Writers on the Range:Extreme green [CBD fleecing of America]

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Writers on the Range:Extreme green [CBD fleecing of America]

Postby Evan G » Jun 2, 2011 1:19 pm

Writers on the Range: Extreme green

by Ted Williams


[My personal view point is that CBD is fleecing America thru the Endangered Species act!]

Original article in Summit Daily [my home!!! :kewl: ]:
It has taken me decades to be recognized as an environmental extremist. My “attack” on Alaska Republican Rep. Don Young, a National Rifle Association board member, in Sierra magazine fomented a mass exodus from the Outdoor Writers Association of America, including 79 members and 22 supporting organizations. I serve on two foundations that award major grants to groups defending wild land from developers, and I write a muckraking column for Audubon called “Incite.”

Actually, I'm an extremist only as defined by people who perceive fish and wildlife as basically in the way. For those folks, all environmentalists are extremists. But radical green groups do exist, and they're engaged in an industry whose waste products are fish and wildlife.

You and I are a major source of revenue for that industry. The Interior Department must respond within 90 days to petitions to list species under the Endangered Species Act. Otherwise, petitioners like the Center for Biological Diversity get to sue and collect attorney fees from the Justice Department.

For 2009, the Center reported income of $1,173,517 in “legal settlement.” The Center also shakes down taxpayers directly from Interior Department funds under the Equal Access to Justice Act, and for missed deadlines when the agency can't keep up with the broadside of Freedom-of-Information-Act requests. The Center for Biological Diversity has two imitators — WildEarth Guardians and Western Watersheds Project.

Kierán Suckling, who directs and helped found the Tucson, Ariz.-based Center, boasts that he engages in psychological warfare by causing stress to already stressed public servants. “They feel like their careers are being mocked and destroyed — and they are,” he told High Country News. “So they become much more willing to play by our rules.”

Those rules include bending the truth like pretzel dough. For example, after the Center posted photos on its website depicting what it claimed was Arizona rancher Jim Chilton's cow-denuded grazing allotment, Chilton sued. When Chilton produced evidence that the photos showed a campsite and a parking lot, the court awarded him $600,000 in damages. Apparently this was the first successful libel suit against an environmental group, yet the case was virtually ignored by the media.

“Ranching should end,” proclaims Suckling. “Good riddance.” But the only problem with ranching is that it's not always done right. And even when it's done wrong, it saves land from development.

Amos Eno runs the hugely successful Yarmouth, Maine-based Resources First Foundation, an outfit that, among other things, assists ranchers who want to restore native ecosystems. Earlier, he worked at Interior's Endangered Species Office, crafting amendments to strengthen the law, then went on to direct the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation. Eno figures the feds could “recover and delist three dozen species” with the resources they spend responding to the Center for Biological Diversity's litigation.

“The amount of money CBD makes suing is just obscene,” he told me. “They're one of the reasons the Endangered Species Act has become so dysfunctional. They deserve the designation of eco-criminals.”


Cont: http://www.summitdaily.com/article/2011 ... ofile=1055


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Last edited by Evan G on Jun 2, 2011 5:30 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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Re: Writers on the Range:Extreme green [CBD fleecing of America]

Postby Steve Pitts » Jun 2, 2011 5:12 pm

I think I am getting the big picture now, but it's no surprise! I just can't quite wrap my head around the irony of the whole thing.
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Re: Writers on the Range:Extreme green [CBD fleecing of America]

Postby BrianC » Jun 2, 2011 7:03 pm

What they are doing is criminal, using environmental issues to gouge the American concerned citizens for their hard earned money.
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Re: Writers on the Range:Extreme green [CBD fleecing of America]

Postby Evan G » Jun 2, 2011 8:31 pm

A follow up and some very interesting reading material:

:boxing: Legislation to stop huge legal fee payments to environmental litigation factories poised to be introduced


by Hugh Holub on May. 16, 2011


Original article: http://tucsoncitizen.com/view-from-baja ... al-groups/

Legislation to stop litigation abuse by among others… litigious environmental groups like Tucson’s own Center for Biological Diversity…. is poised to be introduced in Congress by Senator John Barrasso (R-Wyoming) and Wyoming Representative Cynthia Lummis… called the Government Savings Litigation Act.

BACKGROUND for why this legislation is being proposed:

This from the New York Times April 20, 2011:

Amid flood of petitions, endangered species listings stall

By Todd Woody
New York Times

…“These megapetitions are putting us in a difficult spot, and they’re basically going to shut down our ability to list any candidates for the foreseeable future,” Mr. Frazer said. “If all our resources are used responding to petitions, we don’t have resources to put species on the endangered species list. It’s not a happy situation.”

