Last week, The New York Times reported that an internal memo had been quietly distributed across US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) field offices, directing staff to radically reinterpret the Endangered Species Act (ESA) in a move that blindsided conservationists.
Staffers were essentially asked to start looking the other way when private interests cause preventable deaths of vulnerable animals. Instead of prohibiting habitat modifications that injure animals or cause accidental deaths, the ESA will now only prohibit actions “specifically intending to target an animal,” FWS Director Brian Nesvik instructed staff in the September 14 memo.
“A vessel that inadvertently strikes a whale has not taken it because the vessel’s course was not set against the whale,” Nesvik’s memo said. “Felling a tree is not a take of the bats roosting in it unless the tree is felled for the purpose of killing or capturing them.”