Culture of Life

Let’s file this under faith-based conservation: If God really loved these animals and plants, he wouldn’t let them get all endangered and shit.

A senior Bush political appointee at the Interior Department has rejected staff scientists' recommendations to protect imperiled animals and plants under the Endangered Species Act at least six times in the past three years, documents show.

In addition, staff complaints that their scientific findings were frequently overruled or disparaged at the behest of landowners or industry have led the agency's inspector general to look into the role of Julie MacDonald, who has been deputy assistant secretary of the interior for fish and wildlife and parks since 2004, in decisions on protecting endangered species.

…In several instances, MacDonald wrote sarcastic comments in the margins of the documents, questioning why scientists were portraying a species' condition as so bleak. When scientists raised the possibility that a proposed road might degrade the greater sage grouse's habitat, which is scattered through 11 Western states, MacDonald wrote: "Has nothing to do with sage grouse. This belongs in a treatise on 'Why roads are bad'?"

Awesome. To put this contempt for protecting Endangered Species into perspective, under the Bush administration, only 56 species have been listed as endangered—less than 10 a year. Under Clinton, 512 species, just over 60 a year, were listed, and under Daddy Bush, 234, just under 60 a year, were listed.

So we can add wildlife to the very long list of things that Bush Conservatives aren’t really interested in conserving.