#us fish & wildlife service

[hometoursandotherstuff]

[dougielombax]

Fucking WHAT????!!!!!!!!!!

Yeah it’s real!

Could somebody report his ass to the NOAA for this?

Maybe the US Fish & Wildlife Service too.

Maybe any other relevant agencies.

I’ll drop some links for anyone wishing to do so as well.

Here they be.

Pretty sure this violates the US Endangered Species Act and a few other laws too.

Hopefully something comes from this.

This shit is messed up!

*WHALE JUICE?????!!!!!!!!!!*

No I don’t care that it was already dead!

And I don’t care if the brain worms told him to do it!

This is VILE!

The ableism, antivax fuckwittery and suspicious death of his wife, and endorsing Trump was bad enough.

But this is insane!

This is like some serial killer shit!

What is it with this guy and messing around with dead animals?

And where is the head now? What, does he have it stored somewhere?!

Sickening shit!

Feel free to reblog I guess?

[plethoraworldatlas]

As U.S. conservationists continue to fight for federal protections that would cover gray wolves in the northern Rocky Mountains, research released Wednesday highlights just how important the apex predators are to the western United States.

The study was published in the journal BioScience and led by William Ripple, a scientist at Oregon State University (OSU) and the Conservation Biology Institute known for his work on trophic cascades and carnivores as well as his demands for climate action.

The paper uses gray wolves to show the trouble with "shifting baselines," which, "in ecology encapsulate the gradual and often unnoticed alterations in ecosystems over time, leading to a redefinition of what is considered normal or baseline conditions."

As the study details:

Gray wolves (Canis lupus) in North America have experienced a substantial contraction of their historical range, at one point almost disappearing from the contiguous 48 United States. However, their conservation is important in part because of the potential cascading effects wolves can have on lower trophic levels. Namely, the proliferation and changes to behavior and density of large herbivores following the extirpation or displacement of wolves can have major effects on various aspects of vegetation structure, succession, productivity, species composition, and diversity, which, in turn, can have implications for overall biodiversity and the quality of habitat for other wildlife.

"By the 1930s, wolves were largely absent from the American West, including its national parks," Ripple said in a statement. "Most published ecological research from this region occurred after the extirpation of wolves."

"This situation underscores the potential impact of shifting baselines on our understanding of plant community succession, animal community dynamics, and ecosystem functions," he continued.

The researchers examined journal articles, master's theses, and Ph.D. dissertations from 1955 to 2021 that involved field work in national parks in the northwestern United States for whether they included information on the removal of gray wolves.

They found that "in total, approximately 41% (39 of 96) of the publications mentioned or discussed the historical presence of wolves or large carnivores, but most (approximately 59%) did not. The results for the theses and journal articles were similar."

While the researchers focused on wolves, Robert Beschta, co-author and emeritus professor at OSU, noted that "in addition to the loss or displacement of large predators, there may be other potential anthropogenic legacies within national parks that should be considered, including fire suppression, invasion by exotic plants and animals, and overgrazing by livestock."

Ripple stressed that "studying altered ecosystems without recognizing how or why the system has changed over time since the absence of a large predator could have serious implications for wildlife management, biodiversity conservation, and ecosystem restoration."

"We hope our study will be of use to both conservation organizations and government agencies in identifying ecosystem management goals," he added.

Amaroq Weiss, senior wolf advocate at the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD), welcomed the study, tellingInside Climate News that "I think this is a really important paper, because sometimes science advances at a certain rate without a self-introspection."

"Nature is a really complex tapestry," she said. "It's woven together by threads that hold it together and keep it strong. When you start to pull threads out like you remove apex predators, the whole thing begins to unravel."

The paper comes amid a wolf conservation battle that involves Weiss' group. In February, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) determined that Endangered Species Act protections for the wolves in the northern Rocky Mountains were "not warranted."

Two coalitions of conservation organizations, including CBD, swiftly filed notices of their intent to sue over the decision if FWS didn't change course. After the legally required 60-day notice period passed, they filed the lawsuits in April.

