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New Rule Would Discount Warming as Risk Factor for Species
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| Contributor | ArmyDem |
| Last Edited | ArmyDem Nov 21, 2008 09:09am |
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| Category | News |
| Media | Newspaper - Washington Post |
| News Date | Friday, November 21, 2008 03:00:00 PM UTC0:0 |
| Description | By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, November 21, 2008; Page A03
The Bush administration is finalizing changes to the Endangered Species Act that would ensure that federal agencies would not have to take global warming into account when assessing risks to imperiled plants and animals.
The proposed rule changes, which were obtained by The Washington Post, are under review by the Office of Management and Budget and are close to being published in the Federal Register.
The main purpose of the new regulations, which were first unveiled in August, is to eliminate a long-standing provision of the Endangered Species Act that requires an independent scientific review by either the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service or the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration of any federal project that could affect a protected species. Under the administration's proposal, individual agencies could decide on their own whether a project would harm an imperiled species.
The latest version of the rule goes further than the language Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne issued in August by explicitly excluding climate change from the factors that would trigger an interagency consultation. The move is significant because the administration has listed polar bears as a threatened species under the act on the grounds that their sea-ice habitat is shrinking, but Kempthorne has repeatedly argued that this move should not trigger a federal curb on greenhouse gas emissions linked to the melting of sea ice. |
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