The Essentia Blog

Recent proposals that the Bush administration is looking to rubber-stamp in the last few months of the Bush presidency from the Department of the Interior are an assault on environmental resources in the US.  They include:

• Changes to the Endangered Species Act, reducing numbers of scientific reviews of projects from the US Fish and Wildlife service and disallowing the ESA from being used to prevent climate change.
• New Management Plans for 11 Million Acres in Utah, including freeing up 9 million acres for oil and gas development.
• Effort to revoke congressional commitee’s emergency powers to protect public lands, which would prevent measures like this summer’s use of the rule to protect lands around the Grand Canyon from uranium mining.
• Repealing regulations that keep mining companies from dumping in streams.