To Gut Species Protection, Interior Calls "All Hands on Deck"

The Bush administration is moving at warp speed to finalize a rule that will allow government-approved projects to intrude on the habitats of endangered species.

The Department of the Interior received about 300,000 public comments, mostly negative, on its proposal after it was unveiled in August. According to an internal email obtained by the Associated Press [1], Interior wants to review all the public comments in just four days:

In an e-mail last week to Fish and Wildlife managers across the country, Bryan Arroyo, the head of the agency's endangered species program, said the team would work eight hours a day starting Tuesday to the close of business on Friday to sort through the comments. …

At that rate, according to a [House Natural Resources Committee] aide's calculation, 6,250 comments would have to be reviewed every hour. That means that each member of the team would be reviewing at least seven comments each minute.

That gives each comment just enough time to slide across someone's desk, directly into the trash. Welcome to the federal rulemaking process, thanks for participating.

Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne instructed the agency to review all the comments this week, according to AP.

Kempthorne is obviously trying to hurry the rule out the door before President Bush himself is hurried out the door. A new president may not cotton to the idea of government-approved projects threatening endangered species.

Interior's proposal would allow federal land-use managers to approve projects like infrastructure creation, minerals extraction, or logging without consulting habitat managers and biological health experts responsible for species protection.

Allowing agencies to bypass expert scientific review for development projects runs counter to long-standing practices required by the Endangered Species Act. The act requires project managers to request from Interior "information whether any species which is listed or proposed to be listed may be present in the area" where construction will occur.

Kempthorne may be trying to comply with a deadline set by White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten. In a May memo, Bolten instructed Bush administration agencies to finalize regulations by November 1.

But the endangered species rule has already violated other provisions in the memo. Bolten also instructed agencies to propose rules by June 1. (Probably so agency officials wouldn't be stuck reviewing hundreds of thousands of comments in just a few days.) The endangered species rule was not published until Aug. 15.

Other peculiarities [2] have signaled Kempthorne's intent to ramrod this rule through the regulatory pipeline. Interior initially announced only a 30-day comment period. (Comment periods usually last 60 days; Interior extended the period to 60 days after public outcry.) Also, OMB's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs — the White House office in charge of reviewing agency rules — spent only three days looking at the endangered species changes. OIRA's average review time for Interior Department rules in 2008 is 58 days.

So despite the overwhelming public opposition and the time constraints on the agency's ability to give this major policy shift careful consideration, Kempthorne will plow ahead. The rule would be a feather in Bush administration's cap; Bush's record on protecting endangered species is abysmal [3]. Stay tuned to Reg•Watch for updates.