The US Fish and Wildlife Service is maneuvering to fundamentally weaken the Endangered Species Act, its strategy laid out in an internal 117-page draft proposal. The proposed changes limit the number of species that can be protected and curtail the acres of wildlife habitat to be preserved. It shifts authority to enforce the Act from the federal government to the states, and it dilutes legal barriers that protect habitat from sprawl, logging or mining.

In recent months, the Service has made extraordinary efforts to keep drafts of regulatory changes from the public. All copies of the working document were given a number corresponding to a person, so that leaked copies could be traced to that individual.

The proposed changes, often seemingly subtle, generally serve to strip the Fish and Wildlife Service of the power to do its stated mission: to protect wildlife. Some verge on the biologically ridiculous, say critics, while others are a clear concession to industry and conservative Western governors who have long complained that the Act degrades the economies of their states by preventing natural-resource extraction.

Main Source: Salon