Washington Watch: Birds Beware
For months, we’ve been noting some of the ways in which the Trump Administration is setting environmental protections back by decades. Now the president has reinterpreted the century-old Migratory Bird Treaty Act in a way that will make it almost impossible to enforce.
If you thought a century-old law protecting migratory birds might be the kind of bedrock conservation policy which would be safe from Trump’s anti-environmental agenda, think again. He has decided that when it comes to inconveniencing his pals in the fossil fuel industry, protections are not for the birds.
The difference is simple but critical. The historic interpretation of the 1918 Migratory Bird Treaty Act has been that if your activities kill protected birds, you’re liable for violations of the law. Suddenly though, the Trump re-write finds that if your purpose wasn’t to kill the birds, it’s not a legal problem for you if that just happened to be a side effect.
You can hear polluters arguing, “Sorry, your honor. We were just trying to get the oil out from under the ocean. So what if our oil spill killed thousands of protected pelicans? Just collateral damage. Not our responsibility.”
