Latest news with #EndangeredSpeciesAct
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Health
- Yahoo
Florida fighting ruling on manatee protections
A new showdown is brewing over manatee protection. The Florida Department of Environmental Protection is fighting back on a ruling requiring Florida to step up protections. It involves a series of steps aimed at reducing the threats manatees face in the Indian River Lagoon. The Florida manatee is already listed as a threatened species. But last month, a central Florida conservation group, Bear Warriors United, got something more. 'The Endangered Species Act allows individuals, businesses, governments, anybody who is going to engage in an activity that's going to result in death or harm to a federally listed species, to go to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and say, 'Hey, we're doing this,'' said plaintiff attorney Lesley Blackner. The state was ordered to start a health assessment program and a supplemental feeding effort to support the manatee population in the northern part of the lagoon starting this month. The state will also have to submit public quarterly reports on manatee deaths, water quality, seagrass conditions and harmful algae blooms. The court also ordered a temporary halt on new septic system permits in part of the lagoon watershed starting July 17. 'It's plaintiff's position that the court made the correct decision because what's happened in the lagoon is a catastrophe,' blackner said. The Florida Department of Environmental Protection disagrees, saying the state has invested nearly $747 million in community-led projects in the region to improve water quality and restore habitat, which is especially critical in ecosystems like Indian River Lagoon. The state is now asking a federal appeals court to halt that district judge's injunction, saying in part 'The indefinite moratorium on the construction of new septic systems further threatens to impede commercial and residential development in the state.' Bear Warriors United filed the original lawsuit in 2022 after Florida had a record 1,100 manatee deaths in 2021, with the largest number in Brevard County at 358 deaths. Many deaths were linked to starvation. Click here to download our free news, weather and smart TV apps. And click here to stream Channel 9 Eyewitness News live.
E&E News
5 hours ago
- General
- E&E News
Feds stick with ‘threatened' status for key scarlet macaw population
The Fish and Wildlife Service said Monday that it's sticking with the current Endangered Species Act status of the scarlet macaw, a foreign bird with a colorful plumage and a complicated history. Capping a review compelled by prior litigation, the federal agency announced it will retain the northern distinct population segment of the southern subspecies of scarlet macaw as a threatened species under the ESA. The decision reaffirms a 2019 listing. 'The scarlet macaw's historical range and population have been reduced and fragmented over the last several decades primarily because of habitat destruction and collection of wild birds for the pet trade,' the Fish and Wildlife Service stated. Advertisement The agency's decision not to increase the scarlet macaw's ESA protection level was decried by Jennifer Best, wildlife law program director of Friends of Animals.
Ottawa Citizen
12 hours ago
- Politics
- Ottawa Citizen
Giles: Ontario must not dismantle protection for endangered wildlife
On the Thursday before the Easter long weekend, the Ford government introduced a bill that, if passed, would have devastating consequences for species at risk, all in the name of fast-tracking economic development. Article content Article content Bill 5, the 'Protect Ontario by Unleashing our Economy' act, would strip away essential protections for wildlife — including scrapping the province's landmark Endangered Species Act — at a time when many conservationists, myself included, are increasingly concerned about the state of our natural world. Article content Article content In October, the World Wildlife Fund released new global data that showed catastrophic population declines in wildlife — an average decrease of 73 per cent — since 1970. In Canada, populations of at-risk species of global concern have declined by an average 42 per cent over the same time. Article content A glaring rejection of science Article content The Ford government isn't just making a policy change. It is sending wildlife that is already on the brink over the edge and is a glaring rejection of the science that tells us what's needed to stop the slide toward extinction. Article content We've done the research and know what it will take to recover Ontario's rich biodiversity. And importantly, we have a good idea how much it will cost. Article content A recent study led by WWF-Canada and the University of British Columbia, conducted before Bill 5 was introduced and currently under peer review, looked at the state of biodiversity in the Lake Simcoe-Rideau ecoregion of Southern Ontario, a hotspot for species at risk. Article content Article content The region, home to big cities such as Ottawa and Kingston, has been heavily impacted by dense development, habitat degradation and nature loss. Species like the piping plover, gray fox and Blanding's turtle face multiple threats and are all at risk of extinction. They are also currently protected under the Endangered Species Act. Article content Article content Article content In fact, Ontario has more than 270 species at risk of extinction. Our research focused on 133 of them, whose declining populations or conservation status make them priorities for local and national environmentalists. Using a tool called priority threat management, we predicted the likely outcomes for these species under different conservation strategies, policies and funding scenarios through to 2050.
Yahoo
2 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
New manatee threats could spark possible lawsuit
An environmental group Friday filed a formal notice that is a step toward suing the federal government over protecting manatees in the Crystal River National Wildlife Refuge. The Center for Biological Diversity alleged violations of the Endangered Species Act because of understaffing at the refuge, which the notice said serves as a winter habitat for about 20 percent of Florida's manatees drawn by warm-water springs and vegetation. The notice cited potential 'take' of manatees — a term that can refer to such things as harassment, harm and death of animals — and further potential staffing cuts by the federal government. The notice said the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is 'authorizing visitation and eco-tourism operation in an understaffed refuge that is inadequately regulated and managed — and that is subject to imminent staff cuts. To remedy current ESA (Endangered Species Act) violations and curtail other potential or actual associated violations, federal violators must either fully staff the personnel necessary to mitigate take from visitors, extend sanctuary boundaries and closure timing to reduce harassment during peak manatee season, or otherwise restrict the activities causing harassment and other forms of unlawful take.' The Fish and Wildlife Service said on its website that the Crystal River refuge is the only national wildlife refuge created specifically to protect Florida manatees. Click here to download our free news, weather and smart TV apps. And click here to stream Channel 9 Eyewitness News live.
