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The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service ("FWS") is the federal agency in charge of "listing" most species under the Endangered Species Act ("ESA"). This legislation was passed in 1973 and explicitly stated its goal was "to protect critically imperiled species from extinction as a 'consequence of economic growth and development untempered by adequate concern and conservation'...". The general purpose and specific language of the ESA has been broadly construed by federal courts over the years. Once a species is officially listed as endangered or threatened, the ESA regulations kick in and theoretically prevent any "person" (including corporations) from performing an...

Among those arrested were a father and son from Orange County, as well as the father's girlfriend, on charges related to trafficking in a commodity that largely has been banned by international trade laws since 1976.

MONTROSE, CO - Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum took a new jab at Newt Gingrich, saying he wants to "endanger" the former Speaker. The dig came during a campaign rally in Montrose, CO., as Santorum railed against the federal government's environmental regulations. "These are your lands! Oh but they always say we're doing it for your benefit," Santorum decried. "We'll make sure that you don't do something to scar the land or you don't do something to endanger a newt. No not that Newt, different newt. I want to endanger that Newt - that's a different story." The line drew...

Following approval of a revised wolf management plan by the Wyoming Game and Fish Commission, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service today proposed to remove the gray wolf population in Wyoming from the Federal List of Endangered and Threatened Wildlife. Due to recovery efforts and the provisions of the revised state plan, the Wyoming wolf population is healthy and stable, current and future threats to wolves have been addressed, and a post-delisting monitoring and management framework has been developed. Today’s formal proposal follows an agreement with the state of Wyoming that serves as the blueprint for returning wolf management to...

LONDON (AP) -- Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter is appealing for other donors to join Britain in a multi-million dollar campaign to wipe out guinea worm, a crippling and painful parasitic disease that now exists only in four African countries. At a press briefing in London on Wednesday, British officials are expected to pledge 20 million pounds (US$31 million) over four years to the cause - but only if other donors also open their wallets. The global campaign to eradicate guinea worm started in 1980, when there were about 3.5 million cases of the disease, also known as dracunculiasis, every...

BILLINGS, Mont. - The Obama administration is taking steps to extend new federal protections to a list of imperiled animals and plants that reads like a manifest for Noah's Ark -snip- key Republicans vowed Thursday to press forward with their plans to put the brakes on a law they blame for jeopardizing economic growth. Still, said Patrick Parenteau, an environmental law professor at the Vermont Law School, "Here at a single glance, you see the sweep of the Endangered Species Act. They are moving through this large backlog at a fairly crisp clip now. -snip- The flurry of action could...

The Obama administration is taking steps to extend new federal protections to a list of imperiled animals and plants that reads like a manifest for Noah's Ark - from the melodic golden-winged warbler and slow-moving gopher tortoise, to the slimy American eel and tiny Texas kangaroo rat. ... With a Friday deadline to act on more than 700 pending cases, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service already has issued decisions advancing more than 500 species toward potential new protections under the Endangered Species Act... Patrick Parenteau, an environmental lawprofessor at the University of Vermont. "They are moving through this large...

FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) — Wading through a muddy river bed to reach shallow pools of water, wildlife biologists scooped up hundreds of minnows Friday in one of the first rescues of fish threatened by the state's worst drought in decades. The scientists collected smalleye shiners and sharpnose shiners from the Brazos River — about 2,300 on Thursday and 800 Friday. The fish, which are found only in the Brazos and nowhere else in the world,.. ... With the water drying up in the drought, the minnows don't have the 100 miles of river they need to reproduce. .. A...

Wolf sightings in the Blue Mountains are becoming more frequent this summer, but wildlife officials for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife have yet to document firm evidence of a pack forming in the southeastern corner of the state. Paul Wik, district biologist for the department at Clarkston, said the canyons and timbered ridges southeast of Dayton have been a hot spot for wolf reports this year. Some hunters have even captured images of wolves with trail cameras, he said. "It's definitely no secret they are here," Wik said. "The only question to us is what their status is."...

LUBBOCK, Texas (AP) — Federal officials are readying plans to evacuate a small number of endangered species in Texas as a severe drought lowers water levels and threatens the survival of rare wildlife in the state's huge ecosystem. Months with almost no rain have caused water levels to drop by half or more in many rivers, lakes and other bodies of water, including springs in the central Texas Hill Country that are the only remaining habitat for populations of small fish, amphibians and other creatures. If the water continues to drop sharply, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials are preparing...