Earlier this week, "the cases were voluntarily dismissed and immediately refiled to avoid any potential arguments from the defendants that the plaintiffs failed to give the secretary of the interior proper 60-days' notice under the Endangered Species Act," Collette Adkins, an attorney who leads CBD's Carnivore Conservation program, told Common Dreams in an email Thursday.

"Plaintiffs believe that their case was properly noticed," she said, "but we refiled to avoid any further disruption of the proceedings."

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this press release from the Center for Biological Diversity:

The Center for Biological Diversity and 29 other bird and wildlife conservation organizations from 24 states filed a legal petition today asking the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to establish a permitting process for commercial buildings to protect birds from deadly window collisions.

Today’s petition proposes a permitting process under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act that would require building owners to use proven measures to reduce collisions, such as films, curtains or others means that make glass visible to birds.

According to recent studies, buildings in the United States kill more than 1 billion birds each year. This problem has contributed to a roughly 30% decline in birds since 1970 — or an estimated 3 billion fewer birds gracing the skies in North America.

“The Fish and Wildlife Service can’t keep letting buildings kill vast numbers of birds every year when there are known solutions to this tragic problem,” said Tara Zuardo, a senior advocate at the Center. “Migrating birds are crashing into walls of glass that leave them broken and dying, and federal officials have a legal duty to push for basic preventative steps. As bird populations dwindle, this threat affects every American in every state, and it needs to be addressed.”

In January 2021 the Service finalized a rule that upended decades of enforcement under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. This unlawful reinterpretation failed to prohibit the foreseeable killing of migratory birds. In response to successful litigation by the Center and allies, the Service in 2021 revoked this rule and promised to issue regulations to address infrastructure known to cause bird deaths.

But in December 2023 the agency withdrew much-needed draft migratory bird protection rules, claiming that it requires an indefinite amount of time to pursue the rulemaking and left millions of birds vulnerable to building and window collisions.

Today’s petition notes that the Service admits that building collisions are one of the greatest threats to America’s migratory birds. These collisions are driving declines in warblers, sparrows and many other birds, including a number of sensitive species. That means the conditions leading to these collisions require regulation under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. The Service already administers a permitting process to reduce harm to bald and golden eagles, so it could also do so for migratory birds.

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

The U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling Friday that overturned the landmark “Chevron doctrine” may give Wyoming an advantage when mounting court challenges for and against federal regulations and actions on issues ranging from wildlife and land management to energy development and industrial emissions.

Gov. Mark Gordon and Wyoming’s congressional delegation have hailed the ruling as a clear legal advantage in fighting federal agency actions they don’t like. But the ruling doesn’t necessarily hand Wyoming — or anybody else who sues federal agencies — a clear path to victory in court, according to several Wyoming and out-of-state observers.

Wyoming has much at stake. 48% of the land and 68% of the mineral estate are managed by the federal government and the Equality State has many active grievances against federal agencies now active in the courts. Since 2019, Gordon’s administration has initiated or participated in at least 57 lawsuits either challenging federal natural resources policies, or defending federal positions from litigation brought by public health and conservation groups, according to a list of lawsuits his office provided to WyoFile.

THE CHEVRON DOCTRINE

The Chevron doctrine, established by a 1984 Supreme Court ruling, instructed lower courts to defer to the expertise within agencies like the Bureau of Land Management, Environmental Protection Agency and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in their interpretation of carrying out laws passed by Congress. Those laws — like the Endangered Species Act and Clean Air Act — frequently do not reach into the weeds on scientific matters such as what qualifies as critical habitat or measuring ambient air quality, for example.

Under Chevron, deference to federal agencies’ interpretation wasn’t automatic, but applied when an agency attempted to reasonably interpret an ambiguous statute.

Now that the doctrine is overturned, courts may make their own interpretation of congressional intent. But that still won’t erase decades of case law, or statutory precedent, much of which is based on those agencies’ past interpretations and court actions, observers say.

