The U.S. House of Representatives is set to vote on a bill this week that would change the Endangered Species Act. Critics say if the bill is passed into law, it would severely restrict the government’s ability to protect endangered plants and animals. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mark Brush reports:
Transcript
The U.S. House of Representatives is set to vote on a bill this week that would change the Endangered Species Act. Critics say if the bill is passed into law, it would severely restrict the government’s ability to protect endangered plants and animals. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mark Brush reports:
The bill’s sponsors say they’re trying to reduce the amount of conflict that comes up when the Endangered Species Act is enforced. They say developers face too many hurdles when they want to build on, log, or mine private land.
Jamie Rappaport Clark is a former director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. She says the current law already allows most development projects to go forward.
“The Endangered Species Act has rarely stopped a project. In fact, less than one percent of the hundreds of thousands of projects that have been reviewed by the Fish and Wildlife Service have ever been stopped in their tracks.”
Today, landowners have to go through a permitting process before they’re allowed to develop land that might harm an endangered species. That requirement might change if the current version of the bill is eventually signed into law.
For the GLRC, I’m Mark Brush.