By Dave Workman
Editor-in-Chief
A change in how the Endangered Species Act (ESA) is enforced—allowing the incidental killing of endangered animals provided it was not intentional—has ignited a fury among conservationists who are claiming it essentially guts the Act.
A leaked Sept. 14 memo from U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (USFWS) Director Brian Nesvik ignited the controversy, and now organizations including the Center for Biological Diversity, Center for Western Priorities, Earthjustice and Defenders of Wildlife are on the offensive.
According to the Washington Standard, Chris Servheen, a former grizzly bear recovery coordinator for the USFWS, declared, “It’s essentially going to be a meaningless law, and it will have no protection whatsoever for species,” he said. “It’s like taking the four wheels off your car and saying it’s still your car.
“This tells law enforcement that they have no ability to prosecute somebody who kills a grizzly bear,” he reportedly stated. “(Hunters) are basically relieved of any responsibility of what they’re shooting, you can do whatever you want and say ‘I didn’t mean to.’ It makes the outdoors a pretty dangerous place now.”
However, the Cowboy State Daily is quoting William Perry Pendley, former director of the Bureau of Land Management, who says otherwise.
The rule change “will shield innocent people from litigation by the country’s largest law firm, the Department of Justice.”
Nesvik is telling wildlife officials the term “take” now only applies to the act of intentionally harming an endangered species, such as the deliberate shooting of a grizzly bear in the Lower 48 states.
Kate Groetzinger, communications director at the Center for Western Priorities, told the Washington Standard, “This basically is a blank check to companies, landowners, developers, loggers — anyone operating in endangered species habitat — to both destroy that habitat and kill the animals and literally face no consequences.”
Washington State Democrats have inserted themselves into the controversy, only as a way to attack the Trump administration. In a message posted on Facebook, the Democrats are asserting, “Under Trump’s new guidance, a logging company could knowingly cut down a tree full of endangered species, and their deaths wouldn’t count as a violation unless killing them was the point.
“That’s how far this rollback goes,” the Democrats allege. “If you can knowingly kill an endangered species and face no federal consequences, what protection does ‘endangered’ mean?”
But Pendley, the former BLM official, told Cowboy State Daily all of this fear about mass killing of endangered wildlife is an over-reaction. He said people were accused of “taking” if they apparently just bothered an animal.e said
“Everything was a crime, everything was a take,” Pendley recalled.
The change announced by Nesvik are bringing back the law to its original intent, he said.
The controversy might bring attention to how conservation groups have allegedly used the ESA to move the goalposts of wolf reintroduction efforts in western states. As populations of wolves have increased—often at the expense of big game herds and livestock, according to wolf critics—efforts by state wildlife agencies to ease regulations and allow hunting have sometimes been met with legal actions. Montana and Idaho do allow wolf hunting on a limited basis.
