way, and how to overcome it.

The ESA has done little to actually save species but it’s been the “go to law” that allows activists and deep state bureaucrats to overturn Constitutional guarantees regarding private property, one of the goals of all socialist movements.

The Endangered Species Act really is doing what it's supposed to do. Halt human progress. Saving species is just the emotional hook, and the Congress that voted on this had the so-called 'romantic' species in mind, and were shocked when the Tennessee Valley dam project came to a screeching halt over the snail darter.

Congress actually had to pass special legislation to overcome this outrage. The ESA gave individuals standing to sue the government over environmental issues, which is now out of control with the EPA actually helping activists sue them in order to get power the legislature didn't deem appropriate to give to them. Now we're saving microscopic shrimp to the detriment of pesticide users, and it's one of the most prolific species on the planet.

Once again, I find Trump’s insights into these irrational, misanthropic and morally defective laws to be amazing, and no politician running for President would have an iota of the courage he’s demonstrated to bring this to a halt.

Kudos to Trump!!!!!!! We need a Herculean figure to clean out the swamp. I hope he can divert a river of wise decisions that does it.

I’ve posted and written extensively about this. You may wish to peruse some of the articles, including that regarding the Delta smelt.

Let’s start with:

Endangered Species Act: Blast from the Past.

By Rich Kozlovich

For the benefit of those who are new to the pest control industry and new to Paradigms and Demographics - or those who just refused to pay attention: Here are some Endangered Species Act articles that give the history on how outrageous this piece of legislation is.  This will explain TVA vs. Hill. which is fundamental to our battle. 

ESA Outrages, Part I Thursday, September 18, 2008 ESA Outrages, Part II Monday, September 22, 2008 ESA Outrages, Part III Saturday, October 18, 2008

Congress needs to step in to end this game of ‘endangered chicken’ once and for all. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is recklessly driving the taxpayers’ truck on a collision course with our economy, food producers, true species steward landowners and taxpayers.

"Let’s hope Congress takes the keys away before more damage is done." - Texas Agriculture Commissioner Todd Staples, in testimony to the United States House of Representatives Committee on Natural Resources.  "It is clear the ESA has been used to accomplish the goals of radicals and those seeking to expand the reach of government,” Staples communicated to the Committee in a prepared statement of testimony.

By Rich Kozlovich

ESA Today August 4, 2012

ESA Today Sunday, July 8, 2012

Endangered Species Act

Thirteen Days of ESA

Green Gold

ESA Outrages, Part I

ESA Outrages, Part II

ESA Outrages, Part III

Then please avail yourself of some of my personal choices.

Donald Trump Stopped Democrats from Killing Alaskans

Trump’s Interior Department seeks to end abuse of migratory bird treaty Act

Endangered Species Act: The Frog That Jumped The Shark

Population Doomster Paul Ehrlich’s New Eco-Scare: ‘Biological Annihilation’

Nipping a legal problem in the bud

Are neonicotinoid insecticide seed treatments endangering wild bees?

The Sue-and-Settle Racket

Preserve the habitat of imaginary woodpecker?

Conservation – not more control

Shades of the Old Soviet Union - "Red" Wolf Acolytes of a Dying Ideology

Federal Permits Will Allow Wind Farms to Kill More Bald Eagles

Forgotten (or Expunged?) History - Wolves

The Cock Crows for Rural America

Court expands ESA protections on climate grounds