Barrasso (Asshole-WY) Working Hard To Gut ESA Funding, Give Governors Veto Power On Designations
Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY) released draft legislation on Monday that could severely undermine the Endangered Species Act (ESA), a hugely popular law that has helped save the bald eagle and thousands of other species from extinction. The proposed legislation would shift key authority for conserving threatened and endangered species away from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to individual states. States would be granted authority to write species recovery goals, habitat objectives, and other criteria for delisting at-risk animals and plants under the ESA.
Many states, however, lack the resources to protect imperiled wildlife and plants. State governors, who often oppose protections for endangered species, also would be granted the power to veto scientific decisions about those protections.
“This partisan bill is all about politics, at the expense of sound science and the species that depend on it for survival,” Jamie Rappaport Clark, president and CEO of Defenders of the Wildlife, said Monday in a statement. “It is a reckless power grab designed to wrest away authority from scientists and wildlife experts and give it to states that lack the resources — and sometimes the political will — needed to save wildlife from extinction.”
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The amount of money appropriated to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for recovery of endangered species is only 3.5 percent of what is needed, according to a recent first-of-its-kind analysis by the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD). Furthermore, a 2017 study by the U.C. Irvine School of Law’s Center for Land, Environment, and Natural Resources found that states do not have sufficient laws or resources to adequately protect endangered species. And yet, Barrasso’s proposed bill contains multiple provisions giving states overriding control over the federal program to conserve endangered species.
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https://thinkprogress.org/republican-senator-wants-to-undermine-law-that-saved-the-bald-eagle-de7a269ed313/