Endangered species and the law | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's Note: Jim Bispo's weekly column appears in the Beaufort Observer.

    The WITN TV web site reported on 9/7 that four men had been arrested in Onslow County for reportedly killing an alligator. The report is quoted:

    Four men are facing charges after wildlife officers say they killed and cut up a four foot alligator in Onslow County.

    North Topsail Beach officers say the men and the alligator were in the area of Bermuda Landing Place off Highway 210, also known as Island Drive.

    The officers reported when they arrived, they found the four men processing the alligator meat, apparently for consumption.

    The men were detained, and the North Carolina Wildlife Resource Commission Division of Law Enforcement took over the investigation.

    It would not seem that the folks who were arrested were on an alligator killing spree. They seemed to be looking to get rid of a truly scary critter and get some meat out of the deal to boot. Apparently killing an alligator when it strays into a populated area and before it maims a child or someone's pet is a no - no. What makes that very interesting is that exceptions can be granted to the Endangered Species Act making it acceptable to kill bald eagles for example.. So where are the "purists" when you need them??

    In fact the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service issues 5 year permits for the developers of wind farms to kill bald eagles and they are considering extending the permit to 30 years.. Yes, Bald Eagles The national bird of the United States. And, don't forget it only came off the endangered species list in 2007.

    Click here for more on the proposal.

    The foregoing document comes from the Heartland Institute based in Chicago. According to Wikipedia;

   The Heartland Institute is an American conservative and libertarian[2] public policy think tank based in Chicago, which advocates free market policies.[3][4][5][6] The Institute is designated as a 501(c)(3) non profit by the Internal Revenue Service and has a full time staff of 40, including editors and senior fellows.[7] The Institute was founded in 1984 and conducts research and advocacy work on issues including government spending, taxation, healthcare, tobacco policy, hydraulic fracturing[8] global warming, information technology, and free market environmentalism.

    It's difficult to imagine anything conservative in Chicago, but there it is...

    Anyway...

    In May 2007 the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service issued what they called National Bald Eagle Management Guidelines. It is a 25 page document that describes in some detail how to continue to protect the eagles. It provides a great deal of information and guidance related to the legal protections for the bald eagle, and is a sort of a "best practices" document intended to continue to protect the American icon even though it is no longer on the endangered species list.

    Click here to see the document in its entirety.

    One should never read any of this kind of stuff very closely because if you do you will often find some really troubling things. In the case of the Management Guidelines, you will find the following:

    The Service intends to pursue the development of regulations that would authorize, under limited circumstances, the use of permits if "take" of an eagle is anticipated but unavoidable. Additionally, if the bald legal is delisted, the Service intends to provide a regulatory mechanism to honor existing (take) authorizations under the Endangered Species Act (ESA).

   So it will be OK to kill bald eagles (with the Fish and Wildlife Service approval), but beware anyone who tries to protect themselves (or anyone else) from an alligator in a populated area.

    My first reaction to the issuance of "take" permits was, WHAT??? And it went downhill from there...

    Sure enough, checking into the ESA, Section 10, you find that the Secretary of the Interior is empowered to issue exceptions to the law. The exception to the law will permit, " ...any taking otherwise prohibited by Section 9(a)(1)(B) if such taking is incidental to, and not the purpose of, the carrying out of an otherwise lawful activity".

    It's amazing. All this endangered species protection stuff is really cool and something that we should all support. Of course. At least until it gets in the way of something we want to do, and then we need to get a waiver from the Fish and Wildlife Service folks who are charged with enforcement of the law. It's too bad nobody even thought of that when the Snail Darters and the lizards in the southern California deserts, (where better for a solar farm??) and of course, alligators.

    A number of years ago a small fish called the Snail Darter almost stopped the construction of a dam. According to Wikipedia;

    The snail darter was initially native only to the Little Tennessee River. It was discovered in 1973, and subsequently was at the center of a legal controversy in which construction of the Tellico Dam was delayed due to concerns that it would extirpate the species.[1] The snail darter was declared an endangered species in 1975 under the U.S. Endangered Species Act (ESA) of 1973; this halted construction of the dam for two years, until an amendment to the Act officially exempted Tellico. The snail darter was later introduced successfully to the Hiwassee River.[1] On July 5, 1984, its status was lowered to threatened.[2]

    Huge solar farms in the Southern California deserts (can you think of a more appropriate place for a solar farm??) are reportedly being delayed because construction unions seem to find endangered wildlife on the sites where non-union contractors are about to be awarded construction contracts to build the solar farms. It would seem that no endangered wildlife is found to exist on the sites where "union contractors" have won the bidding. Interesting...

    Enter wind farms and their "bird killing machines" with their 400' +/- diameter blade rotation pattern. At five RPM that comes out to about 142 miles per hour tip speed, a figure not easily ignored.

    All of a sudden, we are seeing our way clear to issue permits for the killing of bald eagles when they get in the way of one of the Prez' favorite green energy undertakings, wind farms. Obscure lizards that no one ever heard of and 3" fish and alligators that wander into populated areas must be protected at any cost, but bald eagles??? Bald eagles would seem to be expendable when they get in the way of one of the Anointed One's favorite places to waste taxpayer money.

    D'ya think??