animals in the 2008 election

Animals in the 2008 Election

~Bruins For Animals

Animals in the 2008 Election

• Endangered Species Under the Bush Administration

• Sarah Palin vs. Animals

• Proposition 2

Endangered Species Under the Bush Administration

• The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has stated that a minimum population of merely 300 wolves—80 percent fewer than currently occupy the northern Rockies—is all that is necessary to keep wolves off the endangered species list. Nonetheless, Service officials assert that state management of northern Rocky Mountain gray wolves will likely result in a population of 900-1,250 wolves, rather than the 300 wolves that the final delisting rule allows. The Service has not cited any commitments by the states to maintain the population above the federally established minimum. In fact, as demonstrated below, Montana, Idaho and Wyoming have not committed to maintain the wolf population above the Service’sminimum number. Inadequate state protections coupled with enduring hostility toward wolves in this region may well cause 80 percent of the region’s approximately 1,500 wolves to be killed under state management.

http://www.earthjustice.org/library/factsheets/wolf-delisting-fact-sheet.pdf

http://www.earthjustice.org/library/factsheets/wolf-delisting-fact-sheet.pdf


• "In a sweeping victory for the gray wolves of the northern Rockies, the Bush administration has moved to reinstate federal Endangered Species Act protection for wolves. The federal government asked a federal court for permission to withdraw its March 2008 decision that dropped Endangered Species Act protections for wolves in the northern Rockies."

http://www.earthjustice.org/news/press/2008/bush-administration-giving-up-on-wolf-delisting-for-now-1.html


• "The news comes at the same time the government released a report finding wolves are not as plentiful in the northern Rockies as federal authorities had forecast as recently as this past spring. New government data suggest there are fewer than 1500 wolves, instead of the 2000 earlier predicted, in the northern Rockies population. So far, government scientists have not documented whether the population decline is due to disease or illegal, unreported wolf killings. Since the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) delisted wolves on March 28, states have assumed legal management authority for wolves leading to the shooting of at least 170 wolves. The region's population of 1,450 wolves falls short of the 2,000 to 5,000 wolves that independent scientists have determined to be necessary to secure the health of the species. "

http://www.earthjustice.org/news/press/2008/bush-administration-giving-up-on-wolf-delisting-for-now-1.html


• The Endangered Species Act- Proposed in 1973 by Former President Richard Nixon after he declared that the United State’s then-current actions for species conservation to be inadequate. The act was passed in Congress that same year. The act did more than just set up a conservation strategy and legislation for animals that were deemed endangered, but also the habitats upon which these species’ survival depended on.

Sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endangered_Species_Act, http://www.esablawg.com/,http://www.doi.gov/news/08_News_Releases/080514a.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endangered_Species_Act

http://www.esablawg.com/




• This act created two separate federal agencies to ensure the act covered what it was set to do. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) which handles marine species and United States Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) which handles fresh water fist and all other forms of wildlife.







• The ESA (Endangered Species Act) also protects “critical habitat” because the loss of habitat is the primary threat to most endangered species. In 1986 under the Regan Administration, there was a regulation passed limiting the protection of critical habitat, which led to a few new designations of critical habitat from 1986-1990’s. During the 1990’s a series of court orders presented by NOAA and FWS set to reversing this regulation, allowing for new habitats to be declared critical especially in the states of Hawaii and California.







• In 1982, Congress amended the ESA to enhance the permitting provisions of the act, and intended, in part, to provide landowners with incentives to participate in endangered species conservation. They created a "Habitat Conservation Plan" (HCP) that if a landowner meets the statutory criteria, they can then obtain "incidental take permits" that allows otherwise prohibited impacts to endangered, threatened and other species covered in the permitting documents. Each conservation plan must specify: the impacts to species that will occur; the steps taken to minimize and mitigate the incidental take; the funding available; alternative actions that we considered, but not taken; and other necessary and appropriate measures. After review of a proposed conservation plan, FWS or NOAA Fisheries may issue an incidental take permit upon making the statutorily required "findings," including a determination that the incidental taking "will not appreciably reduce the likelihood of the survival and recovery of the species in the wild." The Endangered Species Act also empowers FWS or NOAA Fisheries to include "terms and conditions" in the incidental take permits as necessary or appropriate.







• According to the Washington Post in 2001 the Bust Administration had erected many obstacles that limited the number of animals the two agencies were able to protect.







