WASHINGTON -- As the state of Virginia prepared for a major bridge and tunnel expansion in the tidewaters of the Chesapeake Bay last year, engineers understood that the nesting grounds of 25,000 gulls, black skimmers, royal terns and other seabirds were about to be plowed under.To compensate, they considered
WASHINGTON — As the state of Virginia prepared for a major bridge and tunnel expansion in the tidewaters of the Chesapeake Bay last year, engineers understood that the nesting grounds of 25,000 gulls, black skimmers, royal terns and other seabirds were about to be plowed under.
And when a homeowners’ association in Arizona complained that a developer had refused to safely remove nesting burrowing owls from a nearby lot, Fish and Wildlife said that, because of the new legal interpretation, it could not compel the developer to act. Now, said Noah Greenwald, the endangered species director for the Center for Biological Diversity, the Trump administration has engineered “a fundamental shift” in policy that “lets industrial companies, utilities and others completely off the hook.” Even a disaster like the Deepwater Horizon oil spill of 2010, which killed or injured about 1 million birds, would not expose a company to prosecution or fines.
Kathleen Sgamma, president of the Western Energy Alliance, an oil and gas trade association, said fossil fuel companies had been unfairly targeted by the law, pointing to an Obama administration prosecution of seven oil companies in North Dakota for the deaths of 28 birds.Changes to the interpretation of the law topped the association’s wish list for the Trump administration.
“The dynamics really changed,” said Sarah Karpanty, a professor of fish and wildlife conservation at Virginia Tech and a member of the team that had been working with the state. “They were basically conservation partners, and in 2017 all indications were that they were going to be a conservation partner again. Then the solicitor’s opinion changed everything.”
In other cases, states and companies are still acting voluntarily. In June 2018 a state official in Michigan alerted the Fish and Wildlife Service that a logger had spotted a great blue heron rookery in a red pine forest and wanted to know how to proceed. The federal agent replied that while the effort to minimize harm to the birds was appreciated, action was considered “strictly voluntary and not required in any way.
Erik Milito, president of the National Ocean Industries Association, which represents offshore wind companies and drillers, said the Trump administration’s reinterpretation had given his industry more certainty.
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