“I think [courts are] going to struggle with it because they don’t have subject-matter expertise in these very intricate, technical aspects of the everyday life of an agency,” Sheridan-based landowner advocacy group Powder River Basin Resource Council Attorney Shannon Anderson said.

POLITICAL REACTION

Gordon, however, hailed what he described as a “victory for common-sense regulatory reform.”

“For years, unelected bureaucrats running federal agencies in Washington D.C. have used [Chevron] ‘deference’ as an excuse to target certain industries based on politics,” Gordon said in a prepared statement Friday. “Wyoming has experienced that firsthand. Limiting their power to overreach is cause for celebration, and this ruling begins that process.”

While not a party to the suit, Wyoming filed an amicus brief in the Supreme Court case Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, which was the basis for overturning the Chevron doctrine. Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyoming) and Rep. Harriet Hageman (R-Wyoming) also signed on to another amicus brief in the case.

“I applaud the Supreme Court’s decision to restore decision-making power back to democratically-elected members of Congress just as our Founding Fathers intended rather than allowing D.C. bureaucrats to rule with an iron fist,” Lummis said in a prepared statement.

“Today’s Supreme Court ruling is a major victory for getting Washington out of Wyoming,” Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyoming) said in a prepared statement. “For too long unelected, unaccountable Washington bureaucrats have gone unchecked.”

Other parties who’ve tracked efforts to overturn the Supreme Court’s 40-year-old precedent aren’t so sure that it’s a clear-cut victory for industry-aligned conservative western states like Wyoming that often rail against federal regulation.

A SMALLER VICTORY?

“I don’t think there’s been a lot of really deep thinking on their side about what [the loss of Chevron] actually means,” said Brett Hartl, an attorney who heads government relations for the Center for Biological Diversity. “They almost were captured by their own ideological premise more than factual reality.”

It’s possible, he said, that the court’s decision will ultimately have the effect of strengthening some environmental laws, though it could be “many years” before the true consequences are made clear.

“Some laws — like the Endangered Species Act — are actually very clear and very strong and have a very obvious meaning,” Hartl said. “Myself … and other organizations would actually argue that, if anything, the Fish and Wildlife Service has interpreted the [Endangered Species Act] weaker than what the law actually requires.”

As courts, instead of federal agencies, take more of a role interpreting environmental statutes, the strengths of the laws themselves may become more important, he said. To illustrate the point, Hartl compared the National Forest Management Act with the Federal Land Policy and Management Act. The former, which is considered a stronger law, governs U.S. Forest Service lands while the latter, perceived as weaker, has bearing on Bureau of Land Management property.

“So the loss of Chevron may make it easier to have protections for Forest Service lands than BLM lands,” Hartl said.

NO IMMEDIATE EFFECTS

Dessa Reimer, a Jackson-based attorney with Holland and Hart, does not foresee “immediate” on-the-ground changes in Wyoming stemming from the high court’s decision. The Chevron standard of review, she pointed out, does not necessarily implicate most federal agency permitting and decision making.

“For example, the Converse County Oil and Gas Project or Chokecherry Wind or the BLM’s Rock Springs RMP: Those aren’t notice-and-comment rulemaking, so when someone challenges those types of agency decisions, Chevron deference was not applied,” she said.

The immediate effect, Reimer believes, relates to how courts review agency rulemaking. “And there has been a slew of agency rulemaking under the Biden Administration coming out this year that’s already been challenged,” she said.

The BLM’s Public Lands Rule is one example. The measure, which puts land conservation on even footing with other land uses, has been targeted by Wyoming and Utah in a legal challenge.

Typically, federal agency rules and actions swing wildly between Democratic and Republican administrations: The EPA’s stance on regional haze and the BLM’s direction on federal coal leasing in the Powder River Basin are prime examples. But within the Supreme Court’s new ruling overturning the Chevron doctrine is the notion that courts might equalize those wild administrative swings in policy direction, according to University of Wyoming College of Law Professor Sam Kalen.

