The Graham’s penstemon, a quite rare plant that’s known to grow only in isolated colonies in Utah and Colorado, is threatened by oil shale and tar sand exploration. Yet, the Fish and Wildlife Service, which proposed the plant for Endangered Species Act listing as part of a court settlement, has decided to withdraw the species from listing consideration.
Here’s the Associated Press article, as published by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
Native plant societies, the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance and other groups say they’ll sue to get the species listed, claiming that political considerations led to Fish and Wildlife’s action. Sounds like a pretty good bet to me, given the Bush administration’s now well-known antipathy toward real conservation and real science. Native plants fare even poorer than fish and wildlife in the anti-conservation climate that pervades the White House today.
(Full disclosure: I’ve supported SUWA in the past with cash contributions.)
Here’s a fact sheet about the species.
And click here to download and read Fish and Wildlife’s January 2006 listing proposal.
Boy, we just can’t get this gang of criminals out of office quickly enough, can we? They can do a lot more damage in two years…
And that’s exactly what these guys are, Dave. Just because power has shifted in Congress does not signal an end to the dangerous mischief. A president and his team can do a lot of damage through the rule-making process, witness the subverting of science at the EPA.