Julie MacDonald’s Legacy: Fewer Endangered Species

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


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.

DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And we need your support like never before, to fight back against the existential threats American democracy faces. Fundraising for nonprofit media is always a challenge, and we need all hands on deck right now. We have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

payment methods

DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And we need your support like never before, to fight back against the existential threats American democracy faces. Fundraising for nonprofit media is always a challenge, and we need all hands on deck right now. We have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate