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Environmentalism and Religion

2009-06-30T19:00:26Z

Jonathan Zasloff, an environmental law professor at UCLA, has an interesting post up at Legal Planet about the role of environmentalism and religion, a topic I’ve touched on here at Switchboard before. Zasloff is taking a course on Jewish theology and environmental consciousness. He writes:

But I’m taking the class because at this stage, I am somewhat skeptical of the general notion that religion can add much to environmental policy debates.

First, it seems to me that many of the crucial issues of modern environmentalism are not amenable to broad-based moral reasoning and intuition that religion can provide. Religious thinking has little to say about, for example, what is the appropriate amount of particulates that should be in the air, or whether climate change should be tackled by cap-and-trade, or a carbon tax, or command-and-control regulation.

So far as it goes, I think this is basically right. The problem is that Zasloff limits his focus on “policy debates.” It’s true, of course, that most religions won’t have much useful to say about “the appropriate amount of particulates in the air.” But that’s true of almost any policy debate. Religious tradition also won’t tell us much about whether providing the uninsured with health care is best tackled through a government managed single-payer system, the inclusion of a “public option” to compete with private health insurance plans, or competition among purely private plans. What religious tradition can contribute, however, is a belief about whether or not society should provide access to health care for all it’s citizens.

This is all pretty new for environmentalism--and pretty important. People steeped in religious tradition generally have well developed views about how their faith calls on them to treat other people. As a result, we may differ over how much government aide should be directed towards social welfare policies, or exactly what form those policies should take, but providing for the poor and destitute--and, I would argue, the general consensus that society has a moral obligation to do so--is deeply rooted in the “broad-based moral reasoning and intuition that religion can provide.”

Not so when it comes to our obligation to the natural world. There are philosophical and ethical values inherent in environmentalism, of course, as well as a rich tradition of environmental thinkers from Thoreau to Leopold, but mainstream religious theology has, until relatively recently, been something of a bit player in its development. That this is now changing in many religious traditions has the potential to fundamentally alter the nature of environmental debates.

A great example is Andrew Sullivan. Just today, when musing about the pro’s and con’s of the Waxman-Markey global warming bill, Sullivan wrote:

In weighing all these issues, I have to say that in the end, the moral question does hang heavy on me. ...We have a responsibility not simply to advance our own material welfare, and weigh costs and benefits, but also to conserve our natural inheritance as much as we can. I reach this from a religious perspective, but it is easy to reach it from other grounds.

In fairness, Zasloff recognizes these points—particularly the role that religion plays in informing our notions of intergenerational justice. My point is that to also expect religious tradition to provide answers to fine grain policy debates is an unnecessary burden. The value that religious thought brings to environmental debates is no more, and no less, what it brings to every other debate that encompasses both morality and policy. What’s novel is that many religions (and thus many of us) are beginning to see environmental questions in this very light.

Wildlife Roundup: The Good News

2009-06-28T00:38:53Z

Do you ever get tired of all reading bad news about endangered wildlife? I know I do. So I thought I might start a regular feature (of course, what exactly “regular” means is yet to be determined): “Wildlife Roundup: the Good News.” Here it goes:

The Canadian federal government and the Province of Saskatchewan just unveiled a recovery plan for the black footed ferret that aims to restore ferrets to the Grasslands National Park;
According to Maine Audubon, the state’s piping plover population is doing better than last year thanks, in part, to local government efforts to protect their beach nesting sites;
Wildlife officials in Colorado have documented the birth of 10 Canadian lynx kittens in the state—the first births recorded since 2006. These little guys are the third generation of lynx to be born in the state after reintroduction efforts began.
A photograph of a rare wolverine was recently captured on Mount Adams, in Washington, possibly marking the return of this iconic and elusive predator to the state’s southwest;
The very small remaining population of Hangul (India’s red deer) is on the rise;
A new species of bat, now named Miniopterus aelleni, has been discovered in Comoros Island archipelago, off the south-east coast of Africa. The bat weighs only 5 grams and is one of the smallest species of bats in the world.

Moose Don’t Live in Texas (Or How Global Warming Will Change the Midwest)

2009-06-17T15:39:01Z

Yesterday’s NOAA Report on the impact of global warming is a humdinger. What especially caught my eye was a graphic in the regional report on the impact a warming world will have on Illinois and Michigan. As you can see, under the higher emission scenario examined by the report, the Midwest’s climate slowly “drifts” south until our summers here in Chicago come to resemble present day Texas.