History tells us that listing a critter as an endangered species does little for the species and can do a great deal of harm to the local economies—the spotted owl and the delta smelt are two oft-cited cases. But there is not a big body of evidence showing how these listing decisions were made. It was just assumed that the species plight warranted protection. But that was before the listing proposal for the dunes sagebrush lizard threatened a large segment of U.S. domestic oil production and the economies of Southeastern New Mexico and West Texas. Rallies in opposition to the listing...

The Wildlife Conservation Society has discovered a surprisingly healthy population of rare snow leopards living in the mountainous reaches of northeastern Afghanistan's Wakhan Corridor, according to a new study. The discovery gives hope to the world's most elusive big cat, which calls home to some of the world's tallest mountains. Between 4,500 and 7,500 snow leopards remain in the wild scattered across a dozen countries in Central Asia. The study, which appears in the June 29th issue of the International Journal of Environmental Studies, is by WCS conservationists Anthony Simms, Zalmai Moheb, Salahudin, Hussain Ali, Inayat Ali and Timothy Wood....

Scientists scouring the mountains of Borneo spotted a toad species last seen in 1924 by European explorers and provided the world with the first photographs of the colorful, spindly legged creature, a researcher said Thursday. In recent years, the Washington-based Conservation International placed the Sambas stream toad, also known as the Bornean rainbow toad, on a world "Top 10 Most Wanted Lost Frogs" and voiced fears it might be extinct. Researchers found three of the slender-limbed toads living on trees during a night search last month in a remote mountainous region of Malaysia's eastern Sarawak state in Borneo, said Indraneil...

A University of Exeter biologist has discovered a 'lost' species of bat breeding on the Isles of Scilly (UK). A pregnant female brown long-eared bat is the first of its species to be found on the islands for at least 40 years. It was discovered by Dr Fiona Mathews, Senior Lecturer at the University of Exeter, a postgraduate student and a team from the Wiltshire Bat Group. The Scilly Isles Bat Group called in Dr Mathews and her team to help them find out more about bats on the islands. The researchers set up a radiotracking study, with funding from...

A unique and mysterious guinea-pig-sized rodent, not seen since 1898 despite several organized searches, bizarrely showed up at the front door of an ecolodge at a nature reserve in Colombia, South America. The magnificent red-crested tree rat (Santamartamys rufodorsalis), stayed for almost two hours while two research volunteers took the first photos ever of a creature the world thought would never be seen again. The charming nocturnal rodent made his re-debut to the world at 9:30PM on May 4, 2011 at the El Dorado Nature Reserve in the far north of the country. The Reserve was established in 2005 by...

Dr. Michael Collins, Naval Research Laboratory scientist and bird watcher, has published an article titled "Putative audio recordings of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker (Campephilus principalis)" which appears in the March issue of the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. The audio recordings were captured in two videos of birds with characteristics consistent with the Ivory-billed Woodpecker. This footage was obtained near the Pearl River in Louisiana, where there is a history of unconfirmed reports of this species. During five years of fieldwork, Collins had ten sightings and also heard the characteristic "kent" calls of this species on two occasions. Scientists...

A coalition of Central California farm bureaus, flood-control agencies and reclamation districts on Friday filed a lawsuit to force the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to delist an inch-long beetle that has saddled them with severe land-use restrictions and levee maintenance costs.

Oregon Senate Minority Leader Ted Ferrioli doesn't cotton to foreigners offering legislative advice. When Louise du Toit, a singer from South Africa living in Greece, wrote the John Day Republican asking him to oppose a bill sponsored by Sen. Doug Whitsett, R-Klamath Falls, that would remove wolves from Oregon's endangered species list, Ferrioli whipped out this reply: "Are you kidding? Why do you expect that input from [European Union] residents make any difference at all to me? I'll be supporting Dr. Whitsett's bill (he is a VETERINARIAN). By the way, perhaps I should be writing to EU ministers to stop...

The California red-legged frog, threatened for decades by spreading subdivisions, pesticides and logging, has found a sanctuary in the Sierra Nevada. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife has approved an agreement between two conservation organizations permanently protecting a 48-acre site known as the Big Gun Preserve near Foresthill in Placer County. The wildlife service listed the frogs as threatened in 1966 under the Endangered Species Act. The land is owned by a unique nonprofit company called Westervelt Ecological Services, the conservation arm of a century-old Alabama lumber company, which buys up properties to preserve wildlife habitats and endangered natural environments. The...

