Julie MacDonald’s Legacy: Fewer Endangered Species

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Good bye and good riddance to Julie MacDonald of the Fish and Wildlife Service. She was forced to resign because documents she leaked to industry lobbyists surfaced later in lawsuits against the federal government. Quite embarrassing, you can imagine.

But there were a ton of even better reasons for her departure. For example, “she demanded that the determined nesting range of the Southwest Willow Flycatcher be shrunk from a 2.1 mile radius to 1.8 miles, so that it would not cross into the state of California, where her husband’s family owned a ranch.”

As a henchman for the Bush Administration’s ungreening of America, MacDonald’s work is behind the seeming-miraculous comeback of so many species delisted as endangered in the past few months. To name a few in different states, grizzlies, gray wolves, crocodiles, flying squirrels, and manatees.

It’s not that they suddenly bounced back to normal populations. It’s that the feds, as Jen blogged, changed the definition of “endangered.”

Unfortunately, take out one fool, and there’s another standing by to replace her. It appears that her successor, Todd Willens, earned his creds spearheading former California Rep. Richard Pombo’s anti-endangered species agenda.

manatee.jpg
You’re on you’re own, manatee.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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