Needless to say, this all bodes extremely poorly for the region’s wildlife, as many species simply aren’t adapted to Texas-style summers.

Take moose for example. While we can’t boost any moose populations in the Windy City, they can be found in northern Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan. Other populations are in New England and the Northern Rockies.

Moose, as it turns out, seem particularly susceptible to global warming. Moose are solitary animals that don’t herd and are adapted to cold climates. As a result, they are not particularly heat tolerant—their response to hotter temperatures is to cool their bodies by increasing their metabolism. Scientist speculate that this can make moose more vulnerable to disease, lead to low pregnancy and twinning rates, and even starvation. Recent studies have found a strong correlation between January temperatures and overall survival rates.

Moose populations in northwest Minnesota have already experienced severe declines (similar problems have been observed in Michigan and Wyoming). Moose won’t be the only species to suffer in a warming world. Native plants, cold water fish, and a host of other species are going to be pushed right out of the region or into the abyss. That’s why its important that we act now to pass federal legislation to address climate change. I like Texas. But I want to live in Illinois.

Don’t be Shy: Alternative Energy Projects Still Have to Protect Wildlife

2009-06-12T19:33:24Z

I saw an interesting article in yesterday's Chicago Tribune about an Endangered Species Act lawsuit challenging the construction of a wind farm in West Virginia. The suit alleges that the project has violated the Act by failing to get a permit that addresses its possible impact on Indiana bat populations.

Now, let me get some disclaimers out of the way: (1) I don't know a thing about this particular project and I have no view about the merits of the plaintiffs' claims here; and (2) yes, yes, wind energy is a good thing and we need quite a bit more of it -- particularly in West Virginia, where the alternative is often this.

Having said all that, what struck me about the article was the defensive crouch that environmentalists seem to feel the need to adopt when talking about wind and solar (in fact, my knees are little sore from the last paragraph). Thus, when environmentalists challenge alternative energy projects, you often get quotes like this:

"We're not asking for a permanent halting of the project."

And this:

"This case is not about halting, it's about mitigation."

The truth is that alternative energy projects can damage the environment, and we shouldn't be shy about saying so. Just because you generate the clean power doesn't mean you get a free pass from basic environmental standards. Wind energy, for example, has a real and documented problem with bat mortality.

All of which is to say that where you site things like wind farms and solar arrays is really, really important. That's one reason NRDC is working hard to identify places in the West where such projects should not be built. It may well be true (in fact, I have no reason to think it's not true) that in the case discussed above mitigation is a perfectly good answer. Sometimes it is about mitigation; but sometimes it's about saying no.

One of these things is not like the other…or is it?

2009-05-08T16:45:59Z

In another disappointing turn of events, today Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar effectively endorsed the Bush Administration's policy of excluding the effects of global warming pollution on polar bears from consideration under the Endangered Species Act. The Secretary decided not to repeal or modify a rule, first issued when the polar bear was listed as a threatened species, that effectively excludes global warming pollution from the prohibition against "taking" (harming or killing) polar bears.

The weird thing about the rule is that it treats global warming pollution differently than other forms of global pollution. Mercury pollution (ironically, also emitted from coal-fired power plants) also harms wildlife, but we've never categorically ruled out its consideration under the Endangered Species Act. The same can be said of PCBs. Indeed, one of the impetuses for passing the Endangered Species Act as the widespread use of DDT, which endangered bird species around the globe. My point is this: the Endangered Species Act is a valuable tool that can be used to help control many different forms of pollution. We should treat greenhouse gasses no differently.

Another strange thing about the Secretary's decision is the fact that just last week he decided to withdraw an eleventh-hour Bush Administration regulation that changed the requirements for inter-agency consultation under the Endangered Species Act. Those regulatory changes were in large part premised on excluding the consideration of global warming pollution during such consultation. So why did the Department of the Interior choose to withdraw one, but not the other?

Polar Bear News

2009-05-07T16:02:55Z

Andrew Revkin just posted a nice link to a recent response by one of the world's foremost polar bear experts to an attack on global-warming based predictions of polar bear declines. The original critique was written by J. Scott Armstrong, a Professor Marketing at the Wharton School. As I've noted before, Armstrong's paper suffers from a number of pretty significant flaws, not the least of which is its total inversion of the precautionary principle.

