Earth Day 2011 | Interior Dept Seige Over Endangered Species

GreenTracker| Tomorrow is the 41st global Earth Day. In America it may be the most important Earth Day, as Tea Party Republicans seek to roll back regulations that promote sustainability and environment regulations around business.

In many ways, America is back to square one, with many politicos arguing that America’s focus should be the deregulation of business, not concern for the environment, toxins in food or sustainability initiatives.

Today’s NYTimes presents a different kind of sustainability quagmire, writing that the federal Fish and Wildlife Service is in ‘emergency triage mode’ trying to manage an ‘avalanche of petitions and lawsuits’ over endangered species lists.

Over the last four years, two environmental groups, the Center for Biological Diversity and WildEarth Guardians, have filed 90 percent of the 1230 petitions submitted to the Fish and Wildlife Service since 2007. In the prior 20 years, annual requests averaged about 20 per year.

The larger environmental community is divided on this blitz strategy, as the agency asks Congress to impose a cap on the amount of money it can spend on processing listing petitions. The concern is managing workload and — probably more importantly — protecting itself from massive lawsuits. To date, the WildEarth Guardians and the Center for Biological Diversity have filed 100 lawsuits against the Interior Department for delays.

Patrick Parenteau, a professor and endangered species expert at Vermont Law School who was special counsel to the Fish and Wildlife Service in the 1990s, said he could empathize with both sides. “The agency does seem to be reaching a political tipping point,” he said. “They feel overwhelmed, they feel politically vulnerable, they can’t handle the job, and all these petitions makes it harder and harder.”

“But from an endangered species conservation perspective, the environmentalists are doing exactly what the science demands,” he added. “If you want to save these species, you have to list them, designate their critical habitat and spend money.”