The Department of the Interior has been highly exploitive of it's power in managing the nation's assets, including delisting species still delicate in their stability. The American Bald Eagle is the first to be delisted while developers scrambled for lands once protected. Noted in the radio interview at NPR openly states, in not so many words, there was no protection of the newly and returned nesting areas. That reality allows for exploitation of wealth seekers while the population of American Bald Eagles will surely drop and potently require a return of the Eagles to the protected lists and once again the engagement of lands where they can once again nest safely. There is simply gross mismangement by this adminisration and in all honesty it is pre-mediated. This much disarray of species protections comes because of 'desire to dismantle' rather than simply incompetency.
Bald Eagle Comes Off Endangered List (click here for link)
Radio link (click here)
Day to Day, June 28, 2007 · The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has announced that it is removing the American bald eagle from the nation's list of threatened and endangered species. Al Cecere, founder and president of the American Eagle Foundation, talks with Anthony Brooks.
Within the mismangement of these initiatives is also a developing issue with the public as to what delisting means. The public was never provided any overview to the delisting, just that American Bald Eagles were now fair game. :
Polk County
Officials: Man cited after shooting of bald eagle (click here)
October 23, 2007
Oregon teenager accused of killing bald eagle (click here)
Oct 23, 2007
By The Associated Press
SHERIDAN, Ore. — A Sheridan teenager has been charged with killing a bald eagle along the Willamette River.
Terry rancher to pay $15,000 in restitution for eagle deaths (click here)
Oct 26, 2007
The Associated Press
BILLINGS — A Terry rancher whose efforts to poison skunks and raccoons ended with the unintentional deaths of three eagles has been ordered to pay $15,000 in restitution.
Ronald E. Tibbetts, 61, was also given six months of unsupervised probation.
The Bush administration pre-meditatedly acts to undermine the authority of legislation long standing in this country as some of the most moral of it's initiatives. The Bush/Cheney draft to undermine The Endangered Species Act is being exploited by the timber industry before it received public hearings and appropriate passage into legislation. With the filing of this lawsuit, the timber industry nationally is ravaging forests. Yesterday in passing some forested areas along I-40 in North Carolina, I noted 'fragmented' forests near the road and clearing of trees where ever possible, while at times leaving simply a highway 'lined' with perhaps a forest only 30 feet in width but giving the perception of an entire forest in daylight hours.
The Bush administration is again commiting treason and empowering zealotry in an industry intent on exploiting profits at every turn before their damages are realized and stopped by the people of states and the nation. This is all pre-mediated and longly lusted assaults against the moral content of the legislation of the American public, now with decades of investment and soon to be 'reinvestment' when this administration finally is ousted or leaves DC. As noted in the article below the lawsuit filed by the timber industry was all inside information from the Bush Administration with a date one month previous to public knowledge.
Timber Industry Uses Draft Bush Endangered Species Act Regulations (click here)
Lawsuit seeks removal of marbled murrelet from threatened species list, elimination of old-growth forest protections
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: April 30, 2007
For more information, please contact:
Kristen Boyles, Earthjustice, 206-343-7340, X33
Noah Greenwald, Center for Biological Diversity, 503-484-7495
Scott Greacen, EPIC, 707-476-8340
...The timber lawsuit was filed on March 7, 2007, nearly one month before the draft regulations surfaced. Industry lawyers are trying to force the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to remove the marbled murrelet from the federal threatened list under a provision of the draft regulations. Current regulations contain no such requirement.
"The murrelet is just the tip of the iceberg," said Noah Greenwald, conservation biologist for the Center for Biological Diversity. "These draft regulations are really a rewrite of the Endangered Species Act itself, a litigation magnet designed to help industry strip protection from hundreds of endangered species."...
Whoever would consider the NRA a Conservation proponent WILLING to stand upto the Bush Administration. The NRA has reaped enormous enthusiasm under this administration while war promotes gun interest and the lack of regulation, allowing The Assault Weapons Ban to lapse; the NRA also took issue with the grossly exploitive Bush Interior Department.
NRA Pressured To Resist Bush Energy Policies (click here)
Hunters Wary of Limited Land Access
By Blaine Harden
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, January 7, 2007; Page A03
SEATTLE -- After years of close association with the Republican Party and hard-nosed opposition to federal land-use regulation, the National Rifle Association is being pressured by its membership to distance itself from President Bush's energy policies that have opened more public land for oil and gas drilling and limited access to hunters and anglers.
"The Bush administration has placed more emphasis on oil and gas than access rights for hunters," said Ronald L. Schmeits, second vice president of the NRA, a member of its board of directors and a bank president in Raton, N.M....
I believe this is a wonderful idea, but, when this type of program is met with poor examples set by the USA and it's willingly exploitive industries; there raises the question as to what exactly will come out of the program in the way of sustainability and quite frankly $4 million is a token to the monies actually needed for these countries. Species protections are important but sustainability is of utmost importance while working with the United Nations Millenium Ecosystem Assessment (click here) in a warming world dominated in contribution of CO2 by the USA.
The United States Announces 33 Grants to Support $4 million in Conservation Projects for Elephants, Tigers, Great Apes and Rhinoceroses in 17 Countries (click here)
U.S. Department of the Interior
Office of the Secretary
June 13, 2007
THE HAGUE, Netherlands – The United States of America today announced 33 Grants totaling more than $1.7 million to support conservation of Asian elephants, great apes, rhinoceroses, and tigers in 17 countries.
International conservation organizations and other partners will contribute more than $2 million in matching funds for a total of more than $4 million to support conservation projects for the species.
“The American people have a great love and appreciation for wildlife and want to support the efforts of other nations to protect and conserve these species,” said Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Interior Todd Willens. “Combining these grants with the matching funds put up by partners, we will monitor and study elephants, tigers and rhinos, ensure they are protected from poaching and other illegal activities and enable their habitat to be conserved.”
“Through this partnership approach, we are leveraging our conservation dollars to provide the greatest benefit to these species,” Willens said.
Willens made the announcement as the head of the U.S. delegation to the on-going 14th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora.
The United States is awarding the grants to support voluntary conservation efforts in cooperation with local communities and landowners in Cambodia, India, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, Russia, Cameroon, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Cote d’Ivoire, Gabon, Nigeria, Republic of Congo and Liberia....
