You previously relied on the notoriously anti-environmental Karen Bud-Falen to make accusations about the Center for Biological Diversity's legal returns and were roundly refuted by actual financial numbers provide by the Center's director. Now you're reprinting press releases from Doc Hastings who is probably the most anti-environmental and anti-fish conservation member of Congress. You might want to question whether these people have an ax to grind before relying on them. The philosophy that "an enemy of my enemy is a friend to me" leads more often than not to disinformation and damaging politics.

Hastings' purposefully double and triple counts legal returns by applying the same funds to the lawyers arguing the case, to the Center and to the Center's coplaintiffs. The Center's letter (which you oddly did not link to) carefully assigns each return to the one party which actually received the funds. You damage your own credibility by repeating this nonsense just because it appears to damage the credibility of group you clearly despise.

Taxpayer dollars wouldn't need to go in the direction of the center for biological diversity if it wasn't for all the blatant disrespect for wildlife and the environment. The CBD does an awesome job of protecting endangered animals and I have zero concerns about this report. The only ones whinig about this are those who didn't respect the work of the CBD to begin with so big deal.

I didn’t even consult Karen Bud-Falen.  And the CBD denied what I reported; it did not “refute.”  Big difference.  Hastings is no better than Bud-Falen--indeed “probably the most anti-environmental and anti-fish conservation member of Congress.”  On the other hand, even a broken clock is right twice a day.  These people do have an ax to grind, as who does not?  Who says they are my “friends”?  I do not “despise” the dedicated, hard-working, deluded people of the CBD; I despise only how they have made the ESA dysfunctional.  Somehow I doubt that the House Natural Resources Committee is lying here.  Exaggerating perhaps.  Since this arrived in my inbox only two hours ago I am unaware of center’s letter and was therefore unable to link.  Please share.  Finally, kindly explain how I “damage my own credibility” by posting items of general interest with no editorial comment on my part.

You're okay with this stuff I detail in High Country News:

Extreme Green

by Ted Williams

It has taken me decades to be recognized as an environmental extremist. My "attack" on Alaska Republican Rep. Don Young, a National Rifle Association board member, in Sierra magazine fomented a mass exodus from the Outdoor Writers Association of America, including 79 members and 22 supporting organizations. I serve on two foundations that award major grants to groups defending wild land from developers, and I write a muckraking column for Audubon called "Incite."

Actually, I'm an extremist only as defined by people who perceive fish and wildlife as basically in the way.  For those folks, all environmentalists are extremists. But radical green groups do exist, and they're engaged in an industry whose waste products are fish and wildlife.

You and I are a major source of revenue for that industry. The Interior Department must respond within 90 days to petitions to list species under the Endangered Species Act. Otherwise, petitioners like the Center for Biological Diversity get to sue and collect attorney fees from the Justice Department.

The Center also shakes down taxpayers directly from Interior Department funds under the Equal Access  to Justice Act, and for missed deadlines when the agency can't keep up with  the broadside of Freedom-of-Information-Act requests. The Center for Biological Diversity has two imitators -- WildEarth Guardians and Western Watersheds Project.

Kierán Suckling, who directs and helped found the Tucson, Ariz.-based Center, boasts that he engages in psychological warfare by causing stress to already stressed public servants. "They feel like their careers are  being mocked and destroyed -- and they are," he told High Country News.  "So they become much more willing to play by our rules."

Those rules include bending the truth like pretzel dough. For example, after the  Center posted photos on its website depicting what it claimed was Arizona rancher Jim Chilton's cow-denuded grazing allotment, Chilton sued. When Chilton produced evidence that the photos showed a campsite and a parking lot, the court awarded him $600,000 in damages. Apparently this was the first successful libel suit against an environmental group, yet the case was virtually ignored by the media.

"Ranching should end," proclaims Suckling. "Good riddance." But the only problem with ranching is that it's not always done right. And even when it's done wrong, it saves land from development.

