Wiping Out America the Beautiful

Washington, DC -- A few days ago, the former Deputy Secretary of the Interior, Steve Griles, pled guilty to having concealed from Congress the influence peddling that went on in the Department of the Interior under his boss, Secretary Gale Norton. Today, Salon magazine revealed that the influence peddling tradition is alive and well at Interior under Norton's successor, Secretary Dirk Kempthorne. Salon uncovered the details of a secret Interior Department plan to gut the Endangered Species Act without consulting Congress, by implementing a set of drastic new regulations which would:

• Eliminate the basic goal of the act: recovery of endangered species;
  
• Allow projects to proceed that have been determined to threaten species with extinction;
  
• Allow destruction of all restored habitat within critical habitat areas;
  
• Prevent critical habitat areas protecting species against disturbance, pesticides, exotic species, and disease;
  
• Severely limit the listing of new endangered species;
  
• Allow states to veto endangered species introductions.

So secretive is Kempthorne about the plan that drafts were numbered, so that the source of any leak could be identified. "An e-mail sent in March from an assistant regional director at the Fish and Wildlife Service to agency staff, asking for comments on and corrections to the first draft, underscored the concern with secrecy: "Please Keep close hold for now. Dale [Hall, director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service] does not want this stuff leaking out to stir up discontent based on speculation." Reading a document now counts as speculation.

Now the cover has been blown. The documents are hard to decipher but obviously reflect Kempthorne's long-standing hostility towards the notion of protecting wildlife. (For example, he commented while serving as the Governor of Idaho that he was opposed to reintroducing grizzly bears to his state because they were "large carnivores." The irony of one large carnivore chastising the dietary habits of another was seemingly lost on him. And in fact the average Homo sapiens in Idaho relies on meat for more of his diet than a grizzly does.)

Only a few days ago Kempthorne proposed to de-list the Yellowstone population of grizzlies -- but clearly that move was simply the opening round of a proposed mass slaughter of legal protections for American wildlife. The bison on the Department of the Interior's official seal should be galloping off in a panic as I write. Congress, however, may have something to say about this. Stay tuned.

Follow Carl Pope on Twitter: www.twitter.com/CarlPope