KALISPELL, Mont. — Rep. Denny Rehberg, who manages a ranch outside Billings, Mont., knows quite literally what it means to have the wolf at the door: A single wolf killed 51 prized cashmere goats in his pasture years ago. " 'Shoot, shovel and shut up' is a joke in Montana," said Rehberg, referring to a long-standing reference among landowners across the West — perhaps only half in jest — to the best way to deal with a federally protected endangered species like the gray wolf. The reintroduction of the wolf in the northern Rocky Mountains has been so contentious that...

BOISE - After talks with the federal government collapsed, Gov. C.L. (Butch) Otter ordered Idaho wildlife managers today to relinquish their duty to arrest poachers or to even investigate when wolves are killed illegally. Otter rejected the wolf management Idaho has conducted for years as the federal government's "designated agent" after a federal judge in Montana returned wolves to Endangered Species Act protections earlier this year. This means Idaho Department of Fish and Game managers will no longer perform statewide monitoring for wolves, conduct investigations into illegal killings, provide law enforcement when wolves are poached or participate in a program...

We are constantly told that Americans are the ones destroying the planet and thus creating many species on the earth to become extinct, but maybe, just maybe we are not the problem. At I have always said that America is the friendliest country when it comes to the environment and animals. So for some proof that Sea Turtles are not becoming extinct because of the lights on beaches during the season that the sea turtles hatch their eggs, take a look at what the citizens of Costa Rica are doing to help save the sea turtles. OK they are...

The endangered tree kangaroo of Papua New Guinea captured on film.

Habitat protection for the endangered arroyo toad, which lives along slow-moving pools and sandy streams in Southern California, would cost $789 million over 25 years, according to a new analysis by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Most of the costs are expected to occur in new development, primarily in San Diego County, the study shows. The analysis also considered losses from grazing, mining, road construction and utility projects, and possible prices increases for water customers. The financial study was required as part of the agency's proposed designation of 112,765 acres as critical habitat for the small, buff-colored toad with...

At the present time the federal government has listed 2,269 species on the official “endangered or threatened” species list. The list includes plants, insects, mammals, birds, crustaceans and anything alive that is facing an uncertain future as a species, through no fault of its own. To be listed, and thus given special protection and benefits, a species must be diminishing in numbers, whether due to problems in reproducing, to diminishing habitat, encroachment by other species, predation, changes in environment or other threats to its survival. The specific benefit to us in protecting a specific species seems to be irrelevant....

BP officials could be prosecuted under the Clean Water Act, the Oil Pollution Act, and the Endangered Species Act. So could federal officials if they aided and abetted any illegal acts.

Immigration: Arizona moves to protect its citizens from a raging border war, and the administration and its activist supporters cry racism. Why is antelope protection more important than protecting American lives?

A campaign to declare the mass destruction of ecosystems an international crime against peace - alongside genocide and crimes against humanity - is being launched in the UK. The proposal for the United Nations to accept "ecocide" as a fifth "crime against peace", which could be tried at the International Criminal Court (ICC), is the brainchild of British lawyer-turned-campaigner Polly Higgins. The radical idea would have a profound effect on industries blamed for widespread damage to the environment like fossil fuels, mining, agriculture, chemicals and forestry. Supporters of a new ecocide law also believe it could be used to prosecute...

Controversial cuts in water deliveries to farms in California's San Joaquin Valley appear to be "scientifically justified" but still in need of further study, elite scientists have concluded in a report to be issued Friday. In a politically sensitive study, the National Research Council determined two federal agencies had a "sound conceptual basis" for their actions protecting Chinook salmon, delta smelt and other endangered fish. The conclusion undercuts a common farmer criticism. But the 65-page report may give some ammunition, as well, to those skeptical of water delivery restrictions imposed by the Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries...

Rejection Thursday of a bluefin tuna ban at the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) drew sighs of relief from sushi chefs and fishermen across Japan. Japan consumes about three-quarters of the globe's bluefin tuna.

Politics: The water spigots are back on, at least temporarily, in California's Central Valley. Turned off to protect a tiny fish, they happen to be in the districts of two congressmen "undecided" on health care reform. One could chalk it up to good fortune or just good constituent service. But in the middle of a contentious health care debate marked by Cornhusker Kickbacks and Louisiana Purchases, we may be forgiven if we find an announcement by the Department of the Interior regarding California's water supply a tad too coincidental. On Tuesday, the Department of the Interior announced it was increasing...

