The following is courtesy of
ThinkProgress. Thank you, Barack Obama, for beginning the hard work of reversing the Bush Administration's 8-year assault on our environment. There's a lot more work to do, obviously, but this one was important and worth celebrating. Keep up the great work!
ENVIRONMENT -- OBAMA REVERSES BUSH RULES ON ENDANGERED SPECIES: In one of his administration's last-minute regulation changes, President Bush last December "eliminated 35-year-old regulations in the Endangered Species Act that required an independent scientific review of proposed federal projects to determine whether they imperil protected plants and animals." Yesterday, President Obama vowed to reverse that ruling, in a visit to the Interior Department to mark its 150th anniversary where he signed a memo requiring agencies to seek scientific advice and input before implementing changes that might affect endangered species. "In brief remarks, the president said he had signed the memorandum to 'help restore the scientific process to its rightful place' in the working of the Endangered Species Act. 'We should be looking for ways to improve it, not weaken it,' Mr. Obama said of the act." The New York Times notes that Obama's announcement "drew loud applause." "This is very good news for endangered species," said Andrew Wetzler of the Natural Resources Defense Council. "The regulations that President Bush issued were clearly illegal, and they were bad policy to boot."
