Feds finalize species act changes

WASHINGTON - The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service announced Aug. 12 finalized changes to provisions of the U.S. Endangered Species Act that the federal government says will streamline the decades-old wildlife protection law. However, conservation groups denounced the decision saying it will threaten at-risk species. The 1970s-era ESA has been credited with bringing back nearly extinct species such as bald eagles, gray whales and grizzly bears, but the law has been frustration for drillers, miners and other industries because new listings can put vast swaths of land off limits to development. The roll back decision has been seen as advantage for oil, gas and coal production, and grazing and logging on federal lands. The changes end the same automatic protections for threatened species that it provides to endangered species. The original act protected species regardless of economics. The finalized revisions “fit squarely within the President’s mandate of easing the regulatory burden on the American public, without sacrificing our species’ protection and recovery goals," U.S. Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross said in a statement. These changes “crash a bulldozer” through the act’s protections of America's “most vulnerable wildlife," Noah Greenwald, the Center for Biological Diversity's endangered species director, said in a statement. Conservationists and environmentalists said they would challenge the revised law in court. (Source: Reuters 08/12/19)