In a related story, Andrew also recently wrote about a study on the capacity of polar bears to adapt to global warming by shifting their foraging from seals to snow goose eggs during extended ice-free summers. I've now had a chance to read the full study and, as I suspected, although very interesting, it contains some significant caveats that ought to prevent us from deriving too much hope from the author's conclusions. Key graphs:

Competition could lead to a "tragedy of the commons" situation (Rankin et al. 2007), where individual self-interests degrade a resource the whole group could use. Preliminary simulations indicate that if more than 36% of the nests are depredated the snow goose colony would decline. Both Madsen et al. (1998) and Drent and Prop (2008) indicate that polar bear depredation on Svalbard is sufficient that it is impacting the resident goose populations.

While the energy from snow goose eggs may reduce or delay the immediate impact of climate change on the polar bears of this region, simple extrapolation of the available egg energy values indicate that other food sources will have to play a role if the polar bears are to persist in the long term.

The authors also say that: "It is our view that in monitoring the health of this species, we should pay particular attention to the polar bears' diverse foraging abilities and their attempts to cope with environmental changes. We feel this is a better approach than making predictions based only on their historic behaviors in habitats that are themselves now changing."

While I disagree with this conclusion both as a matter of policy and law, it's only fair to note.

LIVE CHAT on Protecting Wolves and the Endangered Species Act

2009-05-06T20:00:00Z

The wolves of the northern Rockies have been kicked off the endangered species list. NRDC is going to court to fight for them. Join Andrew Wetzler, director of NRDC's endangered species project, for a special live chat at 2 p.m. Eastern on Wednesday, May 6, to talk about the government's decision, what it means for wolves and what comes next in the battle for their survival.

&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://www.coveritlive.com/mobile.php?option=com_mobile&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;task=viewaltcast&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;altcast_code=87ddffb658" mce_href="http://www.coveritlive.com/mobile.php?option=com_mobile&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;task=viewaltcast&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;altcast_code=87ddffb658" &amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Chat with NRDC's Andrew Wetzler about wolves and endangered species&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;

Aside from his efforts to help save wolves, Wetzler has worked with NRDC to protect whales from lethal sonar, California condors from lead poisoning and polar bears from global warming. Learn more about the current threat to wolves and how you can help at NRDC's Save BioGems site, then join us here to chat with Wetzler on May 6. You can also participate via Twitter using the tag #greenchat.

Related: Previous live chat on EPA endangerment ruling with NRDC's David Doniger.

Stubborn life

2009-04-22T23:05:35Z

Amidst all the well-deserved concern for wildlife and species loss, it’s good to be reminded every once and a while that life is stubborn. I was reminded of life’s persistence today, when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service formally began to reexamine what areas should be protected as “critical habitat” for the Hine’s emerald dragonfly.

Besides being beautiful, the Hine’s emerald dragonfly is one of those rare endangered species that you don’t have to trek into a wilderness to see—in fact, there are populations near Chicago; and, tucked into the Fish and Wildlife Service’s critical habitat notice, was the announcement of the discovery of a new population of dragonflies on three acres of land in the Mark Twain National Forest, not too far from St. Louis.

Most species will cling to existence to the very end and the world is full of examples of animals and plants that have come roaring back in the face of what must have once seemed like almost certain oblivion. For every passenger pigeon, there is a peregrine falcon. For every river dolphin, there is a gray whale. We just need to get out of the way.

Happy Earth Day.

As go whitebark pine, so go grizzly bears?

2009-04-17T18:55:39Z

Ralph Maughan links to a very important article by the AP's Matthew Brown in today’s Casper-Star Tribune on the connection between increasing human-bear conflicts (guess what, the bear loses) and the decline of high alpine whitebark pine trees.

As the article points out:

Hunters are killing grizzly bears in record numbers around Yellowstone National Park, threatening to curb the species' decades-long recovery just two years after it was removed from the endangered species list.

Driving the high death rate, researchers say, is the bears' continued expansion across the 15,000-square-mile Yellowstone region of Montana, Idaho and Wyoming

Bears are being seen -- and killed -- in places where they were absent for decades. And with climate change suspected in the devastation of one of the bear's food sources, there is worry the trend will continue as the animals roam farther afield in search of food…An epidemic of beetles in Yellowstone's high country has laid waste to tens of thousands of acres of whitebark pine trees, which have seeds that some grizzlies rely on as a dietary staple.