“What SCOTUS did say is, where there has been what’s called statutory precedent that had a court already affirming an interpretation, under a deference standard or not, the court said, ‘We’ll still likely give that stare decisis precedent,'” Kalen told WyoFile. “So it doesn’t automatically mean that all those old cases justify revisiting.”

A lot of litigants will try, however.

“I guarantee you that litigants are going to try to revisit a lot of cases now,” Kalen said. “The way I look at it is as a threat to the administrative state.”

[bnyrbt]

[batwynn]

Someone counted Tick Georg

[asquirrelinspace]

YOINK!

Source: US fish and wildlife service on instagram (https://www.instagram.com/reel/C817Hl-qrm-/)

[spiritheyregone]

The Arctic hare lives in the tundra and in rocky mountainous areas. It needs places with enough cover to let plants grow and keep snow from getting too deep.

Source: nhpbs.org

[premierweird]

[hometoursandotherstuff]

[thoughtportal]

[dougielombax]

What does the US fish and wildlife service actually DO?!

[plethoraworldatlas]

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service last week withdrew much-needed draft migratory bird protection rules the agency promised to propose two years ago. These rules are necessary to protect migratory birds from being killed by preventable hazards, including by window collisions, like October’s massive bird mortality event at McCormick Place in Chicago.

“It’s nonsensical that after two years of delay, the Fish and Wildlife Service withdrew these proposed protections with the threadbare excuse that even more delay is needed,” said Tara Zuardo, a senior advocate at the Center for Biological Diversity. “Yet despite the lack of regulations, this agency still has the power to levy fines against parties that cause the death of birds, and federal officials should use their authority to do so.”

Under the Trump administration, the Service finalized a rule that upended decades of enforcement of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. This radical and unlawful reinterpretation concluded the law did not prohibit the unintentional killing of migratory birds.

In response to successful litigation by the Center and allies, the Biden administration revoked this rule in 2021. The agency promised to issue regulations to address situations like what happened at McCormick Place, where infrastructure is known to cause bird deaths.

However, after two years of delay, the agency withdrew its own proposed regulations, claiming that it requires an indefinite amount of time to work on the rulemaking. This leaves billions of birds vulnerable to increasing threats across the landscape like collisions with windows and communication towers.

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this press release from the Center for Biological Diversity:

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service notified the public Tuesday of two applications from U.S. hunters in Texas and Florida seeking to import black rhinoceros hunting trophies. The rhinos — named Lippie and Willem, aged 28 and 31 — were killed in Namibia.

Black rhinos are critically endangered according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, with only an estimated 6,400 individuals remaining in all of Africa. While the population is growing, black rhinos are still highly imperiled because of poaching for horns, habitat loss and hunting, including “pseudo-hunting” to obtain and trade in otherwise illicit horns.

“It’s tragic that trophy hunters pay vast sums for the luxury of killing such highly imperiled animals when the focus should be on recovering the species,” said Tanya Sanerib, international legal director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “This pay-to-play system perpetuates rarity, which suits wealthy hunters out to bag exotic kills, but doesn’t help critically endangered animals like Lippie and Willem.”

Both rhinos were killed in 2022 — one on a private game reserve, Erindi, and the other in Mangetti National Park. According to application materials, the hunters paid around a quarter of a million U.S. dollars each in hunting fees.

The U.S. permit applications and supporting materials were disclosed Sept. 24. This is in accordance with an Endangered Species Act provision that requires the public to receive notice of and an opportunity to comment on import applications for endangered species such as black rhinos.

Black rhinos were listed as endangered under the Act in 1980 and are subject to a commercial trade ban imposed by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species. To import a black rhino trophy, permits under both the Act and the CITES treaty are required.

To issue the permits, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has to not only find that trophy hunting is not detrimental to the species’ survival, but that it “enhances” or benefits its survival as well. The public has 30 days to submit evidence that such findings should not be made. The last black rhino hunting trophy import permit was issued in 2019.

[sicksucculentz]

there are so many wildlife jobs!!!

I graduate in one year and it’s overwhelming how much I want to try!!!