Noah Peschio
Staff Writer
The Donald Trump presidential administration has not lacked in lawsuits filed against him during his time in office.
However, one lawsuit recently brought on by The Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) has implications that may have hit close to home for Wyomingites.
The nonprofit group (NGO) is bringing the lawsuit in regards to the 274 species that have been awaiting a decision on placement on the endangered species list, including many in the mountain west area. The U.S Fish and Wildlife service created a plan in 2016 in order to address this backlog of species, but the Trump administration has since stalled this process.
Thus far through his presidency, Trump has protected only 19 species under the Endangered Species Act. For context, Barack Obama protected 360, Bill Clinton protected 523 species, and George H. W. Bush protected 232, according to CBD’s press release on the lawsuit.
“If we just leave them in the bureaucratic purgatory, we’re not accomplishing anything. We’re just allowing them to decline further making recovery more expensive, less likely and more difficult,” said Noah Greenwald, the endangered species director for the CBD in an interview with Wyoming Public Media (WPM).
Joining the CBD in 1997, Greenwald has been working to educate the public on the importance of biodiversity and strengthening the Endangered Species Act.
Recently, with many lawsuits from NGOs like the CBD being filed, there has been a clear track of those groups winning these large lawsuits against the current presidential administration.
“The numbers indicate that the NGOs are winning cases against the administration at a fairly decent rate,” said Sam Kalen, the associate dean of the College of Law at the University of Wyoming, “and with an administration that is making fairly – in some instances – dramatic and numerous changes in how programs are being administered, and often without seemingly sufficient analysis or explanation, it is not surprising that it is losing many cases.”
Kalen has been with the university since 2009 and before that, he founded the Center for Law and Energy Resources in the Rockies. He is still the co-director of that center. Many published scholarly articles later, including one used in a supreme court decision, Kalen is quite knowledgeable when it comes to environmental and administrative law.
So far, the actions taken by the CBD have been limited to a demand of 60 days to make a decision and release findings on these waiting species, or to create some type of legally binding schedule on when that will happen. The CBD will file suit if these needs are not met by the administration, according to WPM.
This type of suit is not uncommon to be seen under the Endangered Species Act.
“Litigation under the Endangered Species Act is always occuring, and it has been so with fairly high numbers at least since the 1990s,” said Kalen.
If these 60 days pass with no action, the CBD will begin litigation, thus beginning a long process with the courts in an attempt to protect over 274 species of animals and plants alike.
