Statement of Rodger Schlickeisen, President, Defenders of Wildlife Earth Day, April 22, 2002
As important as that part of the strategy is, the full extent of the Administration’s assault on our environmental laws cannot be appreciated without examination of the less visible part that typically pursued behind closed doors and away from TV cameras and journalists. Now, however, a coalition of 16 of the nation’s largest environmental groups has combined their efforts to bring to public light what is clearly a massive effort on the part of the Bush Administration and its appointees from industry to improperly use the president’s executive authority to weaken, undermine and subvert the nation’s environmental laws to benefit their big corporate supporters.
I recognize that this is a serious and sweeping accusation. I do not make it lightly. And I would not do so without the evidence that there is an ever more clearly identifiable pattern of abuse of executive authority that has already been established in just the Administration’s first 15 months in office. The fact that their agency political appointees have been in place for probably an average of half that time, serves to underscore the amazing extent and aggressive nature of their anti-environmental assault.
Of course you have to understand that nearly all of the Administration’s senior appointments to federal environmental agencies were drawn from the ranks of industries that have been historically the nation’s biggest polluters and violators of those agencies’ regulations.
There is ample evidence of the Administration’s use and abuse of executive authority to trample laws that protect the air we breathe, laws requiring polluters to pay for cleaning up toxic waste sites they themselves created, laws that safeguard our public lands, and laws that protect America’s imperilled wildlife and wild lands.
Regarding the latter, four national environmental groups – Defenders of Wildlife, Earth Justice, National Wildlife Federation, and the Endangered Species Coalition – have just released a report entitled "OPEN SEASON ON AMERICA’S WILDLIFE: The Bush Administration’s Attacks on Federal Wildlife Protections."
The report summarizes actions we have identified that the Bush Administration has already taken to undermine the nation’s wildlife-related laws. The actions include:
– Numerous cases of selling out in court on industry-initiated lawsuits that the Administration either refused to defend or defended very weakly. I honestly believe they essentially invited many of these lawsuits;
– Numerous cases where they have rejected work by federal career scientists and other officials, in favor of allowing key oil and gas, logging and development industry supporters to destroy protected habitats crucial to the survival of imperilled species; and
– Numerous cases where they have chosen to simply ignore the law and related court orders protecting endangered species.
They’re all in the report. Essentially all actions favor industry supporters who have placed some of their most committed lobbyists and advocates in high U. S. government, appointed positions. Many of these actions we believe constitute not just abusive but illegal uses of the President’s executive authority. And in the past few days we have initiated counter action by taking legal action in four areas:
1) Filing a lawsuit in District Court in Tucson against the Corps of Engineers for violating both the National Environmental Policy Act and the Endangered Species Act for failing to comply with a previous court ruling by continuing to permit the destruction of known habitat of the endangered cactus ferruginous pygmy-owl, and against the Environmental Protection Agency for its failure to comply with the Endangered Species Act in the issuance of development permits within the owl’s habitat.
2) Filing a 60-day notice of intent to sue both the Forest Service and the Fish & Wildlife Service for failing to comply with the Endangered Species Act, National Forest Management Act and National Environmental Policy Act with regard to protecting from extinction the endangered lynx on six national forests in the Great Lakes region.
3) Utilizing the Freedom of Information Act to demand important information relating to the Cheney Energy Plan and to Interior Secretary Norton’s decisions both to reduce the amount of critical habitat for the imperilled piping plover by over 90% to satisfy oil industry interests, and to open large swaths of wild Wyoming to oil and gas drilling without environmental review of the consequences.
(I’d note that the Bush Administration’s withholding of information on the Cheney Energy Plan has already resulted in several FOIA court rulings against them, and we expect these requests of ours to produce the same result.)
4) Filing a motion to enforce the historic Florida Manatee settlement agreement entered into more than a year ago by conservationists and the Fish & Wildlife Service and Army Corps of Engineers. On this issue, as on many others, we expect to win in court, because the Administration’s actions are in obvious and blatant disregard of the court settlement.
The bottom line is that behind closed doors and away from public view, the Bush Administration is allowing big corporations and industry insiders to determine government policies that will seriously weaken implementation of our environmental laws. Unless curbed, the result of this effort will be more pollution in our air, more poson in our water, more damage to our public lands, more imperilled species and ecosystems lost forever, and less help from polluters to clean up toxic waste sites they themselves created.
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Contact(s):
Brad DeVries, (202) 772-0237