DC Thank you for joining us this afternoon. In the short time that George W. Bush has been in office, we ve learned that his is an administration that doesn t pussy-foot around when it comes to attacking our environmental laws. They started by proposing to drill in the heart of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and things have only gotten worse since then. It is the listing of species for protection under the ESA and the designation of their critical habitat that must be protected if they are to survive.
Listing starts the process of providing protection.
The report lays out the history. As enacted, the ESA provided that species should be listed for protection whenever the scientific evidence indicates they are threatened or endangered of extinction. However, in 1982, appalled by the implementing agencies and especially Interior Secretary James Watt s failure to list species, the Congress modified Section 4 of the Act by imposing statutory deadlines by which the Secretary had to act, and citizens were given the right to go to court to compel action when the deadlines were not met. Of course, citizens can also go to court to challenge the decisions of the Secretary if they believe they were wrong. The Bush anti-endangered species rider would suspend these mandatory deadlines, effectively nullifying a citizen s ability to obtain a court order requiring an errant Secretary to process a petition, to have a species now listed as threatened upgraded to endangered status, or to have a listed species critical habitat designated.