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| an endangered cactus species |
One question
US Person was consistently asked when he lived overseas was: why are Americans so litigious? The short answer is because "they can", but a less
flippant answer is provided by the horrendous example of the current regime. You may have read that Il Douche is gutting the Endangered Species Act by including, for the first time, monetary considerations when deciding weather to list a species under the Act for protection. This obviously pro-development rule change is contrary to the express provisions of the Act itself. Jamie Rappaport Clark, former head of the Fish & Wildlife Service and now head of Defenders of Wildlife said the changes will definitely make it harder to designate critical habitat; “This effort to gut protections for endangered and threatened
species has the same two features of most Trump administration actions:
It’s a gift to industry, and it’s illegal" The conservation advocacy group Earthjustice as already said it will see the regime in court. Bad law makes litigation a necessity. Despite being passed in 1973 with strong bi-partisan support, the Act has lately become the favorite target of pro-exploitation conservatives--one indication of the law's effectiveness in protecting species on the path to extinction at the hands of man.
The regime is being sued every ten days on average by National Resources Defense Counsel. The organization has amassed an impressive win record: of forty-seven cases resolved so far, NRDC has lost only three. Some of the landmark wins for Earth:
- a federal appeals court reversed the approval of twenty-five drilling permits issued by the BLM in the Greater Chaco region, a landscape considered sacred to native Americans;
- upheld the permanent ban on offshore drilling against the regime's effort to begin drilling in the Arctic Ocean and Atlantic coastal zone;
- forced the government to consider protection of giraffes under the Endangered Species Act. Giraffe populations in Africa have declined by 40% in the last thirty years. The US is a major importer of giraffe carcasses and bone;
- forced the National Marine Fisheries Service to grant protection to the highly endangered Bryde's whale in the Gulf of Mexico. An estimated 22% of the population was exterminated by the Deepwater Horizon disaster. Only thirty-three of these whales remain;
- a federal district court stopped an effort to eliminate rules insuring fossil fuel companies paid a fair amount of royalties for operating on federal land. The "valuation rule" was repealed by the regime with no logical justification other than the bare claim that it was “burdensome” to the fossil fuel industry!
So, in order to minimize their extremist agenda of planetary destruction, conservation organizations must keep suing. That is just the way it is in Trumpilini's 'Merica.
