Enjoy the Birds While You Can

The Republicans want to ban flag burning but let endangered species die. The New York Times provides details.

Republican critics of the Endangered Species Act in Congress have drafted legislation hedging the government's obligation to take all necessary steps to bring back to robust health any species on the brink of extinction.

The draft envisions more limited government obligations: ensuring that the status of an endangered plant or animal gets no worse and helping to make it better.

Representatives of environmental groups who have seen the draft legislation said that the change, achieved by redefining the act's interpretation of "conservation," would severely undercut the law.

The draft measure, said Jamie Rappaport Clark, the executive vice president of Defenders of Wildlife, "takes a wrecking ball to the whole Endangered Species Act" by changing its mission, disabling enforcement tools and loosening controls on agencies like the Forest Service and the Army Corps of Engineers.

The bald eagle would have been history under the Bush regime.