In fact, there’s every reason to believe that this trend will continue. Whitebark pine forests are declining throughout their range because of triple-threat posed by global warming (which is shrinking the whitebark pine’s available habitat), pine beetles, and blister rust.

Here, for example, is a projection of whitebark pine range contraction in response to global warming:

Modeled bioclimate profile of whitebark pine, Pinus albicaulis, for the present (a) and predicted climate for decades 2030 (b), 2060 (c) and 2090 (d) under climate change scenario using an average of Hadley and CCC GCM scenarios of 1% per year increase GGa. Black indicates location of pixels receiving ≥ 50% proportion of votes in favor of being within the climate profile.

That’s why NRDC petitioned to list the whitebark pine as an endangered species. It’s also one of the reasons we’re fighting with Earthjustice to overturn the removal of Yellowstone’s grizzly bear population from the federal list of endangered and threatened species.

Little Fish, Big World

2009-04-16T15:35:07Z

As Josh pointed out, yesterday NRDC filed a lawsuit challenging the critical habitat designation of the tidewater goby, a small fish, unique to its genus, that can only be found in the brackish estuaries, salt marshes, and lagoons along California’s coast.

Our quarrel with the designation (which was issued under the Endangered Species Act) is that the federal government refused to protect any unoccupied goby habitat. Case in point, the Tillas Slough (pictured above), at the mouth of the Smith River in Northern California. The Tillas Slough is important tidewater goby habitat. For one thing, it’s the northern-most place that gobies can be found and, because of prevailing currents and the short distances these little fish can survive and migrate in the open ocean, south-to-north natural recolonization is difficult. That means every time a goby population winks out, without another goby population to its north, the local extinction is more likely to be permanent. For another thing, the Tillas Slough has a huge amount of potential tidewater goby habitat in it—up to 500 acres. In tidewater goby terms, that’s big. Although there are a few other spots along the coast with big chunks of potential habitat, in many other places (especially farther south) available tidewater goby habitat is in the single digits. That’s why the 2005 tidewater goby Recovery Plan specifically identifies the Smith River estuary as a potential reintroduction site; and reintroduction of tidewater gobies to suitable habitat is the key to their recovery.

Now add to that the fact that critical habitat is defined as habitat essential to a species recovery and that fact that the federal government refused not only to designate potential reintroduction sites in Tillas Slough, but any unoccupied habitat as critical, and you see the problem. Tidewater gobies, like so many animals protected by the Endangered Species Act, can recover: but only if we give them some room.

Hey Wyoming: Your Wolves Aren't "Experimental" Anymore

2009-04-13T22:28:25Z

Predictably, the Fish and Wildlife Service’s recent decision to strip wolves of Endangered Species Act protections in Montana and Idaho—but to leave those protections in place in Wyoming—not only angered us, but plenty of folks in Wyoming as well; and the cowboys in the cowboy state are probably going to get even angrier as the other shoe begins to drop.

Not to get all lawyerly on you, but when the federal government reintroduced wolves to the Northern Rockies in the early 1990’s they designated the whole population an “experimental, nonessential, population” under Section 10(j) of the Endangered Species Act. That’s going to be a hard classification to maintain if the wolf delisting rule stands up to scrutiny.

Being an experimental, nonessential, population has quite a bit of advantages, so far as a state like Wyoming is concerned. Experimental populations are treated as threatened, rather than endangered, species (meaning there are fewer restrictions on the ability to kill or harm them). And, for the most part, “nonessential” experimental populations are not even given threatened species status; nor do nonessential populations get the benefit of critical habitat protection under the Act.

Relying on their experimental and nonessential status, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service issued a “special rule” for gray wolves in the northern Rockies. These regulations give an enormous amount of discretion and flexibility to Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho to manage its wolf populations, including killing wolves whenever they are deemed to have had an “unacceptable impact” on wild ungulate (deer, elk, etc.) herds, regardless of whether these impacts lead to actual population declines or wolves are the primary cause of the impacts.

But there’s a catch. In order to qualify as an “experimental” population under the Endangered Species Act the experimental animals must be “wholly separate" geographically from nonexperimental populations of the same species.” And, in order to be a nonessential experimental population, it must be found to be “not essential to the continued existence of a species.”

