NATIONAL

GOP tees up bids to empower states, block federal bat protection. E&E News (pub req’d). Republican efforts to overhaul or alter the Endangered Species Act are heating up on both sides of the Capitol. Eight senators are supporting similar but separate measures that would give states more control over the protection of rare plants and animals. And in the House, Rep. Kristi Noem (R-S.D.) introduced a bill earlier this week to prevent the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service from listing the long-eared bat as an endangered species.

House Democrats urge big funding boost for grouse. E&E News (sub req’d). Congress should approve the Interior Department’s request to roughly quadruple funding for sage grouse conservation or run the risk that the bird becomes listed under the Endangered Species Act, House Democrats said Monday. Nearly two dozen Democrats, led by Natural Resources Committee ranking member Raúl Grijalva of Arizona, wrote a letter to Appropriations Committee leaders asking them to provide $60 million in fiscal 2016 for the Bureau of Land Management and $4 million for the Fish and Wildlife Service, which is what those agencies requested for sage grouse work.

FWS to reconsider woodland caribou’s status, critical habitat. E&E News (sub req’d). In light of a recent Canadian assessment and U.S. court decision, the Fish and Wildlife Service is reconsidering proposals to ease federal species and habitat protections for the endangered woodland caribou. A Federal Register notice published yesterday said FWS is reopening the comment period for the proposed reclassification from endangered to threatened of the southern Selkirk Mountains population of caribou. NOTE: Courthouse News Service also reports.

NWF might back congressional bid to delist Great Lakes wolf. E&E News (sub req’d). The National Wildlife Federation might support legislation in Congress to delist the gray wolf in the western Great Lakes. The organization’s state affiliates will vote this weekend on a resolution supporting a “narrow fix” to a federal judge’s decision last December to restore federal protections for wolves in Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota.

Senators seek solutions for ‘broken’ timber program. E&E News (sub req’d). Duane Vaagen, president of Vaagen Brothers Lumber Inc., in Colville, Wash., testified on behalf of the American Forest Resource Council and the Federal Forest Resource Coalition, two of the nation’s largest logging advocacy groups. He recommended that Congress establish timber trusts in areas suitable for logging. Congress should streamline the National Environmental Policy Act and Endangered Species Act in these areas and dedicate a portion of timber revenues to help expedite future NEPA and ESA reviews, he said.

ALASKA

MSA changes focused on flexibility, science. Alaska Journal of Commerce. Taking the lead on legislation he’s been involved with since it first passed in 1976, Alaska U.S. Rep. Don Young introduced a bill March 4 to reauthorize and amend the Magnuson-Stevens Act. Young’s reauthorization also includes a kind of declaration of sovereignty for the act’s authority to govern fisheries. Under one amendment, any conflict between the Magnuson-Stevens Act and the National Marine Sanctuaries Act or the Antiquities Act of 1906 will fall under the authority of the MSA. Any required changes to fisheries under the Endangered Species Act of 1973 will also fall under MSA authority to examine and implement.

CALIFORNIA

UC Davis reels in $10M to save Delta smelt from extinction. Sacramento Business Journal. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation awarded the University of California Davis $10 million over four years to save a viable population of Delta smelt from extinction, the university reported Wednesday. The federal Endangered Species Act was passed by Congress in 1973 and signed into law by President Richard Nixon at the end of that year. The act mandates saving species from extinction due to economic growth and development no matter the cost.

Large sea turtle surfaces at San Simeon Cove. The Cambrian. While kayaking in San Simeon Cove last week, kayak business owner and guide Cubby Cashen spotted an unusual visitor in the kelp beds south of the pier: a sea turtle measuring approximately 3 feet in diameter. Using pictures and a video of the turtle, biologist Jeffrey Seminoff of NOAA’s Southwest Fisheries Science Center (SWFSC) identified the animal as an Eastern Pacific olive ridley turtle (Lepidochelys olivacea), an uncommon visitor to the area. Many sea turtle species in U.S. waters are listed under the Endangered Species Act.

Worse than worst case scenario. Manteca Bulletin. A pending deal that temporarily relaxes salinity and dissolved oxygen standards in the San Joaquin River at Vernalis south of Manteca could prevent the Stanislaus River from going dry this year. Jeff Shields, South San Joaquin Irrigation District general manager, said that even though the district and OID have a court order protecting its water that will account for a large chunk of what would remain in New Melones on that date, he noted that the Endangered Species Act “is a powerful law” tempting the Bureau to commandeer water that doesn’t legally belong to them to meet fall fish flow requirements. Fall flows aren’t addressed in the proposed deal as they occur after Oct. 1.

Drought dominates conversation at Reclamation, hydropower agency budget hearing. E&E News (sub req’d). California’s ongoing water fights amid a fourth straight year of drought dominated a House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Water, Power and Oceans hearing yesterday. Both sides of the aisle urged the agency to do more after a number of members met with Reclamation officials in the lead-up to yesterday’s hearing. At one of those meetings, Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Calif.) raised concerns about controversial releases of water to help fish, homing in on the example of drawdown at New Melones Dam in his district to help the endangered delta smelt.

FLORIDA

Manatees must remain on endangered list. Keynoter, Op-Ed. My suggestion to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to put away its party hats and streamers. Instead of trying to claim some artificial victory for manatees, the agency should get busy on doing what is actually needed to safeguard the future for manatees so that a legitimate downlisting could be feasible in a few years. Citizens have invested too much in this species over the years to see recovery unraveled by a misguided push to look the other way and pretend things are rosy. They’re not.

OREGON

Once-starving seals, sea lions swarm Columbia River for smelt, salmon runs. The Oregonian. Increasing numbers of pinnipeds, driven by starvation in California to the healthy smelt and salmon runs in the Columbia River, have put a strain on the Port of Astoria’s infrastructure and created enmity between fishers, conservationists and fishery agencies. In 2010, Pacific smelt, known as eulachon, were deemed threatened under the federal Endangered Species Act. Since that designation, they’re been allowed for commercial and recreational harvest in the past two years only. NOTE: Eugene Register-Guard and Daily Astorian also report.

We need to do more to save the sage grouse. Bend Bulletin, Op-Ed. On March 20, an editorial on these pages titled “Saving Oregonians from the sage grouse” concluded that creative conservation efforts are needed to protect the greater sage grouse and to ensure that there won’t be a need to list the bird as an endangered species. We agree, in part. It will take a concerted effort by land managers, scientists, public lands users and all other stakeholders to come up with meaningful conservation measures. And many of the measures developed so far can be beneficial. But more needs to be done.

WYOMING

Sage grouse mapping team meets. Casper Star-Tribune. Wyoming’s Sage Grouse Implementation Team mapping subcommittee will meet in several places across the state to allow comments on proposed revisions to sage-grouse core area boundaries. The meetings will be based on Wyoming’s eight sage-grouse Local Working Group areas.

Deadline Looms For Governor’s Sage Grouse Plan. Wyoming Public Media. The clock is ticking for Governor Mead and his sage grouse team. They have a September deadline to re-evaluate their so-called Core Area Strategy that would slow the bird’s declining population so the U.S. Fish and Wildlife doesn’t list it as an endangered species.