Battle lines drawn...

...between those pesky terrorist environmentalists and red Americans! This article finally puts us into two separate camps!

"'Just about everybody agrees the Endangered Species Act is broken,' said Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Calif., a cattleman turned chairman of the House Resources Committee. 'The only way you are going fix it is with legislative change.'"

Hmmh, a "cattleman" and "republican" saying it's broken, let's see what his "fix" will be. As Mr. Manson of the Fish and Wildlife Servie states:

"we have to carefully examine whether we should try to protect everything,"

yup, that's the frickin' problem, dude! We're trying to save all of those species! Shit, we really only need deer and other stuff that we hunt, right? Besides, for those things we don't hunt,

"at what point [does] a small, distinct population of a species warrant listing for federal protection...."

yeah, who cares about those isolated populations that allow genetic variance? After all, that's how species become endagered in the first place, so if we want the land, what better way to get it than isolate the populations and then get rid of them entirely!

"Last week, for instance, the administration proposed a dramatic rollback of its designated 'critical habitat' for 20 species of threatened or endangered salmon and steelhead trout from Southern California to Washington state."

that silly critical habitat stupidity it's

"prompted complaints for years from property owners."

yup, those free-loading salmon, owls and marmulets! Damned those animals, don't they know it's our fucking land? Which is exactly why we need to get rid of the ESA, and aplty-named Mr. Manson knows it:

"Manson has been crisscrossing the country arguing that critical habitat affords no extra protection for a listed species."

Divide and conquer, after all. It's broken, so we need to get rid of it entirely. And the possibility of providing genetic variance with it. Now that's compassionate conservatism!

OK, on a serious note, as far as I remember, everyone knew that the fragmentation of species was going to be a problem. But most everyone realized that in the fragmented forests of the pacific northwest, that's what needed to be done right now, in the hopes that later the species could come together as a meaningful (on a genetic level) whole. Now, we have transcended that, and those fragmented species don't matter anymore. Next, the main species won't either, and the job will have been done. Twenty years of "progress." Sad.