Donald Trump was on a malicious mission in 2017 against biodiversity, the environment, and the fight against climate change. One of his first acts was to gut the Endangered Species Act (ESA) by removing critically threatened species status from the list. With all things Trump, he was motivated by corruption and cruelty.
His US Fish and Wildlife Service administration’s (FWS) “directive to delist, downlist, or otherwise preclude 30 southeastern US species each year from the endangered species list” violated the spirit of the ESA.
Nationwide, over 100 species were removed by the Trump Administration in 2017.
Pollution. Seagrass on which the so-called sea cows depend also is dying as water quality declines due to fertilizer runoff, wastewater discharges and polluted water that is increasingly diverted on purpose from Lake Okeechobee to coastal estuaries. These manmade pollutants can cause algae blooms so thick that seagrass can’t get the sunlight it needs to survive, jeopardizing the manatees’ main food supply. Since 2009 about 58% of the seagrass has been lost in the Indian River Lagoon, state estimates show.From the Union of Concerned Scientists:
What happened: In late 2017, top leaders from the US Fish and Wildlife Service’s (FWS) southeastern region issued a directive that instructed agency officials to delist, downlist, or otherwise preclude 30 species each year from the endangered species list. The directive, dubbed the “Wildly Important Goal,” was framed as a method to promote “positive, proactive conservation,” though it fails to explain how the denial of federal protections for endangered or threatened species aids conservation efforts.
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The American southeast is incredibly diverse, sporting more than two-thirds of North America’s species and it has the richest aquatic fauna of any temperate area in the world. However, the region also represents one of the most imperiled ecosystems on the planet, with the highest number of endangered and threatened species of any place in the continental United States. This is not the first time that the Trump administration has carried out actions that have attempted to dismantle or undermine endangered species protections, whether that be for the polar bear, the ocelot, the American burying beetle, 1400 endangered species jeopardized by pesticides, or failing to enforce the ESA. When the science shows that a species faces the real threat of extinction, we should be doing everything in our power to prevent that fate, not denying these protections based on the whims and fancies of political officials.
The beloved manatee was one of the species removed. Why would they aim their ire at Florida’s iconic mammal? The ESA slows down and eliminates destructive actions by miners, agricultural (Big Sugar has been Marco Rubio's Sugar Daddy for decades), oil, real estate, and clear-cutting interests, all of which cause serious harm to Florida’s fragile ecosystems. More importantly, it affects corporate profits.
Ryan Zinke, the Trump administration’s scandal-ridden interior secretary, and now a Republican congressman for Montana, celebrated the ruling at the time, falsely insisting that the manatee population was on a strong path to recovery.Some species have already been restored to the ESA, but not the manatee. That is about to change as the FWS reviews the manatee's restoration to critically endangered species status.
If approved at the conclusion of a recently announced 12-month in-depth review, an uplisting from manatees’ current threatened status would free vital federal resources and funding for recovery efforts that have withered amid an ongoing “unusual mortality event”.
“We are at a critical point. We’ve lost 20% of the entire manatee population over the course of two years and that resulted directly after the service downlisted the species back to threatened,” said Ragan Whitlock, staff attorney specializing in endangered species at the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD).
“If we do not radically overhaul and improve our recovery efforts starting with the protection of their habitat we could very well lose this iconic Florida species.”
Emergency efforts in recent years to preserve the gentle animals known as sea cows have included hand-feeding them romaine lettuce in areas where algal bloom pollution has destroyed beds of seagrass.
Let’s hope the current FWS has purged the Trump appointees from the Southeastern and other satellite offices.
Industry groups have long viewed the 1973 Endangered Species Act as an impediment. Under Trump they successfully lobbied to weaken the law’s regulations as part of a broad dismantling of environmental safeguards. Trump officials rolled back endangered species rules and protections for the northern spotted owl, gray wolves and other species.“Tasks to complete the species status assessment and 12-month finding are assigned to current staff in the service’s Florida field office and Caribbean field office,” it said.
Other environmentalists see the move as only the start of a much larger effort that will be required if manatee numbers are to recover.
Joe Biden is restoring all the species protections removed by Trump.
From the AP: Thank you, President Biden.
BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — The Biden administration proposed bringing back rules to protect imperiled plants and animals on Wednesday as officials moved to reverse changes under former President Donald Trump that weakened the Endangered Species Act.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said it would reinstate a decades-old regulation that mandates blanket protections for species newly classified as threatened.
Officials also would no longer consider economic impacts when deciding if animals and plants need protection. And the rules make it easier to designate areas as critical for a species’ survival, even if it is no longer found in those locations.
That could help with the recovery of imperiled fish and freshwater mussels in the Southeast, where the aquatic animals in many cases are absent from portions of their historical range, said Fish and Wildlife Service Assistant Director Gary Frazer.
Frazer said Wednesday’s proposal would restore “baseline” protections so species don’t get pushed further toward extinction.
Thank you, President Biden.
This motherf*cker must never see the Oval Office again.
A blast from the past.