• From 2001 to 2003, until a U.S. District Court overturned the decision, Fish and Wildlife Service officials said that if that agency identified a species as a candidate for the list, citizens could not file petitions for that species.

• Interior Department personnel were told they could use "info from files that refutes petitions but not anything that supports" petitions filed to protect species.







• Senior department officials revised a longstanding policy that rated the threat to various species based primarily on their populations within U.S. borders, giving more weight to populations in Canada and Mexico, countries with less extensive regulations than the U.S.

• Officials changed the way species were evaluated under the act by considering where the species currently lived, rather than where they used to exist.

• Senior officials repeatedly dismissed the views of scientific advisers who said that certain species should be protected.



• May 14, 2008- Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne announced his acceptance of the proposal that recognized Polar Bears as an endangered species.



• In August 2008 the Bush administration proposed new regulations that would weaken the Endangered Species Act by allowing federal agencies to determine whether projects will negatively affect endangered species, rather than following the regular protocol of seeking independent reviews from scientists on such issues.



• September 30, 2008: FWS announced a new proposal to apply a newly developed eco-system based approach to species conservation. This will allow for the new designation of 48 species found only on the island of Kauai to the Endangered Species list.

• “By addressing the common threats that occur across ecosystems, we can more effectively focus our conservation efforts on restoring the functions of these shared habitats.”- Secretary of Interior Dirk Kempthorne.



• As of August 28, 2008, 44 species have been removed from the “endangered” or “threatened” list of animals; 19 due to recovery, 9 due to extinction (of which 7 were extinct prior to being listed), 10 due to changes in taxonomic classification, 5 due to discovery of new populations, 1 due to an error in the listing rule, and 1 due to an amendment to the Endangered Species Act specifically requiring the species delisting. 23 others have been “down-listed” from “endangered” to “threatened.”


http://www.alaskaseafood.org/industry/enews/092607govpalinfish.jpg

Sarah Palin vs. Animals

http://gov.state.ak.us/images/SarahPalin_Council-Hunt_sm.jpg



• "In early 2007, Palin's administration approved an initiative to pay a $150 bounty to hunters who killed a wolf from an airplane in certain areas, hacked off the left foreleg, and brought in the appendage. Ruling that the Palin administration didn't have the authority to offer payments, a state judge quickly put a halt to them but not to the shooting of wolves from aircraft." Salon.com, Mark Benjamin, Her Deadly Wolf Program, September 8, 2008

http://www.defendersactionfund.org/newsroom/sarah_palin.html


http://actionnooz.com/news/wp-content/uploads/sarahpalinkillingdeer.jpg



• "Palin has argued that she is worried about Alaska's hunters, locked in perennial competition with the canine carnivores for the state's prodigious ungulate population. A hunter herself, Palin has battled critics of aerial wolf hunting with the support of the Alaska Outdoor Council, a powerhouse advocacy and lobbying organization for hunting, fishing and recreation groups. In addition to so-called urban hunters, who shoot moose mostly for fun, Alaska is home to a significant number of subsistence hunters, including some of the Native population. Subsistence hunters rely on an occasional moose to make ends meet. The wolves, Palin has said, are stealing food from their tables."

Salon.com, Mark Benjamin, Her Deadly Wolf Program, September 8, 2008


• "The controversy over Palin's promotion of predator control goes beyond animal rights activists recoiling at the thought of picking off wolves from airplanes. A raft of scientists has argued that Palin has provided little evidence that the current program of systematically killing wolves, estimated at a population of 7,000 to 11,000, will result in more moose for hunters. State estimates of moose populations have come under scrutiny. Some wildlife biologists say predator control advocates don't even understand what wolves eat."

Salon.com, Mark Benjamin, Her Deadly Wolf Program, September 8, 2008


• "It wasn't much noticed at the time, but three weeks before she was chosen as John McCain's vice presidential running mate, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin played a key supporting role in the latest episode of the Bush Administration's eight-year war on the Endangered Species Act, one of the cornerstones of American environmental law. On August 4 Alaska sued the government for listing the polar bear as a "threatened" species, an action, the lawsuit asserted, that would harm "oil and gas...development" in the state. In an accompanying statement, Palin complained that the listing "was not based on the best scientific and commercial data available" and should be rescinded."

The Nation Online, Mark Hertsgaard, Our Polar Bears Ourselves, September 10, 2008


• "While the polar bear population was currently stable, the plaintiffs argued, greenhouse gas emissions were melting the Arctic ice that polar bears rely on to hunt seals, their main food source. A study by the US Geological Survey supported this argument, concluding that two-thirds of all polar bears could be gone by 2050 if Arctic ice continues to melt as scientists project.”

