Another reason for real leadership in th White House…

It’s not just the laws that have been passed. It’s not just the laws that have been vetoed. It’s not just the laws that GW Bush has said don’t apply to him as he signed them. In many ways it comes back to the appointments made to the different departments and agencies that do the actual governing…

With little-noticed procedural and policy moves over several years, Bush administration officials have made it substantially more difficult to designate domestic animals and plants for protection under the Endangered Species Act.

As a result, listings plummeted. During Bush’s more than seven years as president, his administration has placed 59 domestic species on the endangered list, almost the exact number that his father listed during each of his four years in office. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne has not declared a single native species as threatened or endangered since he was appointed nearly two years ago.

Since ’01, Guarding Species Is Harder – washingtonpost.com