Amos Eno runs the hugely successful Yarmouth, Maine-based Resources First Foundation, an outfit that, among other things, assists ranchers who want to restore native ecosystems. Earlier, he worked at Interior's Endangered Species Office, crafting amendments to strengthen the  law, then went on to direct the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation. Eno figures the feds could "recover and delist three dozen species" with the resources they spend responding to the Center for Biological Diversity's litigation.

"The amount of money CBD makes suing is just obscene," he told me. "They're one of the reasons the Endangered Species Act has become so dysfunctional. They deserve the designation of eco-criminals."

A senior Obama official had this to say: "CBD has probably sued Interior more than all other groups combined. They've divested  that agency of any control over Endangered Species Act priorities and caused a huge drain on resources. In April, for instance, CBD petitioned to list 404 species, knowing full well that biologists can't make the required findings in  90 days."

Former Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt and his Fish and Wildlife Service director, Jamie Clark, together saved the Endangered Species Act from a hostile Congress. One way they did this was with brilliant habitat conservation plans that rewarded landowners for harboring endangered species instead of punishing them -- as the law had previously done.

A few plans were flawed, but the Center scarcely saw one that it didn't hate. "My frustration was not so much with lawsuits about listings, which fell like snowflakes," declared Babbitt, "but with litigation boiling up  around the plans."

Clark offered this: "Back then, the suits came mostly from CBD. Now I think CBD and WildEarth Guardians are trying to see who can sue most. Bruce (Babbitt), who was committed to saving endangered species, gave me the air cover I needed. I have yet to see that kind of commitment in this administration. The Service isn't making progress. Citizens need to be able to petition for species in trouble, but this has become an industry."

Acquiring the public's attention seems to motivate real environmental extremists almost as much as acquiring the public's money. Recently, the Center petitioned the Environmental Protection Agency to ban the manufacture and sale of lead ammunition and fishing weights. There are lots of inexpensive, non-toxic alternatives. And lead projectiles for hunting and lead sinkers small enough to be ingested by birds do need to be banned.  But the Center for Biological Diversity sought a ban on everything -- no exception for the military, outdoor or indoor target shooting, or deep-sea sinkers that ostriches couldn't swallow. It seems inconceivable that the Center didn't know its petition was going nowhere. But for a year its name has been all over the news, and now, predictably, the Center is suing EPA. The Center for Biological Diversity gives every environmentalist a bad name.

Ted Williams is a contributor to Writers on  the Range, a service of High Country News (hcn.org). He writes in Massachusetts.

© High Country News

You posted an attack piece by an anti-fish conservation congressman which begins with this sentence: "The Center for Biological Diversity today sent a letter to House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Doc Hastings..." So it's not terribly credible for you claim you know nothing about the Center's letter.

Nor is it credible for you to claim a lack of responsibility for Hastings' misrepresentations just because you posted his press release with no editorial comment. You chose to post. You chose to spread his message. Anyone who does that, especially a conservationists, is responsible for determining if it is true. Even more so since the case since the conservation group being attacked says Hastings' cooked the books.

That's how you damage your credibility.

Trashing a remarkably successful conservation group like the Center for Biological Diversity is controversial enough. Doing it by citing the anti-environmental, blatantly false rhetoric of Doc Hastings and Karen Bud-Falen is not going to buy you much credibility.

Ignoring all the amazing work the Center has done for endangered birds, bats, bugs, plants, frogs, reptiles and amphibians, you just have to look at all the habitat they've protected for fish to see how important they are. Whether it is long-lining in Hawaii, drift-netting in California, pupfish and minnows in the Southwest, sturgeon in the Northern Rockies, Atlantic salmon in Maine, darters in the Southeast or shiners in the Midwest, steelhead on the Westcoast, or trout in the Rockies, you can't go anywhere in the U.S. without terrific conservation work by the Center to stop destructive actions, protect habitats, increase federal fundings, and spur restoration actions.

