The Obama Administration has until May 11 to reverse last-minute Bush era regulations changes that weaken the Endangered Species Act. Write or call Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar today and demand that he restore the Endangered Species Act to its full strength.
 
For example, the rules now permit the U.S. Department of Transportation to decide whether a listed species' habitat would be compromised by a highway project, rather than trained biologists from the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service.
 
Call Secretary Salazar at 202/208-3100 during business hours.
Send an e-mail letter (see a sample letter below) to [log in to unmask] . Or send a printed letter to
 
The Honorable Ken Salazar, Secretary
U.S. Department of the Interior
1849 C Street, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20240
 
Sample letter
                                                                                                Your Name and address
 
The Honorable Ken Salazar, Secretary
U.S. Department of the Interior
1849 C Street, N.W.
Washington, D.C, 20240
 
Date
 
Dear Secretary Salazar:
 
I am writing to ask that you restore the Endangered Species Act, as amended, to its full strength before May 11 to protect America’s rarest plant and animal species.
 
In December 2008, the Bush Administration authorized a rule change which altered the Endangered Species Act regulations to eliminate the requirement that Federal agencies must consult with the federal government’s two most scientifically qualified agencies – the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service - about the potential impact their activity may have on federally-listed Threatened and Endangered (T&E) Species.
 
Further, a rule was passed in January which limited protection given to Polar Bears under the Endangered Species Act to less than the level offered by its 'Threatened' status, including permitting drilling offshore in the bear’s fragile Arctic environment.
 
Earlier this year, President Obama called a halt to the immediate enactment of the Endangered Species Act changes and charged your agency to assess these issues.  Congress gave you until May 11 to drop the new regulations and to restore the Endangered Species Act to full strength.
 
I urge you to do the RIGHT thing and restore the Endangered Species Act to its full powers and to repeal the rule that denies Polar Bear full Threatened species protections.
 
 Yours sincerely,
 
Your Name
 
 
Background Information on the Endangered Species Act: 2009 and Beyond
 
2008:  The Bush Extinction Plan
 
In December, the Bush Administration altered the Endangered Species Act through regulatory changes made by U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) that strip protections for America’s rarest and most imperiled animals, fish and plants.
 
DOI received more than 250,000 comments opposing the rule changes.
 
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service recommended rule changes to the Endangered Species Act of 1973, as amended, that purported to streamline the consultation process required under Section 7 of the Act.
 
The new rule allows federal agencies to decide for themselves whether their actions would negatively impact a Threatened or Endangered Species (T&E) or adversely modify its critical habitat.
 
The changes would eliminate the current requirement that federal agencies consult with the U.S.’s two most scientifically qualified agencies – the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service - about the potential impact their activity may have on a federally-listed species.
 
Prior to the rules change, the independent consultative process was “designed to figure out how a project can move forward without harming a species at risk of disappearing forever,” said Jon Hunter, policy director of the Endangered Species Coalition, an ally of the Sierra Club.
 
“The new rule takes decision-making on Threatened and Endangered Species listings out of the hands of scientists and wildlife professionals at agencies such as the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and instead puts those decisions in the hands of agencies working on projects that may be adversely affected by a listing,” said Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club in a statement after the proposed rule changes were made public in the Federal Register.
 
 The press in reporting on the issue last summer noted that the rule changes were written by the U.S. Solicitor General’s office, not scientists and administrators of either the U.S. Fish and Wildlife or the National Marine Fisheries Service.
 
For example, the rules now permit the U.S. Department of Transportation to decide whether a listed species' habitat would be compromised by a highway project, rather than trained biologists from the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service.
 
In what the U.S. Department of the Interior characterized as an effort to make endangered species considerations “less contentious” between federal agencies and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife and National Marine Fisheries Service and “to provide greater clarify and certainty to the consultation process,” the rule changed the definition of “cumulative impact” on a species.
 
The new regulation would permit a federal agency to break up its projects into smaller pieces and assess how each of those phases impacts a listed species, rather than the whole project. For example, the new rule does not require the U.S. Department of Transportation to consider whether a completed road would present a cumulative impact in the form of road injuries and deaths for Endangered or Threatened species.
 
Most alarming to many conservation activists these days, the new Endangered Species Act regulation “reinforces the Services’ current view that there is no requirement to consult on greenhouse gas emissions’ contribution to global warming and its associated impacts on listed species.”
 
The new rule redefines the “essential causes” that might harm an Endangered species resulting from a project of a federal agency. The revisions make explicit that while the impact of tailpipe emissions (from a new highway) on local air pollution could be an effect of the action, the greenhouse gas emissions’ contribution to global warming and associated impacts to listed species are not and the effects of those impacts would not need to be considered in any consultation.
 
 According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, global warming threatens up to one-third of all species on earth with extinction. It is irresponsible of the U.S. government to shirk its responsibility in requiring that its federal agencies assess the global warming impact of their actions on Threatened and Endangered Species.
 
Across the U.S., climate change is already impacting humans and their wildlife through hotter summer temperatures and more violent storms. The last thing the humans and the threatened and endangered species that live across the U.S. in national forests, state and local parks, agricultural lands and in urban and suburban areas need is the blatant disregard of the U.S. government when it comes to the impact of federal projects.
 
Especially vulnerable to global warming climate impacts, the Polar Bear was listed as a Threatened species in May 2008, but another Bush Extinction Plan rules change passed in January reduces its protection under the ES Act because it permits drilling in the Polar Bears’ fragile Arctic habitat.
 
The Sierra Club and many of its allies in the environmental community submitted comments opposing the U.S. Department of the Interior’s proposals to weaken the Endangered Species Act. Soon after the rules were finalized, the Sierra Club and other environmental groups engaged in legal action regarding the changes because they violate the requirements of the ESA.
 
2009: Urgent Action Needed.
 
There is a short window of opportunity to stop what many wildlife conservationists call The Bush Extinction Plan.
 
On Inauguration Day, Jan. 20, President Obama said his Administration would freeze all regulatory changes made by the Bush Administration in its last days. The President charged Interior, the USFWS and other agencies to examine the new Endangered Species Act and Polar Bear protection regulations.
 
On March 11, President Obama signed the Omnibus Appropriations Bill (HR 1105) which included an amendment that gave the administration 60 days to drop the Endangered Species Act rule changes and to give the Polar Bear full protection as a Threatened species.
 
That gives President Obama and Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar until May 11 to do the RIGHT thing by restoring the Endangered Species Act to full strength and to protect the Polar Bear to the full extent of the law.
 
Tell Secretary to save the Polar Bear and other Threatened and Endangered Species by killing the Bush Extinction Plan.  Modify the sample letter and make it your own. Tell Secretary Salazar how much you care about the future of American endangered species and all wildlife.