Archives » Wednesday, December 17, 2008
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Daniel Stone
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Dec 17, 2008 04:10 PM
The Department of Interior has had better weeks. Several months into a
stepped-up effort to sift through Endangered Species Act petitions
faster, the department's inspector general delivered a report to congress on Monday detailing the extent of political meddling that was involved in more than a dozen designations on species protection. All of them, it was revealed, were decided against advice from Fish and Wildlife scientists in the field.
So
you'd think most people, especially ones who advocate for animals like
the black-tailed prairie dog, would be ready to turn a page at
Interior, impatient for Obama's much-promised new way of doing things
in Washington -- a way that he stressed would include species
protection and policies of environmental conservation. Obama said
during the campaign that whomever became his Secretary of the Interior
would have to understand land use issues. But even more important, he
said, would be the new IntSec's experience with hunting and fishing. “I
think that having a head of the Department of Interior who doesn't
understand hunting and fishing would be a problem," he told Field and Stream Magazine in October. "And so my suspicion is that whoever heads up the Department of Interior is probably going to be a sportsman or sportswoman.”
Having
expressed his sentiment early on paved the way for Obama's selection,
which the president-elect announced today with the choice of Colorado
Senator Ken Salazar to head the administration's interior department.
Problem
is, wildlife and species protection advocates don't exactly see Salazar
as having the same sort of transformational capabilities that Obama
claimed his administration would bring to town. Not long after the
swirling rumors about Salazar began to gain some traction, the
scientifically-respected Center for Biological Diversity put out a
statement, essentially hoping that the speculation was wrong, and that
Salazar isn't exactly the best choice to reform the department. "The
Department of the Interior desperately needs a strong, forward looking,
reform-minded Secretary," said Kieran Suckling, the group's executive
director. "Unfortunately, Ken Salazar is not that man."
The
group points to holes in Salazar's record on issues of land use,
drilling in marine habitat and fuel efficiency standards that it says
will be particularly important for the next administration to address.
There was also an incident in which Salazar's office threatened to sue
the Fish and Wildlife Service over its determination that a particular
species was endangered, which CBD biologists say could be a signal of
how Salazar's interior department could treat future cases under the
Endangered Species Act. Defenders of Wildlife, the species-protection
organization based in DC, also gives Salazar low marks for his votes on
issues affecting wildlife.
Several environmental groups took the
liberty in recent weeks to put forth other names that would be more
favorable picks for the post. A broad coalition of conservation
advocates and scientists had launched a letter-writing campaign to the
transition and the media in support of Raul Grijalva,
a congressman from Salazar's neighbor state of Arizona who has sharply
criticized the Bush Administration's policies on endangered species and
natural resources. California congressman Mike Thompson was also on
environmentalists' short list.
Still, there is some optimism
that Salazar could be more friendly to environmental activists and the
science community than the current leadership at Interior. Karen
Schambach, a coordinator for the organization Public Employees for
Environmental Responsibility told the LA Times,
referencing the rumors, that Salazar would at the very least be open to
more public discussion about controversial issues. Talking to a Times
reporter, Schambach said that the current administration has silenced
conservationist thinkers. She's hopeful that Obama's DOI would, if
nothing else, have an open ear.
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