Issues
FWS proposes endangered listing for Texas hornshell. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposed Tuesday to list the Texas hornshell as an endangered species. A freshwater mussel species found in New Mexico and Texas, the Texas hornshell is the only native mussel remaining in New Mexico and is estimated to currently occupy 15 percent of its historical range. The listing decision comes as a result of a 2011 settlement with conservation groups, including the Center for Biological Diversity, which required the agency to consider protections for 757 species.
“We have determined that the Texas hornshell is in danger of extinction due to habitat loss from loss of water flow, decreased water quality, and increased accumulation of fine sediments and predation,” the agency wrote in the Federal Register. The Service is working with the state government and industry in New Mexico to develop a candidate conservation agreement with assurances (CCAA) and reintroduce the mussel into the Delaware River.
The agency’s decision could be a signal that it intends to list five other freshwater mussels found in central Texas that have been identified as candidates for Endangered Species Act protections. The Service is expected to make a determination on those five species sometime after fiscal year 2016.
Nevada judge expected to rule on sage grouse lawsuit. A federal judge in Nevada is expected to rule shortly on a lawsuit aimed at blocking protections of the greater sage-grouse across most of the West. The Nevada Attorney General and other interested groups filed their final briefs in the year-long lawsuit last week, challenging the land-use amendments and temporary freeze on new mining claims the government adopted after deciding not to list the sage-grouse under the Endangered Species Act.
“The Bureau of Land Management’s rushed, one-size-fits-all sage grouse plan not only violates multiple federal laws, but also the agency’s own regulations,” Nevada Attorney General Adam Laxalt said in a statement. “The BLM blatantly disregarded the many Nevada experts and stakeholders, and failed to consider how its plan would impact Nevadans. This approach to regulation is as dismissive to our State as it is illegal, and I remain dedicated to protecting the interests of Nevada and ensuring that agencies follow the law and take the State’s concerns and interests into account.”
Obama Administration lawyers say Judge Miranda Du lacks the authority to negate the policies at this time. The Administration argues the land-use plan amendments and temporary freeze on mining claims cannot be challenged because the government has yet to make any site-specific decisions.
Groups target rule protecting threatened animals, plants. Last week, the Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF) joined the Washington Cattlemen’s Association (WCA) to deliver a petition addressed to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) asking for the repeal of a federal regulation that extends Endangered Species Act (ESA) restrictions to as many as 150 species of plants and animals not considered by Congress to be “endangered.” The government currently uses the regulation to automatically prohibit the “take” (the harassment, harm, or capture of listed plant or animal) of species listed as “threatened,” despite Congress’s mandate to only prohibit the take of threatened species on a case-by-case basis.
Pat Parenteau, a Vermont Law School professor and former special counsel to the FWS, cautioned that any litigation brought on by the WCA and PLF would likely fail because the statute of limitations for challenging the rule expired in 1984. Parenteau predicted that a court would “almost certainly defer to the
In 1993, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit rejected a case that made similar arguments against the regulation, finding that the FWS has the “discretion to extend maximum protection to all threatened species at once if, guided by its expertise in the field of wildlife protection, it finds it expeditious to do so.” The PLF believes two U.S. Supreme Court rulings have since shifted the odds in their favor after the court found the federal government did not have “unrestricted power” when interpreting the Clean Air Act. PLF attorney Damien Schiff suggested that a similar conclusion could be reached regarding the ESA.
In the News
BLM plan could boost Gunnison grouse protection on 600K acres. E&E News (sub req’d). The Bureau of Land Management today announced it has completed a draft analysis of a broad plan to manage hundreds of thousands of acres of federal land in southwest Colorado and southeast Utah to protect the Gunnison sage grouse. The draft environmental impact statement is part of a yearslong BLM effort to study how best to protect the Gunnison grouse in the wake of the Fish and Wildlife Service’s 2014 decision to list the grouse as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. That decision two years ago was sharply criticized by elected leaders, including Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper (D) and Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.), who argued the listing was unnecessary. It was also blasted by environmental groups, a coalition of which eventually sued FWS to prompt the service to list the chickenlike bird as endangered.
WAFWA responds to E&E News’ article on Lesser Prairie Chicken Range-wide Plan. WAFWA (Press Release). WAFWA is very disappointed with the amount of misinformation presented as fact in this article regarding the Lesser Prairie-Chicken Range-wide Plan. The errors in this report are too numerous to itemize individually. Furthermore, nothing in the article is current news, rather the inaccurate reporting of past events, some of which took place more than two years ago. It is important to us that the many partners who are collaborating on this unprecedented effort be apprised of key developments to conserve the lesser prairie-chicken. WAFWA and our member agencies take that responsibility very seriously. Read the full response HERE. Read the E&E article HERE.