This winter, on certain days, it would take only two small fish known as delta smelt to show up at California's two largest water projects to trigger pumping restrictions causing the loss of hundreds of millions of gallons of water a day. If two more smelt appear the next day, the pumps are cut more, and so on. Since Jan. 1, the State Water Project has lost nearly 370,000 acre-feet of water, enough to serve the residential needs of San Jose for nearly three years." This is how the federal Endangered Species Act (ESA) has been implemented on a day-by-day,...

Yuck. The only disease to ever be wiped off the face of the earth has been smallpox. Doctors hope that within a few years Guinea worm will be the second. Ever heard of Guinea worm? No? Then you are blessed and didn’t even know it did you? Because chances are if you haven’t heard of the Guinea worm that’s because you aren’t living anywhere near where people are being infected by the Guinea worm. That’s the second reason to consider yourself blessed.

Competitiveness: The latest index of economic freedom shows America falling fast, being ranked for the first time as "mostly free." We've fallen behind Canada, and it's look out below. Our accelerating descent into a command-and-control economy with government pulling the strings is taking its toll. The Heritage Foundation's 2010 index of leading economic indicators shows that the land of the free is only mostly free, falling to eighth in the world from sixth last year, now sandwiched between Canada and Denmark. That Canada, long considered a bastion of socialized medicine, is ranked as economically freer may surprise some. But our...

Global Warming: The Alaskan governor who knew polar bears weren't endangered says the planet isn't either and challenges the oracle of climate change. Al Gore says despite the CRU e-mails, the situation is of the utmost gravity. In a Dec. 9 Washington Post op-ed, Sarah Palin noted that the Climate-gate e-mails from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia "reveal that leading climate 'experts' deliberately destroyed records, manipulated data to 'hide the decline' in global temperatures and tried to silence their critics from publishing in peer-reviewed journals." This did not sit well with Gore. "The entire North...

California: While Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger worries about rising seas, his state sinks below the waves. Don't mess with Texas, they say. But California and the nation could follow its lead. Last Wednesday, Gov. Schwarzenegger released a new report based on research compiled by the California Energy Commission claiming that by 2100 San Francisco Bay would be more bay than San Francisco, with Fisherman's Wharf and Treasure Island under the rising waters of climate change. His show-and-tell, which included a new Google Earth application the commission spent $150,000 to help develop, goes a long way toward explaining the once-Golden State's slide...

Ecology: The administration creates the mother of all protected habitats for a species whose numbers have increased since Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth." It's our hopes for energy independence that are drowning. When filmmaker Phelim McAleer, whose documentary "Not Evil Just Wrong" takes apart the myths of global warming, got to ask Gore a question at the annual conference of the Society of Environmental Journalists, McAleer brought up the nine critical errors in Gore's film "An Inconvenient Truth." A British court two years ago listed them and said they must be righted before the film could be shown in schools...

Environmentalism: Sen. Dianne Feinstein votes to deny water to California's drought-stricken San Joaquin Valley. Farmers, families and food are being held hostage to an endangered fish called the delta smelt. (snip) The Senate rejected the amendment by a largely party-line 61-36 margin, with Feinstein opposing the restoration of water deliveries to farmers. The California senator claimed she was blindsided by the amendment to the bill she was managing in the Senate, bizarrely comparing the move to a "Pearl Harbor." "No one from California has called, written or indicated they wanted this on the calendar," Feinstein protested.

Delta smelts: Preferred over humans. Environmentalism: Sen. Dianne Feinstein votes to deny water to California's drought-stricken San Joaquin Valley. Farmers, families and food are being held hostage to an endangered fish called the delta smelt.There was a time when the San Joaquin Valley was the most productive agricultural region in the world. It was a large part of what made the Golden State golden.Now it's a place where farmers no longer farm, but instead line up at food banks to feed the families of those who once fed the rest of the country and a good chunk of the...

Here we go again. I was watching Sean Hannity tonight (9/17/2009), and have been following loosely the situation in the San Joaquin Valley of California with their water crisis over the small Delta Smelt minnow and its endangered species listing. The Farmers have water rights to that water. There is no legal water rights for that water for a minnow over the farmers. There is only a manufactured judicial legal decision by liberal judges based on junk science and the whims of administrators and bureaucrats that create these incidents based on the Endangered Species Act and a rabid environmental...

n 1931, a severe drought began that within a few years engulfed the Oklahoma panhandle and a third of the Great Plains in a "Dust Bowl." Tens of thousands of people fled the region—many traveling to California along Route 66, which John Steinbeck called "the mother road, the road of flight" in "The Grapes of Wrath." A lot of the "Okies" settled in the San Joaquin Valley. In the decades that followed, state and federal officials built dams and other irrigation projects that helped turn the valley into some of the world's richest farmland.