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Opinion - We need to simplify environmental permits to boost their impact
In the clash between the competing pro-petroleum and pro-climate visions of the economy, few policy issues are as misunderstood and complicated as our nation's environmental permitting systems. The number of permitting actions is enormous. During a single presidential term, approximately 1.5 million permitting, informal review, and consultation processes are overseen under just five environmental and historic preservation laws. Many of these cover minor actions that would never have required permits in the 1970s and 1980s. Consider the National Environmental Policy Act. Roughly 400,000 'categorical exclusions' are processed under this law each presidential term, compared to about 1,000 major reviews called 'environmental impact statements.' An exclusion isn't an absence of review; instead, it is akin to a simpler kind of permit. There are categorical exclusions to cover summer picnics by federal agencies, a 90- to 120-day exclusion process for a loan to replace powerlines across North Dakota wheat fields, or exclusions for every Agriculture Department grant to a farmer. Most exclusions involve minimal staff hours and are completed in weeks to months, making it hard to object to any one review. But collectively, their issuance requires hundreds of staff and millions of days of project delays. Over four years, about a million similar, small permit processes will run their course under the Endangered Species Act, Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act and especially the National Historic Preservation Act. Yet almost all the attention on reform has focused on the small number of 'big' permits. For example, President Biden's permitting team reported cutting 25 percent off the average processing time for those 1,000 major environmental impact statements, compared to the first Trump administration, whose permits were also faster than the administration of Obama. On big permits, Democratic administrations have favored adding staff to write and review documents. That strategy works, but it can be hard to maintain, particularly if agency budgets get cut. And most of the laborious steps to finish an impact statement remained unchanged, with some becoming more expansive. Republicans tend to favor the wholesale elimination of major permits — at least for fossil fuel infrastructure — and cutting staff. That pattern showed up across President Trump's executive orders. If maintained by courts and Congress, those orders would eliminate some National Environmental Policy Act regulations and skip most requirements to protect clean water and endangered wildlife by calling permit issuance an emergency. Democrats are increasingly flirting with exemptions for different categories of projects — wind and solar instead of oil and gas, for example. A problem with taking away major permits is that they often have very significant impacts on things that communities in both red and blue states value. Permit reviews can produce much less harmful outcomes. Addressing the millions of smaller permits is a missed opportunity with fewer downsides. First, we should entirely eliminate thousands of small permits by defining the actions they cover as not 'major federal actions' — the original, intended scope of the National Environmental Policy Act. For instance, a provision in proposed permitting legislation redefines all grants and loans this way. This change would benefit thousands of towns, cities, nonprofits and businesses that receive federal funding and wouldn't affect public input because few categorical exclusions ever involve the public in the first place. Second, we can improve remaining small permit processes by expanding reforms that have proven successful in dramatically accelerating timelines and reducing workload while still avoiding or compensating for harms caused by projects. For example, government agencies are increasingly using technology-based 'dashboards' that allow anyone to track the status of an application and exactly which staff are reviewing it. Virginia has achieved the greatest success with this technology, alongside procedural reforms, delivering an expected 70 percent reduction in application review times for 200,000 state decisions over four years. The Department of Energy is piloting AI technologies that could allow more than 80 percent of small permit documents to be machine written. Self-permitting under general permits is another promising reform. Projects that agree to use what are effectively common-sense best practices to avoid harm are automatically approved if they submit the paperwork that proves those practices will be followed. General permits exist under clean water and wildlife laws, although the paperwork required to get these automatic approvals could still be significantly reduced. Offsets — which are opportunities to compensate for unavoidable environmental impacts — also help. Having a supply of pre-approved beneficial offsets has sped up some Clean Water Act permitting by 50 percent. We can't build everything Americans want without having any environmental effect, and having offsets available allows unavoidable harm to be balanced with benefits to similar environmental features nearby. The most important change needed to improve or eliminate millions of small procedures is a culture shift among both permitting agencies and permit applicants. Many government staff are dedicated public servants, but some view institutional caution as a mission and environmental permitting as a battleground instead of an opportunity to problem-solve with constituents. On the other side, many applicants blame agencies when they themselves have submitted flawed or incomplete applications, proposed unreasonable projects, or rejected the idea of regulatory oversight, failing to respect the reality that most Americans want to unlock growth while also stewarding the environment. Making a million small processes more agile, responsive and effective is a key step toward a government that strikes these balances, and that serves the needs of all Americans. Timothy Male is the executive director of the nonprofit Environmental Policy Innovation Center. Dave Owen is an environmental law expert at UC Law San Francisco, specializing in water, land use and administrative law. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. 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