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17213 |
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Date: September 02, 2020 at 11:05:30
From: sheila, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Federal Judge Blocks Trump Rollback of Migratory Bird Protection |
URL: https://www.courthousenews.com/federal-judge-blocks-trump-administrations-rollback-of-migratory-bird-protection/ |
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hoping, praying this judgment stops the senseless killing of birds with no punishment even when done intentionally. An example would be washing out thousands of Swallow nests beneath bridges to paint them, and so much more. Migratory birds need protection.
Aug 13, 2020
Courthouse News
MANHATTAN (CN) — Sprinkling her ruling with the wisdom of literary lawyer Atticus Finch, an Alabama-born federal judge stopped President Trump’s Interior Department from declaring open season on practices that endanger migratory birds.
“It is not only a sin to kill a mockingbird, it is also a crime,” U.S. District Judge Valerie Caproni, quoting the novel “To Kill a Mockingbird” and federal law, wrote in the introduction of her 31-page ruling.
That was the lesson Atticus Finch tried to impart upon his children in a passage of the novel that Judge Caproni quoted early in her ruling.
“Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy,” the novel’s passage, quoted in a footnote of the ruling, observes. “They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.”
“That has been the letter of the law for the past century,” it continues. “But if the Department of the Interior has its way, many mockingbirds and other migratory birds that delight people and support ecosystems throughout the country will be killed without legal consequence.”
Born in Lee County, Alabama, Judge Caproni grew up a 2.5-hour drive away from the hometown of Harper Lee, the literary pride of the “Cotton State” whose novel stands as an icon of fictional civil rights lawyering.
Since Barack Obama appointed her to New York’s federal bench in 2013, Caproni’s droll wit and remnants of her Southern dialect occasionally has made their mark on her cases.
The latest of this pantheon involves the Trump administration’s bid three years ago to reinterpret the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918, aimed at “saving from indiscriminate slaughter” migratory birds in the United States, United Kingdom and Canada.
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Responses:
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17215 |
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Date: September 02, 2020 at 11:23:27
From: sheila, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Expert Says Trump Rule Could Kill Billions of Birds |
URL: https://www.courthousenews.com/expert-says-trump-rule-could-kill-billions-of-birds/ |
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some background on why the above ruling to continue migratory bird protection via the 1918 Migratory Bird Protection Act is so important.
April, 2020
BUTTE, Mont. (AP) — At a former open pit copper mine filled with billions of gallons of toxic water, sirens and loud pops from propane cannons echoed off the granite walls to scare away birds so they don’t land.
After several thousand migrating snow geese perished in the Berkeley Pit’s acidic, metal-laden waters in 2016, its owners deployed an arsenal to frighten away flocks, including lasers, drones, fireworks and remote-controlled boats.
Montana Resources already had been hazing incoming birds with spotlights and rifle shots into the water — and a spokesman said those deterrents likely helped the company avoid a penalty or prosecution under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act.
But the Trump administration wants to end the 50-year practice of using criminal penalties under the migratory bird law to pressure companies into taking measures like these to prevent unintentional bird deaths.
Critics — including top Interior Department officials from Republican and Democratic administrations — say the proposed change could devastate threatened and endangered species and accelerate a bird population decline across North America since the 1970s.
Former U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Dan Ashe told The Associated Press the law’s threat of prosecution served as “a brake on industry” that probably had saved billions of birds.
“Removing that obligation, if it stands, over the next several decades will result in billions of birds being casualties,” said Ashe, who served in the Obama administration. “It will be catastrophic.”
Industries kill an estimated 450 million to 1.1 billion birds annually, out of an overall 7.2 billion birds in North America, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and recent studies.
State officials and wildlife advocates who are suing the administration in federal court say birds already are being harmed under actions allowed by a 2017 Trump administration legal memo that signaled the rule change.
Most notable was the destruction last fall of nesting grounds for 25,000 shorebirds in Virginia to make way for a road and tunnel project. State officials had ended conservation measures for the birds after federal officials said such measures were voluntary under the new interpretation of the law.
The move to relax the bird law, combined with Trump rollbacks of the Endangered Species Act and the National Environmental Policy Act, puts birds and their habitat at greater risk, said Audubon Society vice president Sarah Greenberger.
The Trump administration proposal follows longstanding pressure from oil companies, utilities and other industries.
Ashe’s estimate that billions of birds were at risk was supported by a leading ornithologist from Cornell University and two former senior officials with the Fish and Wildlife Service — Brad Bortner, who retired in 2017 from his post as chief of the migratory bird program, and Paul Schmidt, the agency’s former assistant director.
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