Weekly Newsletter |May 10, 2019

Issues

FWS Eases American Burying Beetle Protections. Last week, the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) proposed easing protections for the American burying beetle, downlisting the beetle to threatened from endangered under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). “Working collaboratively for almost three decades with states, zoos, federal agencies, private landowners and others … we have made some positive steps forward and are now proposing to downlist the beetle,” FWS Southwest Regional Director Amy Lueders declared in a statement.

The beetle has been listed as endangered since 1989 and has been a source of contention ever since. Notably, in 2015, groups including the Independent Petroleum Association of America (IPAA) and the Texas Public Policy Foundation petitioned FWS to delist the beetle. Two years later, IPAA et al. filed a lawsuit against FWS, arguing the agency had dragged its feet in considering the petition

Following the announcement, IPAA’s Senior Vice President of Government Relations and Political Affairs Dan Naatz issued the following statement:

“IPAA is pleased with U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS)’s long overdue action to delist the American burying beetle from the Endangered Species list. Since 1989, the beetle’s listing has been met with criticism for failing to provide the science-based evidence that ESA listings warrant. The beetle’s listing was rooted in faulty assumptions about the species’ range, distribution, and abundance. This status change is welcome news to those that have been in limbo awaiting a decision on the listing from USFWS.”

The FWS also conducted a scientific assessment examining the beetle’s future under what officials cast as relatively high and relatively low emissions scenarios. The high emissions scenario is the “expected scenario if strong policy actions to curb emissions are not pursued by the United States and the international community,” officials said.

The agency predicted that rising air and soil temperatures mean that “within the mid-century time period, American burying beetles in all Southern Plains … areas would likely be extirpated and would represent a loss of approximately 59 percent of the current range of the species.” However, FWS concluded that the impacts of oil and gas development on local habitat are “relatively minor compared to agriculture or urban expansion.”

Chad Warmington, president of the OIPA-OKOGA, an oil and gas industry trade group, said downlisting the endangered beetle “provides significant regulatory relief” to oil and gas producers “and is a step in the right direction for appropriate conservation of our native species.” Warmington went on to say, “The oil and gas industry’s implementation of significant conservation and recovery programs is a key reason the beetle has and will continue to flourish.”

Utah Offers Support to DOI on Sage-Grouse Management Plan Revisions. Earlier this month, environmental groups asked the U.S. District Court for the District of Idaho to block the Department of Interior (DOI) from implementing changes to Obama-era grouse plans that bolster economic development, claiming increased risk to greater sage-grouse in the area.

The state of Utah has moved to defend the revision, filing a motion to intervene that seeks to allow Gov. Gary Herbert (R), the state, and its School and Institutional Trust Lands Administration to join the DOI in opposing efforts by the environmental groups to challenge the sage-grouse plan revisions.

In a 24-page memorandum filed with the court in support of the motion to intervene, attorneys for the state argued that the environmental groups’ supplemental complaint “significantly threatens” the intent of the Trump administration revisions to better align the federal plans with the state’s sage grouse conservation plan.

Kathleen Clarke, director of Utah’s Public Lands Policy Coordinating Office, wrote in a sworn declaration supporting the motion to intervene that the state and BLM “coordinated extensively in development” of the plan revisions, which will result in better protection of the bird. The environmental groups – Western Watersheds Project, WildEarth Guardians, the Center for Biological Diversity and the Prairie Hills Audubon Society – asked the court to issue an injunction blocking the Bureau of Land Management from implementing the revisions by June 15.

In the News

Hearing reveals support for streamlining renewables permitting. E&E News, Sub req’d. Members of a House Natural Resources subcommittee at a hearing yesterday urged the Trump administration to promote renewable energy by adopting an Obama-era strategy. Lawmakers on the Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources discussed requiring the Interior Department to identify public lands suitable for development of large-scale wind and geothermal power projects, with an eye toward speeding the permitting process. Arizona Rep. Paul Gosar (R), the subcommittee’s ranking member, introduced legislation two years ago that would require the Interior Department to do that. At the hearing, he announced plans to “quickly” reintroduce his “Public Land Renewable Energy Development Act.” Gosar’s bill is meant to increase renewable energy development by doing for wind and geothermal energy what Interior did for solar in 2012 with the Western Solar Plan

Judge won’t lift Pacific fracking suspension. E&E News, Sub req’d. A federal judge this week declined to reconsider his freeze on hydraulic fracturing permits off the California coast. Judge Philip Gutierrez for the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California last year blocked offshore regulators from approving new well stimulation treatments until they comply with the Endangered Species Act and Coastal Zone Management Act. DCOR LLC, an oil and gas company that conducts fracking in the Pacific Ocean, in January asked the judge to rethink the injunction. “Reconsideration does not give parties a ‘second bite at the apple,’ but that is precisely what DCOR seeks here in arguing for the first time that the Court should not have issued an injunction to remedy the ESA and CZMA violations,” Gutierrez, a George W. Bush appointee, wrote Tuesday night.

