have you no sense of decency?
The Bush administration on Tuesday proposed dramatically rolling back protections for salmon and steelhead trout streams from Southern California to the Canadian border, saying the rare and endangered fish are sufficiently protected in other ways.The revised plan, which was prompted by a lawsuit from the National Assn. of Homebuilders, could exclude 80% to 90% of the “critical habitat” that the National Marine Fisheries Service designated four years ago as necessary to keep West Coast salmon and steelhead populations from going extinct and to allow their depleted populations to recover.
…
In addition, streams that run through millions of acres of national forests stretching from northwestern California through western Oregon and Washington would be excluded as critical habitat for the fish. Federal officials said they did not want to impose another layer of restrictions on areas already subject to protections for the northern spotted owl.
oh… right… can’t have too much protection of endangered species going on in one location at the same time. uh, earth to fuckwads: maybe if you’re dealing with multiple conservation issues in the same region it’s a sign that there are some pretty big problems.
anyway…
The new plan, released late Tuesday, was immediately applauded as “a very large improvement” by Christopher Galik, an environmental policy analyst for the National Assn. of Homebuilders.
this guy should take a lesson from the timber industry in minnesota… no matter how much they give you, always complain that it’s not enough.
Homebuilders feared the habitat restrictions would stall, change or cancel streamside projects [if the laws were kept in place]. Timber companies worried that the restrictions would curb plans for logging roads and harvesting practices that can muddy streams. Farmers were concerned that they would be prohibited from siphoning water from rivers and streams used by the fish.
oh. no. we can’t use and abuse every square foot of this beautiful planet so we can build, build, build more houses? spread our race around like a fungus?
oh. no.
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