Horn
9th April 2017, 11:14 PM
If this is the kind of housecleaning and swamp draining we’re going to get, we’re in real trouble
Guest opinion by Paul Driessen
Was it because there were too few senior Trump Administration officials in place to catch and stop it? Or because Department of the Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke was new on the job, and had so much on his plate, that this decision just slipped right past him?
Maybe it was because the new Administration faces so many battles with environmental activists already that it didn’t want another one? Or perhaps Interior was intimidated by environmentalist lawsuits challenging President Trump’s 60-day delay of newly-issued Obama Administration regulations?
Whatever the reason, Trump’s Interior Department opened a real can of worms when it let the Obama Administration’s last-minute endangered species designation for the rusty patched bumblebee (RPB) take effect March 21 – exactly 60 days after President Trump issued his regulatory Executive Order.
The designation has serious adverse implications for Mr. Trump’s ambitious plans for infrastructure improvements, economic growth, job creation, and reining in regulatory abuse and overreach.
Already, officials in the Minneapolis area have delayed a road construction project – purportedly near a patch of potential RPB habitat – while they look for signs that the bees are actually nesting there. Another Minnesota group is trying to use hypothetical threats to RPBs to delay construction of a wastewater treatment plant that would prevent pollution from reaching sensitive state waterways!
And this is just the beginning. It will happen again and again as anti-development agitators use this designation to theorize that construction projects and even farming operations could risk harming an “endangered” bee species or its possible habitats.
In issuing the “endangered” designation, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) advised that “The rusty patched bumblebee is likely to be present in scattered locations that cover only 0.1% of the species’ historical range.” Thus, government agencies need only be consulted or issue a permit for developers to “take” (disturb, harm or kill) the bees in these limited areas.
However, 0.1% of the RPB’s historic range is still an area of roughly 6,000 square miles: 3.8 million acres – equivalent to all of Connecticut and Rhode Island combined. And that’s just the beginning.
The real kicker is that no one knows where that 0.1% area might be, scattered in tiny bits and pieces all across the 13 Northeast and Midwest states where the rusty patched bumblebee has supposedly been observed (by amateur entomologists) since 2000. That’s 378 million acres: equal to the combined land area of Montana, North and South Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois and Indiana!
That’s partly because the Obama FWS issued the endangered species designation without developing any protocols for actually identifying the ground-dwelling bee’s nesting sites. They could be anywhere in that 13-state area – which means environmentalists could delay, block or bankrupt every new power line, bridge, highway, pipeline, housing development, plowing operation or other project in the affected states.
The decision gives eco-obstructionists another powerful weapon against projects they oppose. They’ve already proven they are smart, determined, coordinated, well-funded opponents of President Trump’s infrastructure, energy, job and economic improvement agendas. Why give them more power?
Even worse, this insect designation opens the floodgates. Whether Secretary Zinke realizes it or not, waiting in the obstructionist wings, right behind the rusty patched bumblebee, are two more bumblebee species whose potential habitats spread across 40 states. The yellow-banded bumblebee has been found all the way from Montana east to New England, and down the Atlantic coast to Virginia, West Virginia and North Carolina. The western bumblebee’s range includes the entire block of eleven western states plus parts of Alaska: nearly a billion acres.
Put together, we’re talking about nearly half of the United States!
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/04/08/off-to-a-bumbling-start-at-interior/
Guest opinion by Paul Driessen
Was it because there were too few senior Trump Administration officials in place to catch and stop it? Or because Department of the Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke was new on the job, and had so much on his plate, that this decision just slipped right past him?
Maybe it was because the new Administration faces so many battles with environmental activists already that it didn’t want another one? Or perhaps Interior was intimidated by environmentalist lawsuits challenging President Trump’s 60-day delay of newly-issued Obama Administration regulations?
Whatever the reason, Trump’s Interior Department opened a real can of worms when it let the Obama Administration’s last-minute endangered species designation for the rusty patched bumblebee (RPB) take effect March 21 – exactly 60 days after President Trump issued his regulatory Executive Order.
The designation has serious adverse implications for Mr. Trump’s ambitious plans for infrastructure improvements, economic growth, job creation, and reining in regulatory abuse and overreach.
Already, officials in the Minneapolis area have delayed a road construction project – purportedly near a patch of potential RPB habitat – while they look for signs that the bees are actually nesting there. Another Minnesota group is trying to use hypothetical threats to RPBs to delay construction of a wastewater treatment plant that would prevent pollution from reaching sensitive state waterways!
And this is just the beginning. It will happen again and again as anti-development agitators use this designation to theorize that construction projects and even farming operations could risk harming an “endangered” bee species or its possible habitats.
In issuing the “endangered” designation, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) advised that “The rusty patched bumblebee is likely to be present in scattered locations that cover only 0.1% of the species’ historical range.” Thus, government agencies need only be consulted or issue a permit for developers to “take” (disturb, harm or kill) the bees in these limited areas.
However, 0.1% of the RPB’s historic range is still an area of roughly 6,000 square miles: 3.8 million acres – equivalent to all of Connecticut and Rhode Island combined. And that’s just the beginning.
The real kicker is that no one knows where that 0.1% area might be, scattered in tiny bits and pieces all across the 13 Northeast and Midwest states where the rusty patched bumblebee has supposedly been observed (by amateur entomologists) since 2000. That’s 378 million acres: equal to the combined land area of Montana, North and South Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois and Indiana!
That’s partly because the Obama FWS issued the endangered species designation without developing any protocols for actually identifying the ground-dwelling bee’s nesting sites. They could be anywhere in that 13-state area – which means environmentalists could delay, block or bankrupt every new power line, bridge, highway, pipeline, housing development, plowing operation or other project in the affected states.
The decision gives eco-obstructionists another powerful weapon against projects they oppose. They’ve already proven they are smart, determined, coordinated, well-funded opponents of President Trump’s infrastructure, energy, job and economic improvement agendas. Why give them more power?
Even worse, this insect designation opens the floodgates. Whether Secretary Zinke realizes it or not, waiting in the obstructionist wings, right behind the rusty patched bumblebee, are two more bumblebee species whose potential habitats spread across 40 states. The yellow-banded bumblebee has been found all the way from Montana east to New England, and down the Atlantic coast to Virginia, West Virginia and North Carolina. The western bumblebee’s range includes the entire block of eleven western states plus parts of Alaska: nearly a billion acres.
Put together, we’re talking about nearly half of the United States!
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/04/08/off-to-a-bumbling-start-at-interior/