endangered species

The 1973 Endangered Species Act (ESA) has been a costly fiasco. It has failed to protect or help revive species at risk of extinction.

But it does imperil property.

Our feline friends have a history with the US Government.

In today’s edition of The Heartland Daily Podcast, Adrian P. Wydeven, Coordinator of Timber Wolf Alliance, Northland College and a retired wildlife biologist with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, Wisconsin’s state wolf manager 1990 -2013. Wydeven joined Managing Editor H. Sterling Burnett to discuss a letter he co-authored signed by 26 wildlife management professionals and scientists sent to the Department of the Interior, urging it remove the great lakes gray wolf populations in Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin from the Endangered Species list.

The current plan calls for virtually all the southern half of New Mexico to become wolf habitat—but wolf advocates at a hearing about the plan, held in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, on Wednesday, August 13, repeatedly declared that Southern New Mexico wasn’t enough. They want the wolf introduced north of I-40—which would include Albuquerque and Santa Fe. Some called for wolves to be released in the Grand Canyon and the Four Corners area.

According to a 2012 report by the Federal Research Service, “The federal government owns roughly 635-640 million acres, 28% of the 2.27 billion acres of land in the United States.

For years environmentalists have usurped individual private property rights and thwarted economic development. Now, thanks to Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, it appears that the job creators may have finally learned something from the extreme tactics of groups, like the Wild Earth Guardians and the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD), which have been using the courts to their advantage by filing lawsuits against the federal government.

On Monday, March 17, on behalf of the state of Oklahoma and the Domestic Energy Producers Alliance (DEPA), Pruitt filed a lawsuit against the federal government, specifically the U.S. Department of the Interior and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS). The lawsuit alleges the “FWS engaged in ‘sue and settle’ tactics when the agency agreed to settle a lawsuit with a national environmental group over the [Endangered Species Act] listing status of several animal species, including the Lesser Prairie Chicken.”