Lawsuits Allege Politics is Harming Species in States

Lawsuits Allege Politics is Harming Species in States



November 2007 
 The nonprofit Center for 
Biological Diversity is filing simultaneous lawsuits today to protect six 
endangered species ranging over hundreds of thousands of acres from 
Montana to Alabama. 
The national environmental group says these lawsuits are the first phase 
of "a campaign to challenge political interference by high-level Bush 
administration officials that have stripped protections for 55 endangered 
species and 8.7 million acres of land." 
A legally required "notice of intent to sue" over the 55 species was filed 
with the Bush administration in August. 
Today's lawsuits challenge the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's refusal to 
list as endangered species a fish called the Montana fluvial arctic 
grayling and the Mexican garter snake found in Arizona and New Mexico. 
The group also is challenging the elimination of 109,382 acres of 
protected critical habitat from three fish species - the Santa Ana sucker 
in California, and the loach minnow and spikedace - once common throughout 
the Verde, Salt, San Pedro, Gila, and other rivers of Arizona and New 
Mexico. 
Another lawsuit challenges the agency's refusal to provide any critical 
habitat for the Mississippi gopher frog. The frog, still found in a few 
spots in Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi, is listed as endangered but 
still has no protection from impending development in its habitat. 
"These are some of the most endangered species in the United States," said 
Michael Senatore, senior counsel for the Center for Biological Diversity. 
"It's outrageous that federal scientists were blocked from protecting them 
by political appointees in Washington, DC." 
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologists issued decisions to list the 
Montana fluvial arctic grayling and garter snake as endangered species, 
but those decisions were reversed by former Deputy Assistant Secretary of 
the Interior Julie MacDonald and other high ranking officials.

The Montana fluvial, or river-dwelling, arctic grayling was once widely 
distributed throughout the upper Missouri River drainage above Great 
Falls, Montana, but is now reduced to a single population in the upper Big 
Hole River in southwestern Montana. 
The species continues to be threatened by water withdrawals, livestock 
grazing, nonnative species, and global warming. The Fish and Wildlife 
Service concluded that the grayling warranted Endangered Species Act 
listing in 1994. 
In 2004, the agency elevated the species' priority number from a 9 to a 3 
because it was judged to be at imminent risk of extinction. In 2006, 
agency scientists prepared a draft decision to list the grayling as 
endangered calling the species' status "unequivocal." 
Internal agency memos indicate that MacDonald then intervened and the 
decision was reversed by "the highest levels of management." The final 
decision to withhold protection was issued on April 24, 2007. 
Following a critical report by the Department of the Interior Inspector 
General documenting systematic abuse and overruling of federal scientists, 
MacDonald resigned her post May 1. 
To calm the scandal, the Department of the Interior and the U.S. Fish and 
Wildlife Service pledged to review eight decisions illegally reversed by 
MacDonald. The Center calls this review, a "cynical effort at damage 
control" that only "flamed the controversy." 
In response to a congressional request, the Government Accountability 
Office is currently investigating additional instances of science 
manipulation by MacDonald, who may have been involved in more than 100 
instances of overruling scientific determinations on endangered and 
threatened species. 
"The depth of corruption within the Department of the Interior goes way 
beyond Julie MacDonald and eight decisions," said Senatore. "It impacts 
hundreds of endangered species and millions of acres of wetlands and 
wildlife habitat." 
The case of the Santa Ana sucker involves two other high level officials 
in the Department of the Interior. This southern California fish has been 
extirpated from 75 percent of its historic range. It was listed as a 
threatened species in 2000 and in 2004, Fish and Wildlife Service 
scientists proposed the designation of 23,719 acres of critical habitat to 
protect it.

They were overruled by Assistant Secretary of Interior for Fish and 
Wildlife and Parks Craig Manson and Deputy Assistant Secretary Randal 
Bowman, claims the Center for Biological Diversity. 
The final decision published in the Federal Register on January 4, 2005, 
was signed by Manson. It excluded 15,414 acres from the proposal, leaving 
8,305 acres of protected habitat, after a draft economic analysis 
estimated conservation costs could range from $21.8 to $30.5 million over 
the next 20 years. 
Manson explained that several existing Habitat Conservation Plans cover 
the excluded acres, providing conservation benefits for the Santa Ana 
sucker. 
But the Center quotes internal agency documents in which staff complain 
that "the decision made no sense" and warned of "how difficult this one 
will be when it comes to straight-facing it with the public and the 
press." 
Today's lawsuits are the latest in a long string of legal challenges to 
Bush administration species decisions. The designation of any critical 
habitat at all for the Santa Ana sucker, for instance, was done in 
response to an earlier lawsuit by the Center for Biological Diversity, as 
well as California Trout, Inc., the California-Nevada Chapter of the 
American Fisheries Society, and Friends of the River. 

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