Officially Sponsored Endangerment

Last week, the bald eagle was removed from the endangered list because by most accounts the species had made a comeback. That's good news. The bad news, however, is that many more species may expire due to deliberate lack of government intervention by this administration. From today's Los Angeles Times:

The bald eagle may be soaring back from near-extinction, but hundreds of other imperiled species are foundering, as the federal agency charged with protecting them has sunk into legal, bureaucratic and political turmoil.

In the last six years, the Bush administration has added fewer species to the endangered list than any other since the law was enacted in 1973.

The slowdown has resulted in a waiting list of 279 candidates that are near extinction, according to government scientists, from California's Yosemite toad to Puerto Rico's elfin-woods warbler.

Beyond the reluctance to list new species, a bottleneck is weakening efforts to save those already listed. Some 200 of the 1,326 officially endangered species are close to expiring, according to environmental groups, in part because funds have been cut for their recovery.

"It's wonderful the bald eagle is recovering — one of the most charismatic and best funded species ever," said Jamie Rappaport Clark, a former director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service who now works for Defenders of Wildlife, an advocacy group. "But what's happening with the other species? This administration has starved the endangered species' budget. It has dismantled and demoralized its staff." [Emphasis added]

One way to choke off a federal agency is to cut its budget. The Fish and Wildlife Service is facing a 28% cut in the president's proposed budget, and previous years' cuts have left the agency with 30% fewer employees on board.

Those who remain are being led by political appointees who have closer ties to the interests opposed to the agency's mandate than to the nation as a whole. One of those appointees, Julie McDonald was recently forced to retire when an Interior Department Inspector General's report busted her for leaking sensitive agency memos to business interests battling against further regulation (more about Ms. McDonald here).

The Democrats of the 110th Congress have decided to hold hearings on this agencies problems and the appointees responsible for them. Hopefully, those same Democrats will also see that money is put back into the budget for this agency so that it can do the job it was created to do. We need more good news stories like the bald eagle.