Bush Takes Aim at the Piping Plover
One of America's most charming and delicate shorebirds, the piping plover, is close to extinction. Yet the administration of President George W. Bush has permitted the reduction of the critical habitats for this endangered bird by 92 percent. The administration said that the amount of habitat needed for the protection of the species was grossly overestimated by the previous administration.
The Center for Public Integrity notes that the BNP Petroleum Company, seeking drilling rights near the South Padre Island National Seashore in Texas, petitioned the Bush administration to reduce the critical habitat area for wintering populations of the piping plover.
A Call to Action
Every schoolchild is taught about the extinction of the dinosaurs. But we may be on the verge of another great extinction. This time it is birds, the descendants of the dinosaurs which once dominated Earth.
A new report from Stanford University estimates that one in 10 bird species will be extinct by the year 2100. The report says that an additional 15 percent of bird species will be on the verge of extinction by the end of the century
Bush Threatens the Marbled Murrelet
The marbled murrelet is a threatened seabird that nests in the old growth forests of the Pacific Northwest. It frequently nests in forests that may be 30 miles from the ocean, but it returns to the ocean each day to feed.
Logging approved by the Bush Administration in old growth forests threatens the murrelet’s habitat. Environmental groups have determined that the bird will become extinct in the next century if logging is permitted to continue in old growth forests in the region.
The marbled murrelet has been protected since 1992. But on September 1, 2004 Bush’s Interior Department announced that it will no longer consider marbled murrelets in the Pacific Northwest as an isolated species from murrelets in Canada and Alaska. This reclassification paves the way for the administration to remove the murrelet from the “threatened” category of protection under the Endangered Species Act. Apparently the interests of the timber industry have prevailed.
Nine days after he took office in 2001, George W. Bush’s Department of the Interior removed all 11 national forests in Arizona and New Mexico from the list of protected habitats for the threatened Mexican subspecies of the Spotted Owl. These forests are critical since they are home to over 90 percent of all known Mexican Spotted Owls.
The same month, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service also announced that the California species of the Spotted Owl did not warrant protection under the Endangered Species Act.
Federal Judge David Bury called the reduction of critical habitat “nonsensical” and blasted the administration for knowingly violating the Endangered Species Act. On October 2, 2003, Secretary of Interior Gale Norton refused to obey the court order to protect the Mexican Spotted Owl, arguing that a “lean budget” has made the agency unable to comply with the order to designate critical habitat for the bird!
This is not an isolated case. Over the last year, the Department of the Interior in the Bush Administration has removed protection for endangered populations of other species of birds including the Trumpeter Swan, Mountain Quail, and the Sage Grouse.
- special thanks to Stephen Greenfield for submitting this information
Birds Listed as Either Threatened or Endangered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
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