NOAA Endangered list...sad facts from some parallels

[Crazy35111]

Been seeing several videos and posts about the new ruling on the "Endangered" corals. Thought I would share some parallels to another species that has recently been handed down the pike from the Feds. First off the environmental group Center for Biological Diversity that has sought to get these species listed along with another one accounts for about 75% of all requests for listing to the Fish and Wildlife Service. They have been using a tactic called Sue and Settle for years to get their way. Basically if their demands are not met, they sue the government and then the government settles with them. Back in 2012, the two large groups joined lawsuits and sued the USFWS. Instead of going to trial, they agreed to meet behind closed doors (Enviro Groups and USFWS), no industry people, no voices from the public, just those three groups. The FWS has basically 3 options for listing. Endangered, threatened warranted, and unwarranted. If they classify a species in the threatened and warranted group then they can monitor but dont have the expense that it takes to to put the species on the endangered list. What happened back in 2012 with Sue and Settle, every species that was on the warranted list over the course of the next 8 years(from 2012) those species had to be given a designation of either endangered or not warranted. This plays into the favor of the enviro groups because the USFWS has already classified the species as warranted so those species can only move on up to endangered.

This is why I fear our coral trading days are coming to an end. They have force their hand with Sue and Settle and are getting their way regardless of science.

We are in the oil and gas business in KS. Recently they put the Lessor Praire Chicken on the endangered species because its numbers on western plains of KS, OK, TX, NM, NE have decline sharply. They are blaming this on destruction of habitat. Not sure if anyone has been to Western KS...there is NOTHING out there. So now they want us to pay mitigation fees to drill wells around areas that are good habitat for the chickens even if they are not there. That money can never be returned and will be used to out compete Oil and Gas companies from leasing new land. To give everyone an idea their fees range from $2000-80000 per location. These fees also include other industries as well. Farming, highways, home construction, basically anything that can be built on these lands.

What they didnt account for when making this decision was the SCIENCE!! They dont care about the science or the studies. There was several studies done on the Lessor Prairie Chicken before being listed and none of it mattered. The numbers of the chickens havent declined due to oil and gas, or construction...they have declined because where the chicken lives has been in a drought area for 5+years!

I am all for saving species, but save them on the basis of science. They needed to consider all the evidence before making the decision, but they didnt. Which is why I dont think anything we do will change their minds on it, because the decision has already been made, they are just going through the legal steps with the comment period to make it legal. I dont want to argue about this just wanted to inform everyone of the parallel to whats happening. Just do some research on the Center for Biological Diversity and their sue and settle tactics and that there are going to be many many more species over the next 6 years if they dont get shut down. What we were told by the attorneys representing us (several states, oil and gas industry, farmers) for the PC is that once the species is on the list, it will take an act of Congress to get it off...That might be a better place to focus efforts is your representatives, as NOAA and FWS decision is already made.

Just do some research
heres a start
http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidblackmon/2013/05/27/the-sue-and-settle-racket/
https://www.uschamber.com/report/sue-and-settle-regulating-behind-closed-doors
http://www.epw.senate.gov/public/in...ecord_id=811d6278-a0e2-87e4-4d08-f62c12bce86e

 

[organism]

Well said, extremist environmentalist groups like those are just thinly veiled extortionists who will do anything to get their way. They'll never stop because they're funded by enormous trust funds and also donations from conning people into "helping those poor animals" when if people knew where there money was really going they wouldn't be donating anything. The courts are taxpayer funded and usually cave eventually, so these groups are burning up money at both ends.

They're not going to stop until our hobby is shut down, in Socal here their goal is to shut down ocean rushing and they've made huge strides closing about 60% of the ocean to fishing in the last 5 years, and at the end of the day there's not much that can be done to stop them. They fabricate everything and have the money to call it fact, whereas we have facts but no money to make summer listen or care.

 

[Eric Boerner]

While I agree with most of your post Crazy, I must protest that science is not considered when making these decisions. It is an unfortunate thing that science is the very thing to blame for these suits. It's who's science is what makes the difference in court.

NOAA collects the data from the field and analyzes it as part of a congressional mandate to mitigate and manage protected resources. That data is then required to go out to the public. NGO's like the CBD takes that data and has their scientists skew it so it favors their attack goals. They then refute NOAA's science as 'bad' (even though NOAA collected the data and are the experts on the species and ecosystem they come from). Like you said, it's often sue and settle, unless NOAA scientists are in long-term studies of those species. If they are, typically they will refute CBD findings in court and the suit will go away until they can find another angle. Its a massive waste of time, effort, and tax dollars.

Again, real science is always considered in these findings. Good or Bad.