Obama Administration Proposes Budget Cuts for Endangered Species Listing
Although the Obama administration’s proposed budget for endangered species includes much-needed increases for climate change planning and adaptation, it proposes to cut funding or flatline budgets for other key endangered species programs, including listing, recovery, candidate conservation, and law enforcement.
“Although acknowledging the serious threat to endangered species from climate change, Interior Secretary Salazar is proposing budget cuts to the very programs species need to survive a changing world,” said Bill Snape, a senior attorney at the Center’s Washington office. “Climate change threatens to push many currently endangered but poorly protected species over the brink, but the secretary’s not making providing greater protections for species a priority.”
The Obama administration has proposed to cut funding for listing of endangered species by 5 percent. Currently, there are 249 species that are designated as candidates for listing as endangered species. Candidate species, including the New England cottontail, yellow-billed loon, Yosemite toad, and many others, are species that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has determined do need protection, but for which they claim they lack the resources to actually provide that protection.
Many animals and plants have been waiting decades for protection, and most are gravely endangered. To date, the administration has only protected two species under the Endangered Species Act. By comparison, the Clinton administration protected an average of 65 species per year.
“Secretary Salazar is not prioritizing protection of endangered species,” said Snape. “With threats from habitat loss, pollution, invasive species, and climate change all on the rise, budget cuts are the last thing the nation’s endangered species need.”
The proposed budget also cuts funding for candidate conservation, which is supposed to provide protection to candidate species in the absence of listing, by almost 9 percent; cuts funding for endangered species law enforcement by almost 4 percent; and is nearly flat for recovery.
Image Credit: greenberg-art.com
Source: Center for Biological Diversity
The process for identifying a species as endangered should be totally separated from politics and economic considerations.
It's a sad but understandable reality that resources are limited, and we cannot adequately protect all species. However…why should that affect which species are listed as endangered?
The species should be listed as endangered based on independent scientific investigation–independent of economic and political considerations. If we still can't adequately protect the ones that are endangered, that's another issue that needs to be tackled, but that should happen after the fact.
Ok Salazar and his department are up to the tricks that I have become accustomed to seeing from them. By volunteering to have some of his budget cut he gets to birds with one stone ……and he is good at killing two animals for the price of one. First, he looks like a hero volunteering to run the Department of the Interior with less funding. Hummmm… I wonder what departments within the Dept. of Interior this will affect. How about Law Enforcement? Of course he will have to stay within the new budget. The corporate crooks will run amuck with no one to rein them in for their unlawful and inhumane deeds. What Salazar is really doing is requesting to have the funding cut off for law enforcement of acts that congress charged his department with. Thus the special interest groups, which his Dept. of the Interior has warmed up to, can continue to remove wild animals they deem as competition for their cash crops (cattle, sheep) and he can cry in his own defense that he does not have the budget to do more such as follow up on investigations and the law enforcement that his department is charged with. Ah…tricky, brilliant………. is Carl Rove working at the Department of the Interior? Maybe he is doing consulting work for them? Anyway, Obama's people are being out maneuvered like green kids by wise guy oldsters. Really now President Obama….do you really not see the writing on the wall? What gives?