Bush’s Interior Department has been caught red-handed manipulating endangered animal protections for the benefit of oil, gas, ranching and timber industry friends, while giving internal documents to lobbyists who use it to sue the our own government! What a disgusting way to run a country full of extraordinarily beautiful, but increasingly-endangered natural spaces and things...
Where does it end in regard to President Bush’s horrible environmental record? Nowhere in sight, unfortunately. There is no question that Bush favors profit over nature – historically, when his policies are scrutinized, anyone without an authoritarian-friendly political predisposition can see that his bottom line on the environment is same as the financial bottom line of oil, gas, mega-ranching and timber industries.
Case in point, the deputy assistant secretary at Bush’s Interior Department, Julie A. MacDonald was caught being a very, very bad girl.
MacDonald, before resigning last Monday, April 30, was responsible for overseeing the Fish and Wildlife Service. According to a report by the department’s inspector general, MacDonald violated federal rules by giving internal U.S.I.D agency documents to industry lobbyists, and she rode roughshod over agency scientists.
The list of filthy, disgusting, despicable things that this woman did to violate our country’s best interests is, in part, as follows:
The inspector general’s report said MacDonald heavily edited biologists’ reports on sage grouse, a species that, in the end, was not placed on the threatened or endangered lists. Why on God’s Green Earth would this political appointee do something like this, you ask?
Their habitat overlaps with vast parts of the Rocky Mountain West, where oil and gas drilling and cattle ranching are prevalent; listing the grouse as endangered or threatened could have curbed those industries’ access to federal lands.
In another case that the inspector general cited was that MacDonald demanded that scientists reduce the nesting range for the Southwest willow flycatcher to a radius of 1.8 miles, from a 2.1-miles, so it would not cross into California, where her husband has a ranch.
She also gave internal agency documents to industry lawyers and a lawyer from the Pacific Legal Foundation, all of whom frequently filed suit against the Interior Department over endangered species decisions.
So basically, she cheated – a lot, and often. Buh-bye, Ms. MacDonald – and good riddance!
MacDonald’s resignation came just before a House committee was to hold hearings on political interference with biologists, and the same day that Senator Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, wrote Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne demanding that he take action to address the concerns about MacDonald.
Even though environmental groups are satisfied with the departure of an official who had become a magnet for accusations of political interference with the work of federal biologists, they and Congressional critics said they were not convinced that the interference would end until the entire lobbyist and special-interest-oriented regime at the Interior Department could be examined closer for other industry-favored political plants.
Kieran Suckling, policy director of the Center for Biological Diversity, said: “Julie MacDonald’s reign of terror over the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is finally over. Endangered species and scientists everywhere are breathing a sigh of relief.”
Also in Interior Dept. scandal news:
Earlier this year, J. Steven Griles, the former deputy interior secretary, pleaded guilty to lying to a Senate committee about his dealings with Jack Abramoff, the disgraced lobbyist who is now in prison.
Bob Hollack, a wildlife service biologist in the Spokane, Wash., office resigned last month after prolonged disagreements over the editing of his scientific reports. He said in an interview, “It will be interesting to see what they do now — clean up some of her messes or go on doing the same thing.”
Mr. Wyden, in remarks for Wednesday’s Congressional Record, said, “We cannot continue to have government scientists whose work is manipulated and conclusions are rewritten by political appointees. We cannot continue to have federal officials working secretly with groups challenging their own agencies.”
Last week, lawyers in Portland, Ore., for the environmental group, Earthjustice, discovered that a timber lobbying group, the American Forest Resource Council, had based part of its March 7 lawsuit against the Interior Department on an ill-received internal draft of endangered-species regulations, not on the rules actually in force.
Chris West, a spokesman for the timber group, did not respond to how the lobbyists had gained access to a preliminary working document. Having acess to the draft would make it easier to remove endangered-species protections that had already been granted to animals and plants.
Of all the endangered species listing decisions made under the Bush administration, 52 percent denied protection as compared to only 13 percent during the last six years of the Clinton Administration.
(Information compiled from various news sources, including New York Times, Center for Biological Diversity and salon.com )