44 is building a basketball court so he can shoot hoops with his NBA buddies. While he is waiting for the White House tennis court to be converted, he is nominating people who have little interest in the subjects they are being assigned to protect. The man named to enforce the Endangered Species Act as head of the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), Sam Hamilton, is head of the ten state Southeastern Region. Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) tells us that he has the weakest record of any comparable official in the country. The latest records show that of the 5,974 consultations of development permits, Hamilton only issued one jeopardy letter or opinion that the proposed action would adversely impact a protected species. During the same time period, the Rocky Mountain region issued 100 jeopardy opinions in only 586 consultations. 44 restored the the consultation process eliminated in the last days of the Regime, but the nomination of Hamilton to be agency head undercuts the supportive rhetoric of Secretary of Interior Ken Salazar, who told the press that the consultation process was vital to ensure endangered species "receive the full protection of the law"{3/4/09}. In a PEER survey of federal scientists working for FWS, 46% that they had been directed at some point to refrain from making findings that are protective of species. 49% said that commercial interests have inappropriately induced the reversal or withdrawal of scientific conclusions. Under Hamilton's supervision virtually no species was listed and no critical habitat was designated except after costly and difficult lawsuits against the agency. PEER's director said under Hamilton the Endangered Species Act has become dead letter law in the Southeast.
In was in Hamilton's jurisdiction that a federal biologist, Andrew Eller, was threatened with termination for publicly expressing concerns about the "no jeopardy" effect of a limestone rock
quarry on the highly endangered Florida panther. Eller escaped termination after a settlement with the agency was reached in 2006, but his field supervisor who proposed his termination, and who allowed the use of skewed statistics to support the desired result, was promoted. Only 87 panthers are thought to exist in the wild. Biologists in the Vero Beach office wrote a joint letter in 2005 saying their supervisors had forbidden them from writing any jeopardy opinions on any project, regardless of adverse effects. A FWS supervisor called the panther a "zoo species" destined for extinction in the wild, and that any jeopardy opinions would be wasted effort. A federal district court revoked the excavation permit for the proposed limestone mine located amid 6,000 acres of habitat in the western Everglades, the panther's last redoubt. The judge ruled that FWS ignored scientific evidence, and was arbitrary and capricious in finding no potential harm to the panther. The suit was brought by the National Wildlife Federation and its allies.