Military Wins OK on Endangered Species

[Khephra]

WASHINGTON -- President Bush and the Defense Department won House approval Friday for easing some protections for endangered species and marine mammals.

One provision in the $401 billion defense bill amends the Endangered Species Act to prohibit setting aside any more "critical habitat" -- lands needed for species to recover -- on military installations that already have a plan for managing natural resources.

Another amends the Marine Mammal Protection Act to lower the threshold on what can be considered "harassment" of a marine mammal. Until now the law has prohibited anything annoying or potentially disturbing; the new standard would be anything threatening survival or reproduction.

The Bush administration lost out on its bid, however, to relax some of the military's requirements for complying with the Clean Air Act and toxic waste laws.

more.............

http://www.newsday.com/news/politics/wire/sns-ap-military-environment,0,7063521.story?coll=sns-ap-politics-headlines

[Military Brat]

1. At the rate bush is going, ALL the animals are endangered

And people and everything else on earth.

[Barrett808]

2. Yes, good candidate for Antichrist n/t

n/t

[DUreader]

3. Correction: Military wins OK to KILL Endangered Species

[Kolesar]

4. Tom Delay's House of Horrors

Hopefully, we can stop this in the Senate.

[NickB79]

5. Like a Simpson's episode

Lisa: (looking at a poster of a mushroom cloud and whales): Nuke the whales? What?

Nelson: Well, ya gotta nuke something.

[pinniped]

6. I really hate that ASSHOLE!

Nothing will be alive by the time Ivan's reign is over.

[booksenkatz]

7. kick

This story is sickening.

[Minstrel Boy]

8. A new front opens in the war on terror

You're either with us, or you're with the walruses.

[chenGOD]

9. This is absolutely horrible.

The military corporation has no regard whatsoever for the environment. All you have to do is look at bases here in South Korea, or the ones recovered in the Phillippines. Or you could look at the areas in the US where they have done nuclear testing...

this is BULLSHIT and I hope that the environmental groups cause a huge stink about it...

[baby_bear]

10. Attention Washington State DUers -- pretty sad votes

Insleee, Larsen, Dicks and Smith, all Democrats, voted YES on this slimy bill that undercuts last month's court victory wherein the Navy agreed to limit its use of destructive sonar. Baird voted "present." Of the Democrats, only good old McDermott voted no. I hope that if any of those other Dems are your representative, you will write and tell him that you are disappointed in him. At the very least, this exemption had no place in a spending bill. They should have voted no, unequivocally.

The Seattle P-I has good coverage of this in today's edition.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/147453_sonar08.html

<snip>
Fifty-one House members, including Inslee, Baird and Blumenauer, unsuccessfully appealed Oct. 21 to the Armed Services Committee chairmen to leave the issue alone for now, citing a study by Spanish and British scientists that came out Oct. 9.

The study said whales near naval exercises where sonar was used appeared to get a sometimes-fatal version of the bends, the nitrogen sickness suffered by human scuba divers. The study followed a string of whale deaths in the vicinity of naval exercises in several places around the globe. All involved common midfrequency sonar, not the newer, more-powerful low-frequency version.

"Marine mammal scientists have said that this study may be the so-called 'smoking-gun' linking sonar use with marine mammal strandings," the House members wrote. "It provides a plausible and credible scientific explanation for an abundance of circumstantial evidence that has linked sonar use to marine mammal stranding."

</snip>

This just makes me ill.

s_m