Resources chief to handle sage grouse, other hot-button issues. E&E News (sub req’d). The Bureau of Land Management has appointed a veteran public lands manager to help the agency oversee renewable resources, including greater sage grouse conservation and wild horse and burro management. Kristin Bail, with 32 years of experience at both BLM and the Forest Service, is currently head of BLM’s National Conservation Lands system, which accounts for almost 10 percent of the agency’s landholdings. One of Bail’s top priorities will be implementing BLM’s sweeping sage grouse conservation efforts, which call for amending 98 BLM and Forest Service land-use plans to incorporate grouse protections across tens of millions of acres in 10 Western states.
Landowners ask court to rehear frog habitat case. E&E News (sub req’d). Private landowners in Louisiana want a federal court to reconsider a case challenging the Fish and Wildlife Service’s designation of critical habitat for an endangered frog. The dusky gopher frog was historically found in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, but today there are only about 100 left in Mississippi. The frog is listed under the Endangered Species Act. The Fish and Wildlife Service in 2012 issued a final rule designating 6,477 acres as critical habitat for the frog, of which 1,544 acres were private land located in St. Tammany Parish, La., where the frogs haven’t been seen for decades.
Regulators’ delisting of lesser prairie chicken a win, and a test, for voluntary conservation. Forbes (Op-Ed). Though it has achieved a complete legal victory, the petroleum association and others that have partnered with the states on the Lesser Prairie Chicken Initiative Council have many challenges ahead of them. When announcing that it had finalized the chicken’s delisting, FWS stressed that it would be “undertaking a thorough re-evaluation of the bird’s status and the threats it faces using the best available scientific information to determine anew whether listing under the ESA is warranted.” FWS’s statement, and its silence on the private-public conservation effort, is not surprising, especially considering that the agency had endorsed the Council’s rangewide conservation plan in October 2013, but then reversed course and imposed the “threatened” designation just seven months later.
Lawsuits speed listings—study. E&E News (sub req’d). Deadline-driven lawsuits speed Endangered Species Act protections for imperiled species, according to a peer-reviewed study released online today. The study, led by Emily Puckett of the University of Missouri, also found that the average time the Fish and Wildlife Service took to add rare plants and animals to the endangered or threatened species lists took over 12 years — roughly six times the maximum time allowed by law. Agency-requested limits on the amount of funding that FWS can spend on listings is largely to blame for the delays, Puckett and her colleagues reported.
Champaign County wind farm to push on after court ruling. Dayton Daily News. A U.S. Appeals Court ruling provided mixed results for a proposed wind farm in Champaign County, but the project’s developers said they believe they can resolve concerns and push it forward. Everpower Renewables, the company in charge of the project, plans to develop two wind farms in Champaign County that could install more than 100 turbines across several townships. Opponents have said the wind mills will create a safety risk and be too close to homes, as well as endanger bats. The project’s developers also failed to follow proper procedures in the approval process, opponents have contended. Developers had to acquire a permit that sets conditions to protect the endangered Indiana bat. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service issued that permit in 2013 but opponents appealed.
Feds hand over nearly $50 MILLION in environmental lawsuits. Daily Caller. Federal agencies have paid out more than $49 million to groups suing the government under major environmental laws since 2009, according to a Daily Caller News Foundation analysis of the Department of Treasury’s Judgement Fund. Agencies have been hit by 512 “citizen suits” since 2009, and paid out millions to lawyers often suing to increase regulations on businesses and landowners. Three major environmental laws allow groups to bring citizen suits against federal agencies: the Clean Air Act (CAA), the Clean Water Act (CWA) and the Endangered Species Act (ESA). Federal agencies paid out $30 million to attorneys for 237 citizen suits under the ESA.
Conservation group: Climate change is only a minor risk to endangered species. E&E News (sub req’d). Guns, nets and bulldozers are still the biggest threats to the world’s threatened species, while climate change remains a distant risk, according to a commentary by scientists in the journal Nature. The finding comes weeks ahead of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) meeting Sept. 1 in Hawaii, which will focus on the links between climate change, sustainable development and conservation. The scientists noted that media reports increasingly focus on climate change as a major extinction risk.
Sharp rise in estimated bird deaths at Calif. ‘power tower.’ E&E News (sub req’d). Nearly 6,190 birds died at the Ivanpah solar energy plant in Southern California’s Mojave Desert in its second year of operation, a 77 percent increase over the estimated fatalities from the previous year. “It’s an unbelievably high number, and we’re really alarmed,” said Garry George, renewable energy director for Audubon California. “We have a lot of questions about this mortality report.” David Knox, a spokesman for plant operator NRG Energy Inc., said no federally threatened or endangered birds have been killed at Ivanpah in its first two years of operation.