The Nation Online, Mark Hertsgaard, Our Polar Bears Ourselves, September 10, 2008


http://www.arctic.ac.uk/images/polar_bear.jpg


• Governor Palin is an active promoter of Alaska's aerial hunting program whereby wolves are shot from the air or chased by airplanes to the point of exhaustion before the pilot lands the plane and a gunner shoots the animals point blank. The program also targets bears.



• Palin offered a $150 bounty for wolves to entice hunters to kill more wolves in certain parts of the state, with hunters having to present a wolf's foreleg to collect the bounty.



• She actively opposed a ballot measure campaign seeking to end the aerial hunting of wolves by private hunters and approved a $400,000 state-funded campaign aimed at swaying people's votes on the issue.



• She also introduced legislation to make it easier to kill wolves and bears and which would have also removed the aerial hunting initiative from the ballot and block the ability of citizens to vote on the issue.



• The Board of Game, which she appoints, has approved the killing of black bear sows with cubs as part of the program and expanded the aerial control programs.



• The media is currently looking into reports that state officials implementing one of the aerial wolf killing programs illegally killed five-week old wolf pups just outside their dens.

Text: http://www.defendersactionfund.org/newsroom/sarah_palin.htmlPhoto: http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/968322162?z00m=16757161


• The Board of Game, which she appoints, has approved the killing of black bear sows with cubs as part of the program and expanded the aerial control programs.



• Palin has repeatedly opposed the listing of endangered animals under the Endangered Species List despite overwhelming scientific evidence that such listings are warranted.



• The U.S. Geological Survey predicts that loss of summer sea ice - crucial habitat for polar bears - could lead to the demise of two-thirds of the world's polar bears by mid-century, including all of Alaska's polar bears. The Bush administration has proposed listing the polar bears as threatened under the ESA to help protect polar bear habitat from threats such as oil and gas development.



• Governor Palin has actively opposed the listing of the polar bear despite the fact that Alaska's top marine mammal biologists agreed with the federal scientists who believed the bear should be listed. She wrote the Secretary of Interior urging him not to list the bear on the ground it might hurt the state's oil- and gas-dependent economy. After the bear was listed, she recently filed suit seeking to overturn the listing of polar bears.



• Alaska's Cook Inlet beluga whales are a unique group of white whales whose numbers have dramatically declined in the past two decades due to pressures ranging from pollution to increased ship traffic. Governor Palin opposes the listing of the Cook Inlet beluga whales, citing the listing as a threat to oil and gas development, despite their genetic uniqueness and the fact that their numbers have decreased from 1,300 in the 1980s to about 350 today.



http://farm1.static.flickr.com/176/392500552_192c4f88fc.jpg


• Palin is a strong supporter of drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, a vital wilderness area. It is home to hundreds of thousands of caribou who use the refuge as a calving ground, more than one million migratory birds, and countless other wildlife. It's the most important onshore denning habitat for female polar bears. Senator McCain himself has repeatedly voted to protect this pristine wilderness area. Palin is also a supporter of drilling in Bristol Bay and other offshore sites despite the risks to sensitive marine wildlife in the area, including the endangered polar bear and Beluga whale.



• Governor Palin actively campaigned against a state ballot measure this summer aimed at protecting Alaska's Bristol Bay. The mining industry seeks to develop a gold and copper mine in the area that would pollute the Bay's headwaters and threaten the spawning grounds for the largest remaining wild salmon run. The initiative would have prevented large-scale mining operations from dumping waste materials into salmon watersheds.



• The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is home to some of the most diverse and spectacular wildlife in the arctic. The Refuge's rich pageant of wildlife includes 36 fish species, 36 land mammals, nine marine mammals, and more than 160 migratory and resident bird species. The Arctic Refuge contains remote, complete, and undisturbed lands across five different ecological regions: lagoons, beaches and salt marshes of coastal marine areas; coastal plain tundra; alpine tundra of the Brooks Range; the forest-tundra transition south of the mountains; and tall spruce, birch, and aspen of the boreal forest.


Arctic National Wildlife Refugre ~ http://www.gwichinsteeringcommittee.org/images/unnamedlake.jpg

Proposition 2

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animals in the 2008 election

Technology

election endangered

endangered species list

species conservation

species survival

northern rockies population

minimum population

wolf population

regions population