With the decision to delist wolves in Montana and Idaho, however, both of these qualifications vanished. No longer are Wyoming wolves “wholly separate” from a nonexperimental population of wolves, since Wyoming wolves share the Yellowstone ecosystem with wolves in Montana and Idaho . Wyoming wolves also can’t be considered “not essential to the continued existence” of Northern Rocky wolves, because, when it decided to keep wolves in Wyoming listed, the Fish and Wildlife Service found that they were.

What this means is not only was Wyoming left out of the Fish and Wildlife Service’s wolf delisting decision but, as a necessary consequence of that decision, it may find that its management options for wolves just got much, much narrower. All of which, of course, is simply another example of why the Fish and Wildlife Service never ought to have gone down the road of delisting wolves on a state-by-state basis in the first place.

Gray wolves lose protection in the Northern Rockies, but hopefully not for long

2009-04-01T16:25:07Z

As expected, today the Secretary of the Interior officially made available the final rule removing the Northern Rocky Mountain population of gray wolves from the list of federally endangered species in Montana and Idaho. The rule will take effect 30-days after it is published (tomorrow) and will immediately open wolves in the region to state management which, in the case of Idaho, at least, will undoubtedly mean widespread killing

Besides being a really dumb policy, the delisting rule is also illegal. NRDC and Earthjustice will be sending a 60-day notice of intent to sue letter with our allies tomorrow, when the rule is published, in which we lay out exactly why the rule does not work. Here’s the cliff notes version:

The delisting plan arbitrarily relies on an old and outdated recovery target of 30 breeding pairs of wolves in Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana. Not only was the adoption of these goals flawed at the time, but since then the science has become even more clear that a far larger population is needed to ensure recovery.
The notice of the proposed delisting didn’t give the public the opportunity to comment on many of its aspects, including its controversial plan to artificially relocate wolves from one population to another in order to promote genetic connectivity.
The delisting plan redefines wolves in the Northern Rocky Mountains as a “distinct population segment” and then strips them of protection—but in doing so the agency ignores the fact that wolves are protected as a species nationwide. The plan also delists wolves in areas where they haven’t even arguably recovered, such as portions of Oregon and Washington.
The delisting plan erroneously finds that Montana’s and Idaho’s post-delisting wolf management plans are adequate to conserve wolves but these plans will, in fact, allow very aggressive wolf killing. Idaho’s plan is particularly problematic and the state has already proposed a wolf hunting quota that would allow 40% of Idaho’s wolves to be killed;

There’s more of course, but this should give you flavor of the profound problems with delisting. Make no mistake, wolf reintroduction and recovery in the region is one of the most remarkable conservation success stories of the last twenty years and we are very close to achieving real recovery. But if this delisting plan goes forward, all of that could be lost and the viability of wolves in the Northern Rockies will suffer a severe blow.

Just because it’s conventional wisdom, doesn’t mean it’s wrong

2009-03-26T03:04:23Z

When I was in law school, it was very common for professors to begin a classroom discussion of some theoretical topic or another by saying: “The conventional wisdom is….” This was always a sure sign that, whatever the conventional wisdom, the professor was about to disagree with it. Don’t get me wrong, they weren’t setting up straw men, there really was a conventional wisdom. But they never agreed with it.

Setting out to takedown consensus opinion is a very natural inclination for an academic. Professors are far more apt to get attention, get published, and get tenure by coming up with a clever argument that set expectations on their head. The same is true of journalists.

As sure as the changing of the seasons, you can bet that once a narrative establishes itself in the public’s mind there will be a journalistic propensity to write stories about why it’s wrong, often regardless of the evidence. Indeed, some publications are so well known for such “counterintuitive journalism,” that it’s become something of a running joke.

All of which brings me to Andrew Revkin’s most recent piece on polar bears in DotEarth. It’s pretty much conventional wisdom now that polar bears are in serious danger of extinction from global warming. So, right on cue, DotEarth has a piece up discussing the bits of evidence that could run counter to this assumption. The problem is, though, that there’s just not that much evidence to be found. Essentially, Revkin points to three things:

