Racing Backwards

The Trump administration is moving quickly to finalize dozens of regulatory rollbacks and other actions to weaken environmental protections.  This includes eliminating protection for birds.  Henceforth, the Trump administration will not enforce the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1917, which makes it illegal “by any means or in any manner” to hunt, take, capture or kill birds, nests or eggs from listed species without a permit, unless the primary intent of the action is to kill birds.  Other actions, even actions that the actor knows will kill birds, are permissible.  By this new standard, all anyone has to do to avoid enforcement action is to say their primary purpose was to do something other than kill birds.  For more about this, see The New York Times of January 31, 2020.

On February 6, 2020, the Trump administration’s Interior Department announced the finalization of plans to allow coal mining and oil and gas drilling on a million acres of land in southern Utah that had once been a part of the Grand Staircase – Escalante National Monument established by President Bill Clinton.  In 2017, Trump cut the size of the monument in half.  Inasmuch as the coal industry is in the tank economically and the world is suffering from a surplus of oil and gas that has driven prices below $50 per barrel for oil and record low prices for gas, all we can hope is that the land will be spared because of economics.