The Wyoming Attorney General said Friday will file a lawsuit next Tuesday to challenge the recent U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's ruling that rejected the state's wolf management plan. "The Endangered Species Act requires listing and delisting decisions to be based on science," Bruce Salzburg told the Wyoming Farm Bureau Federation at a symposium about the law in Casper. But the Fish and Wildlife Service, a division of the U.S. Department of Interior, decided in early March to leave the gray wolf in Wyoming on the endangered species list for political and public relations reasons... The Fish and Wildlife Service,...

The Endangered Species Act 'is not the appropriate tool for us to deal with what is a global issue,' Interior Secretary Salazar says in announcing that the Bush-era policy on emissions will stand. Reporting from Washington -- The Interior Department on Friday let stand a Bush administration policy barring the federal government from using the precarious state of the U.S. polar bear population as a reason to crack down on global warming, upsetting environmentalists and cheering oil and gas companies. The decision means the government cannot use the Endangered Species Act to regulate greenhouse gas emissions -- even though Interior...

MARATHON, Florida (CNN) -- Juan Lopez reads meters with one eye and looks for snakes with the other. Lopez is a member of the "Python Patrol," a team of utility workers, wildlife officials, park rangers and police trying to keep Burmese pythons from gaining a foothold in the Florida Keys. Officials say the pythons -- which can grow to 20 feet long and eat large animals whole -- are being ditched by pet owners in the Florida Everglades, threatening the region's endangered species and its ecosystem. "Right now, we have our fingers crossed that they haven't come this far yet,...

A new report has concluded that U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) former boss, Julie A. MacDonald interfered in scores of Endangered Species Act decisions — including one related to the Gunnison's prairie dog found in parts of northern New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona and Utah. During her tenure, FWS reversed a finding by its scientists that the species may warrant protection. Last month's report by the Interior Department's inspector general raises questions about whether MacDonald single-handedly doomed the prairie dog's endangered status or if other people were involved. Either way, what's clear from the report is that MacDonald repeatedly stepped...

Barack Obama may have an impossible burden of expectation on his shoulders, but one fervent wish of many US scientists should be easy enough to fulfil: simply lead the nation back into the "reality-based community".

More than 7,000 live monitor lizards, almost 900 owls—plucked and plastic wrapped for easy cooking—and other wild animals were seized in two raids in a single week by Malaysian officials earlier this month. Experts on illegal wildlife trade expressed astonishment at the huge number of rare owls seized. "It's the first time we've ever seen a big shipment like this of owls," said Chris Shepherd, a senior program officer for the wildlife trade monitoring network TRAFFIC. The scale of both hauls indicates that Asian wildlife smuggling is growing more sophisticated, Shepherd said..."

A dead humpback whale that washed ashore at Fort Abercrombie State Park last week may be there to stay. The 30-foot, 2-year-old whale was discovered Aug. 14 and has probably been dead three-and-a-half to four weeks, said district park ranger Kevin Murphy. Murphy said Fort Abercrombie staff have two main concerns about the whale. “The Marine Mammal Protection Act, and more importantly, the Endangered Species Act protects those guys, even after death,� he said. “So collection of soft or hard parts, bone or baleen or blubber is illegal.� Murphy said tampering with an endangered species comes with a hefty $25,000...

The Associated Press reported Monday details of a proposal by the Interior and Commerce departments that would change how the 1973 law is implemented, allowing federal agencies to decide for themselves - without seeking the opinions of government wildlife experts - whether dams, highways and other projects have the potential to harm endangered species and habitats. Current law requires federal agencies to consult with experts at the Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service if a project poses so much as a remote risk to species or habitats. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne defended the changes in a call...

WASHINGTON, DC, August 12, 2008 (ENS) - The Bush administration has proposed sweeping changes to the Endangered Species Act, releasing a plan to give federal agencies the authority to decide without expert consultation whether their activities could harm endangered and threatened species. Administration officials contend the proposal will make the law easier to implement, but critics say the plan would undermine federal protection of imperiled plants and animals. Announced Monday by the head of the U.S. Interior Department, the proposed changes would relax the current requirement that federal agencies consult with federal wildlife experts to ensure activities they undertake or...