A jawbone discovered a couple of years ago that may indicate that polar bears lived in the Arctic during the Eemian interglacial period, which was significantly warmer than today. As I noted at the time the jawbone was first reported, however, the problem with reading to much into this discovery is the fact (which, in fairness, Revkin notes) that current models predict Arctic temperatures significantly above temperatures reached during the Eemian.
A study by scientists at the Museum of Natural History that report observations of western Hudson Bay polar bears eating goose eggs and speculates that the eggs could provide a substitute source of food for polar bears forced to spend longer and longer periods on land. While this finding is interesting, I know of no polar bear biologists who believe that bears can survive in habitat completely free of summer sea ice. And current models predict that the Arctic is on track to be completely ice free by 2040—perhaps much sooner.
And finally, the most questionable evidence of all: a critique of global warming models used to justify the polar bear listing, written by J. Scott Armstrong, a professor of marketing at the Wharton School. The critique, which as been loudly trumpeted by global-warming skeptics has a number of flaws, not least of which is the fact that the methods it draws on (used primarily in economic forecasting) are simply inappropriate in the context of environmental protection. For example, one of the paper’s central points is that the polar bear population models are not sufficiently “conservative.” Armstrong et al. says that “[b]eing conservative means moving forecasts towards ‘no change’ in the face of long-term and uncertain trends.” Yet in the environmental context (particularly when we’re talking about extinction) being conservative should mean exactly the opposite. In the face of uncertainty, we should err on the side of avoiding irreversible damage to the natural world

Is the goose egg study wrong? I don’t know. But it should take more than that to overturn conventional wisdom, no matter how tempting it may be.

Yellow-billed loons won't get help from the federal government

2009-03-24T20:08:13Z

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service just consigned the yellow-billed loon to purgatory.

Yellow-billed loons are the biggest species of loon in the world and can boast wing spans of up to a five-feet. The loon breeds in the tundra wetlands of Alaska, Canada and Russia; wintering along the west coast as far south as California. The species has a global population of approximately 16,000 individuals, of which about 4,000 breed in Alaska. The majority of Alaskan yellow-billed loons breed in the Western Arctic, in areas recently opened up to oil and gas development, such as near Teshekpuk Lake and along the Colville River. Loons are also threatened by overharvest throughout their range.

In 2004 NRDC, the Center for Biological Diversity, Pacific Environment, Trustees for Alaska, and other groups filed a petition to protect the yellow-billed loon under the Endangered Species Act.

Today, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced that, while yellow-billed loons are in danger of extinction and qualify for protection under the Endangered Species Act, they would be classified as a “warranted but precluded” species and be put on the Service’s “candidate list” for later action. In other words, the Service decided there are other, higher priority species it needs to list first and the loon will just have to wait its turn. The extensive use of “warranted but precluded” findings is one of the biggest problems with the Endangered Species Act.

There are currently 251 other “candidates” for listing, many of whom got on the candidate listing just like the loon did. On average, candidate species can wait for protection for decades and dozens have gone extinct while on the candidate list. In fact, some have referred to the candidate list as “extinction’s waiting room.” This is all the more ironic considering how much effort the Fish and Wildlife Service puts into making “warranted but precluded” findings. Today’s decision on the yellow-billed loon runs 150 pages.

In another bit of irony, it was just last week that the Fish and Wildlife Service issued a report expressing concern over the decline of bird populations in the United States. Announcing the report, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar said:

Just as they were when Rachel Carson published Silent Spring nearly 50 years ago, birds today are a bellwether of the health of land, water and ecosystems….From shorebirds in New England to warblers in Michigan to songbirds in Hawaii, we are seeing disturbing downward population trends that should set off environmental alarm bells. We must work together now to ensure we never hear the deafening silence in our forests, fields and backyards that Rachel Carson warned us about.

Yet today’s decision means that, for now at least, one species of bird will be not be getting the additional protection that the federal government says it deserves.

Movement towards lead-free ammunition spreads

2009-03-20T17:34:12Z

Last week, as the National Park Service announced that it would move to phase out the use of lead ammunition in those few national parks that allow hunting. This is good news, and follows California's decision to phase out lead ammunition in California condor habitat, where the ingestion of lead fragments by condors is a particular problem.

The use of non-lead alternative ammunition really shouldn’t be controversial. Lead is a proven toxin, which effects not just condors but other birds, such as eagles, and even bears. The alternatives (mostly copper and copper alloy bullets) are equal to or superior in performance compared to bullets made with lead. Among other things, copper bullets typically retain virtually all of their mass after striking a target—a key metric in assessing ballistic performance.

But don’t take my word for it, check out these impressive videos: