Why does the Bush administration hate nature?
"A senior Bush political appointee at the Interior Department has rejected staff scientists' recommendations to protect imperiled animals and plants under the Endangered Species Act at least six times in the past three years, documents show.
"In addition, staff complaints that their scientific findings were frequently overruled or disparaged at the behest of landowners or industry have led the agency's inspector general to look into the role of Julie MacDonald, who has been deputy assistant secretary of the interior for fish and wildlife and parks since 2004, in decisions on protecting endangered species.
"…In several instances, MacDonald wrote sarcastic comments in the margins of the documents, questioning why scientists were portraying a species' condition as so bleak. When scientists raised the possibility that a proposed road might degrade the greater sage grouse's habitat, which is scattered through 11 Western states, MacDonald wrote: "Has nothing to do with sage grouse. This belongs in a treatise on 'Why roads are bad'?""
2 comments:
Just for variety, let's try a conservative's reason why roads through public park lands are bad: the taxpayer pays for maintenance, which, over not very many years, far exceeds the cost of building the roads.
Here's another ill-kept "secret." While there are of course plenty of exceptions, a great many owners of land adjacent to national parks cooperate, some enthusiastically, with wildlife conservation efforts. These are not wild-eyed liberals like me... but they are, in one very real sense, environmentalists. Environmentalists come in all flavors except "Bush supporter."
Ms. MacDonald may "grouse" all she wants, but she and people like her are the obstacle. There are certainly places in national lands in which "roads are bad," but people like her do far more damage to wildlife than a whole raft of stakeholders (environmentalists, landowners, timber industries, etc.) trying to find a suitable compromise about roads... preferably one that complies with the law.
I guess I'm not a real activist. I've never spiked a tree or painted a baby seal. I like staying out of jail, and I like seeing problems resolved. Full disclosure: for a couple of years I was in the local leadership of a well-known national environmentalist group, a rather mild-mannered one for all the lawsuits it presses, one that disapproves of spiking trees, etc. That's why I know about the broad political spectrum of support for wildlife conservation. The Bushies are the exception, not the rule, among self-identified conservatives. If I were a conservative (Dog forbid), I'd vote to get rid of the extremists in charge.
The YDD
Some environmentalists want to keep areas of wilderness completely roadless which I understand. It literally protects the wilderness from us. Too much of us. We get a road into a place and destroy without being aware just by walking and crushing life underfoot. We take away rocks and wood, we bring diseases and trash. We shoot wildlife for sport or food.
Bush and his cohorts see National Parks and see unused resources. They cannot understand why we can't squeeze out everything of value out of these areas. They see cash where others see the salvation of other species. I know MacDonald is parroting what she's been hired to do: block, deny, reduce, denigrate, mock. Above all, let businesses in and keep environmentalists and scientists out.
I too am not a real activist or maybe I'm not a rabid one. I have quietly boycotted companies that step wrong, when they ignore human or animal quality of life issues, but I rely on those who care passionately about this to keep me informed and suggest what to do next.
I hope we can stop Bush's people in time to prevent terrible damage to our parks and our wildlife.
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