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Group Fights for Access to Government Endangered Species Information: Bush Administration Continues to Withhold Key Mountain Plover

Date
December 8, 2004
Contact
WildEarth Guardians
In This Release
Wildlife  
#EndangeredSpeciesAct
Denver, CO – December 8. WildEarth Guardians filed suit against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (Service) Wednesday challenging the agency’s refusal to release important documents regarding the withdrawal of a proposed rule to list the mountain plover under the Endangered Species Act. The conservation group filed three Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests last fall to compel the Service to release information over the controversial plover listing withdrawal and then sued in July over a long overdue response to the requests. While the Service did release several thousand documents to the group three days after the July suit was filed, it is still withholding key information.

WildEarth Guardians suspects the withheld documents will help explain why the Fish and Wildlife Service made a sudden, radical shift in its mountain plover policy direction. The plover was on track to be listed as a threatened species in 2003. Then on September 8, 2003 the Service unexpectedly announced that the bird would not receive federal protection after all. This despite a 63% population drop over the last three decades coupled with escalating threats on mountain plover habitat by the disappearance of robust prairie dog towns in the Great Plains, the conversion of winter range to crops and real estate in the California, and massive oil and gas development. The mountain plover population continues to suffer a 2.7-3.7% loss every year. The Fish and Wildlife Service’s reversal left biologists, conservationists, and even some government employees baffled.

The Endangered Species Act requires listing decisions to be based solely on biological factors and insulated from political and economic considerations. The withheld documents responsive to WildEarth Guardians’ FOIA requests may show that the Service avoided listing the biologically imperiled mountain plover to accommodate commercial interests, such as the oil and gas, crop agriculture, and livestock industries, whose activities are harming plovers and their habitat.

“The failure to release the mountain plover documents is in keeping with a disturbing Bush Administration trend of denying access to important government information that should be made public,” said Dr. Lauren McCain of WildEarth Guardians. “And the message to the American people is: your government must have something to hide.”

Public access to government information promotes sound decision-making and upholds important checks and balances that protect people and wildlife from poor policy decisions. The public has a right to know what factors did influence the 2003 mountain plover listing decision.

“Long delays and denials of government endangered species and other environmental information has been chronic with this Administration. Actually receiving requested information requires persistence, stamina, shear stubbornness, and too often legal action,” added McCain. “This is just not how the Freedom of Information Act is supposed to work.”

While alarmed at the Service’s decision not to protect the plover, this dramatic about-face is not unexpected. The Center for Biological Diversity has tracked the Bush Administration’s refusal to enforce the ESA and has documented that George W. Bush has listed fewer species under the ESA than any other administration since the law’s passage in 1973. Only 31 species in total have been listed under Bush, and the courts have ordered all of those listings. In contrast, the Clinton Administration listed 65 species per year and the George H. W. Bush Administration listed an average of 59 species every year. Though the present administration cites underfunding as its excuse for failing to protect imperiled species, for years it has been asking Congress to chronically starve the program of funding.

WildEarth Guardians is a regional conservation organization whose mission is to preserve and restore native wildlands and wildlife in the American Southwest.