Two environmental groups, the Center for Biological Diversity and WildEarth Guardians , have filed 90 percent of the listings petitions since 2007 and maintain that a bioblitz, as it is often called, is the best strategy for forcing the service to be more assertive in its wildlife protection mission.

“We want to compel the Fish and Wildlife Service to look at the full extent of the extinction crisis in the United States,” said Nicole Rosmarino, wildlife program director for WildEarth Guardians, which is based in Santa Fe, N.M. “We would like a system where the service is actively looking for species that merit protection rather than the current system where groups like ours have to drive this process.”

….

WildEarth Guardians and the Center for Biological Diversity have filed more than 100 lawsuits against the Interior Department over listing delays involving some 1,100 species since 2007, according to government records. Under the act, the Interior Department must determine if a petition to list a species warrants further investigation within 90 days of its receipt. Officials acknowledge that the Fish and Wildlife Service invariably misses that deadline.

If the agency issues a finding that a listing may be warranted, it has 12 months to conduct a scientific investigation and make a final determination. That deadline is often missed as well, leading to more litigation.

The Center for Biological Diversity is a particularly formidable adversary. The nonprofit group, based in Tucson, has 20 lawyers on its staff in more than a dozen offices across the country. The center raised $7.5 million in 2009, according to its annual report, including $4.8 million from membership donations and $1.2 million in what it calls “legal returns” from cases….


Cont.: http://tucsoncitizen.com/view-from-baja ... al-groups/

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Last edited by Evan G on Jun 3, 2011 11:57 am, edited 4 times in total.
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Re: Writers on the Range:Extreme green [CBD fleecing of America]

Postby nathanroser » Jun 2, 2011 10:43 pm

Lawyers beware, your shenanigans will no longer be tolerated (or at least no longer financed).
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Re: Writers on the Range:Extreme green [CBD fleecing of America]

Postby PYoungbaer » Jun 3, 2011 6:47 am

Now you know what we're up against. If you look at CBD's federal tax returns (990 form), which are public and available through various websites for non-profits, such as Guidestar, you'll see an almost doubling of their budget (roughly $4 million to $ 8 million), including from legal settlements.
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Re: Writers on the Range:Extreme green [CBD fleecing of America]

Postby Pippin » Jun 3, 2011 8:37 am

Here's an article someone posted to Facebook about a new bill aimed at preventing this kind of abuse. I say the NSS should encourage every member to contact his or her representative and ask that they support the Government Savings Litigation Act.

Legislation to stop huge legal fee payments to environmental litigation factories poised to be introduced:
http://tucsoncitizen.com/view-from-baja ... al-groups/
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Re: Writers on the Range:Extreme green [CBD fleecing of America]

Postby Steve Pitts » Jun 3, 2011 9:21 am

BrianC wrote:What they are doing is criminal, using environmental issues to gouge the American concerned citizens for their hard earned money.

Exactly!
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Re: Writers on the Range:Extreme green [CBD fleecing of America]

Postby tncaver » Jun 3, 2011 10:51 am

Pippin wrote:Here's an article someone posted to Facebook about a new bill aimed at preventing this kind of abuse. I say the NSS should encourage every member to contact his or her representative and ask that they support the Government Savings Litigation Act.

Legislation to stop huge legal fee payments to environmental litigation factories poised to be introduced:
http://tucsoncitizen.com/view-from-baja ... al-groups/


Finally a common sense bill that will save taxpayers money while protecting our US treasury from money grabbing do gooders who aren't do gooders
at all.

I have written my three US legislators and requested that they support the bill being introduced to stop out of control environmental groups from
raiding the US treasury. I recommend that every member of the NSS and non members who go caving, write their legislators as well. This is extremely
important. This may not stop the current CBD petition to close all caves but if passed will put a huge damper on future money grabs by out of control
environmental groups.
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Re: Writers on the Range:Extreme green [CBD fleecing of Amer

Postby Cheryl Jones » Sep 10, 2011 4:34 pm

Update on this story:

The Government Litigation Savings Act bill now has a number (H.R. 1996) and 48 sponsors, and has been referred to committee (House Judiciary, Subcommittee on Courts, Commercial and Administrative Law.)
Track it here: http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h112-1996
The actual wording and other info: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d112:h1996: (the colon is
needed in the URL)

The Bill's sponsor is Rep /Cynthia Lummis (R-WY), http://lummis.house.gov/
Her Sept 10 op-ed on the bill: http://washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/o ... ept-secret

Here's a Sept 7 NYT article. http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2011/09/07 ... 35436.html

It might be worthwhile writing your representative if he/she is not one of the sponsors, as well as writing members of the House Judiciary committee's Subcommittee on Courts, Commercial and Administrative Law.

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