Enviros file FOIA suits for pesticide docs. E&E News, Sub req’d. Environmentalists went to court today in hopes of squeezing myriad pesticides-related documents out from several allegedly unresponsive federal agencies. In a flurry of four Freedom of Information Act lawsuits, the Center for Biological Diversity seeks to compel disclosures from EPA, the Interior Department, the Department of Agriculture, NOAA Fisheries and others. All told, the lawsuits filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, revolve around 20 different FOIA requests for which meaningful responses have not yet been forthcoming. “Federal agencies that are supposed to be protecting human health, wildlife and our environment from dangerous pesticides have fallen into a terrible pattern of withholding critical information from the American people,” Lori Ann Burd, director of the center’s environmental health program, said in a statement. One lawsuit concerns documents involving the harm certain pesticides cause to endangered species. Another seeks records of meetings between agency staff, including political appointees, and CropLife America, a pesticide industry trade group.

Greens sue for NOAA official’s records. E&E News, Sub req’d. Environmentalists are heading to court to track down records related to one of NOAA’s top officials. The Center for Biological Diversity today sued NOAA under the Freedom of Information Act for documents related to chief of staff Stuart Levenbach’s work on offshore drilling, the Endangered Species Act and other initiatives that affect the marine environment. CBD requested some of the records more than a year ago and made an additional request in December, seeking emails and other documents that could detail Levenbach’s involvement in the policies. According to today’s lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, NOAA has not handed over any records.

Grijalva bill seeks permanent grizzly protections. E&E News, Sub req’d. House Natural Resources Chairman Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.) yesterday introduced legislation that would permanently protect grizzly bears and grant Native American tribes a say in how they are managed. The bill, H.R. 2532, seeks to protect grizzlies outside of already federally protected ranges by making it illegal to kill a bear unless doing so “is imminently necessary for self-defense or to save the life of a person in immediate danger.” The “Tribal Heritage and Grizzly Bear Protection Act” would ban trophy hunting and “non-discriminatory predator control measures that may result in taking of grizzly bears on public land,” it says. The bill would exempt grizzlies that are already in a “population” that is listed under the Endangered Species Act as threatened or endangered, and thus already protected.

BLM considers 21K-acre Calif. geothermal lease sale. E&E News, Sub req’d. The Bureau of Land Management is seriously considering offering more than 21,000 acres of federal lands in Southern California for utility-scale geothermal power development, according to a new draft analysis released today. The Haiwee Geothermal Leasing Area project would be among the largest areas offered for geothermal leasing on federal lands in recent years. It would also be the first geothermal lease sale in California, if not nationwide, under the Trump administration, which has been criticized by congressional Democrats for mostly ignoring renewable energy development on federal lands in favor of oil and gas leasing. The draft supplemental environmental impact statement for the commercial lease sale proposal, published in today’s Federal Register, establishes BLM’s “preferred alternative” action: to authorize “geothermal leasing, exploration and development throughout the entire” Haiwee Geothermal Leasing Area.

Bernhardt takes the reins. E&E News, Sub req’d. Interior Secretary David Bernhardt wants to spend some quality time with the lawmakers who can help make or break his agenda. In a sit-down with E&E News last Friday, Bernhardt detailed his aspiration to meet one-on-one with every member of the House authorizing and appropriating panels that have a handle on Interior programs. It’s an ambitious goal; the House Natural Resources Committee alone has 44 members. Bernhardt, the newest confirmed member of President Trump’s oft-shifting Cabinet, is finding ways to put his stamp on the position and facing the realities of a job that is more public-facing than his prior positions. He’s building his own staff, reorganizing his office and trying to sit down with all the right people. “I think it will be really helpful to understand, for example, why are they even on the Natural Resources Committee?” Bernhardt said. “What are the things that they’re passionate about? What matters in their district?”