CSPA Advisory

CSPA Action Alert 8.15.08                              ACT NOW!  

Bush Administration Proposes to Gut Federal Endangered Species Act: Do you want to fish for salmon and steelhead or carp?

In the midst of the collapse of California’s salmon and steelhead fisheries, the Bush Administration is proposing massive radical changes in rules implementing the federal Endangered Species Act.  If implemented, the rule changes will grievously damage our fisheries by comprising the last line of defense protecting listed species from their present tumble toward extinction.  It will make our efforts to protect and restore fisheries vastly more difficult.

For the sake of our fisheries and future generations, we must stop this despicable attempt to dismember our nation’s most successful law protecting fisheries and wildlife.

The proposed new regulations can be found here: The Federal Register notice of proposed ESA rule changes 

Under the current regulations, federal agencies must consult with scientists at the Fish and Wildlife Service or the National Marine Fisheries Service to determine whether a project is likely to harm endangered species or habitat.

However, the new regulations would:

1.                  Exempt thousands of federal activities from review under the Endangered Species Act;

2.                  Eliminate checks and balances of independent oversight;

3.                  Limit which effects can be considered harmful;

4.                  Prevent consideration of a project's contribution to global warming;

5.                  Set an inadequate 60-day deadline for wildlife experts to evaluate a project in the instances when they are invited to participate -- or else the project gets an automatic green light;

6.                  Enable large-scale projects to go unreviewed by dividing them into hundreds of small projects;

7.                  Limit protection of a species only to where it is currently found.

  Because these regulations are administrative and not legislative, they won't need the approval of Congress.  In an effort to push these new rules through before the Bush Administration leaves office, the normal 90-day comment period has been cut to 30 days.  The comment period began August 15^th and ends September 15^th. 

And in a blatant effort to reduce the number of fishermen opposing the new rules, the U.S. fish and Wildlife Service has announced that they will not accept e-mailed or faxed comments.  

Comments will only be accepted via:

The above is a form fill page and is the easiest to use.

I cannot over stress how important it is for all fisher-folk to take action and oppose these insidious rule changes. 

Below is a sample letter (remember, it’s always good to modify any form letter to reflect your own words).  You can modify, print, sign and mail it to the address above or copy and paste it into the comment section at the Web-portal site or the NRDC site. 

Sincerely,

Bill Jennings, Executive Director
California Sportfishing Protection Alliance  

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Sample Letter:

Mr. Dirk Kempthorne, Secretary
Department of the Interior

Dear Secretary Kempthorne,

I am writing to urge you to stop the changes to longstanding regulations implementing the Endangered Species Act you recently proposed. These changes would drastically weaken the interagency consultation provision of the Endangered Species Act -- widely considered the most important and effective provision of the Act -- and also undercut the Endangered Species Act's proper role in addressing the impacts of climate change on our nation's most imperiled wildlife.

For 35 years the Endangered Species Act has protected imperiled species from the effects of potentially harmful federal projects. The strength of the Endangered Species Act has been the checks and balances created by interagency consultation between federal agencies as they pursue projects, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife and National Marine Fisheries Services, whose primary responsibility is the conservation of endangered species.

Interagency consultation ensures that federal experts independently review federal projects that may impact America’s most imperiled fish and wildlife and that project modifications are made where necessary.  The proposed regulations would eliminate interagency consultation on thousands of federal projects that pose a risk to endangered and threatened species each year and transfer the responsibility to protect fish and wildlife to agencies with no or little knowledge or expertise in fish or wildlife protection.  Furthermore, some agencies' interests could be directly at odds with the well being of endangered species.

By eliminating or reducing the consultation processes long embedded in the law, the proposed rules remove essential safeguards, including independent scientific review. In essence, the rules replace science with politics.  They will almost certainly result in detrimental impacts on endangered and imperiled species and increase the likelihood that opportunities to avoid such impacts are overlooked.

Notwithstanding the fact that these are the most significant changes to regulations implementing the Endangered Species Act in more than 20 years, you have provided the public just 30 days in which to submit comments, not the traditional 90, and prevented anyone from sending their comments by email.

I request you set an additional 60 days to allow the public an opportunity to meaningfully comment on these proposed regulations.

I also urge you to not to finalize these regulatory changes.

Thank you.

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