The Bush administration wants to gut the Endangered Species Act, which is credited with saving various animals from extinction. According to Salon.com, the plan is under wraps and employees of the Fish and Wildlife Service (which is part of the Executive Branch which George W. Bush heads) think the plan is crap-ola. The story from Salon is below. More on this story here.

Also surfacing is more evidence that the Bush administration is screwing around with its official reports on global warming. According to ThinkProgress.org, "A new report documents “hundreds of instances” in which Bush administration officials throughout the government “engaged in White House-directed efforts to stifle, delay or dampen the release of climate change research that casts the White House or its policies in a bad light, says a new report that purports to be the most comprehensive assessment to date of the subject.”

ABC News tells us that "Researchers for the non-profit watchdog Government Accountability Project reviewed thousands of e-mails, memos and other documents obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests and from government whistle-blowers and conducted dozens of interviews with public affairs staff, scientists, reporters and others. The group says it has identified hundreds of instances where White House-appointed officials interfered with government scientists' efforts to convey their research findings to the public, at the behest of top administration officials."

I've said it before and I'll say it again. The environment is a commodity. Weakened environmental regulations and watered down animal protection laws equal more money for corporations. Ideologicaly, these measures mesh with the fanatical cravings of the Bush administration and its supporters to weaken any governmental program that gets in the way of making money. This is a legacy of both political parties, but I reckon to say that the Republicans are worse. They campaign on these efforts to roll back advances in science and wildlife protection, but with a war going on, who's listening?

Here's the story about the Endangered Species Act:

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is maneuvering to fundamentally weaken the Endangered Species Act, its strategy laid out in an internal 117-page draft proposal obtained by Salon. The proposed changes limit the number of species that can be protected and curtail the acres of wildlife habitat to be preserved. It shifts authority to enforce the act from the federal government to the states, and it dilutes legal barriers that protect habitat from sprawl, logging or mining.

"The proposed changes fundamentally gut the intent of the Endangered Species Act," says Jan Hasselman, a Seattle attorney with Earthjustice, an environmental law firm, who helped Salon interpret the proposal. "This is a no-holds-barred end run around one of America's most popular environmental protections. If these regulations stand up, the act will no longer provide a safety net for animals and plants on the brink of extinction."

In recent months, the Fish and Wildlife Service has gone to extraordinary efforts to keep drafts of regulatory changes from the public. All copies of the working document were given a number corresponding to a person, so that leaked copies could be traced to that individual. An e-mail sent in March from an assistant regional director at the Fish and Wildlife Service to agency staff, asking for comments on and corrections to the first draft, underscored the concern with secrecy: "Please Keep close hold for now. Dale [Hall, director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service] does not want this stuff leaking out to stir up discontent based on speculation."

Many Fish and Wildlife Service employees believe the draft is not based on "defensible science," says a federal employee who asked to remain anonymous. Yet "there is genuine fear of retaliation for communicating that to the media. People are afraid for their jobs."