They don't get everything right all the time, but then none of us do. The important thing is they get most things right most of the time and have a remarkable ability to make things happen where others are satisfied with complaining.

You mean because the committee cited some “letter” from the CBD I should have scurried around and found it?  C’mon.  I’ve already invited you to post it; so post and shut up.  And what about the letter from Environment and Natural Resources Division of the Department of Justice.  Should I have scurried around and found  that, too?  And do you really think a U.S. Congressman would dare to lie about what that letter contained?  Everyone who questions the CBD, me included, gets accused of “cooking the books.”  If the CBD is so concerned about these accusations, why doesn’t it come clean and detail how and where it gets its funding?  Instead, we get just one huge figure from “litigation.”  Why do you keep saying I cite Karen Bud-Falen?  I do no such thing.  Just because the wise-use crowd disapproves of how the CBD does business doesn’t mean that environmentalists like Ted Williams and Amos Eno and Jamie Clark and Jim Chilton and Bruce Babbitt shouldn’t do the same.  Our big beef is that CBD usurps priority for ESA listings, making the whole act dysfunctional.  Tragic.  CBD truly wants to help wildlife; and it truly is hurting wildlife as much or more than extractive industry.

Assuming President Obama is re elected with some sort of legislature to work with, at some point there has to be a refocus of priorities within Fish and Wildlife and indeed our whole system of public lands and jointly owned animals to concentrate on conserving and preserving as much as possible and to do that we need to somehow rid ourselves of wackos like the CBD and all of their clones.

Reading the rejoinder from the Director of CBD in the HCN I was bowled over. To think that someone so misguided could cause so much mischief is unbelievable.

The Center is invoking the judiciary to force the administration to obey the laws created by the Congress of the United States. That is not typically America defines terrorism.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife listing priority is defined by its official "candidate for listing" list. However, the average length of time a species spends on the list is twenty years due to agency foot dragging, especially during Republican administrations. The only two times in history the Fish and Wildlife Service has rapidly processed the candidate list are when the Center sued the agency in 1989 resulting a long-term listing plan and when the Center sued the agency again in 2011 resulting in a second long-term listing plan. So in fact, the Center is very focused on forcing the agency to follow its own priorities in the face of massive political pressure to ignore the priorities.

This is the center’s standard line.  But it doesn’t fly.  The Fish and Wildlife Service has limited staff and limited budget.  I know these biologists.  I work with them.  They are some of the finest, most dedicated folks I know.  They bust there humps.  But they can’t list and manage everything.  By suing for every species and subspecies in Christ's kingdom no matter what is or isn’t known about them the center has thrown federal biologists into a state of chaos.  They spend all their time defending these mostly meritless lawsuits, testifying for weeks instead of managing imperiled species.  Kierán Suckling, the center’s director, boasts that he engages in psychological warfare by causing stress to these already stressed public servants. "They feel like their careers are  being mocked and destroyed -- and they are," he told High Country News. Thanks to the center and a few other ultra-litigious outfits the ESA has become totally dysfunctional.  Sad. 

Ted, this just came out today. Seems the director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service doesn't agree with your and Doc Hastings' assertions about the Center. Given that you've been accused of cherry picking quotes and ignoring contrary opinions, I hope you'll include Director Ash's statements in future postings.

Excerpt:

"On the scale of the challenges that we face implementing the Endangered Species Act, litigation doesn't even show up on the radar screen," Ashe said in an interview this week marking his one-year anniversary as director...

Ashe dismissed the attacks as a "good sound bite," noting that the amount of money the agency has paid out in legal fees is a small fraction of the $200 million a year it spends to implement the ESA and hardly enough to support entire nonprofit organizations.

"Can I get frustrated at [Center for Biological Diversity] and WildEarth Guardians, or my good friend Jamie Clark at Defenders [of Wildlife] when they decide to sue us? Yeah, I can," Ashe said. "But on balance, I think it's a strength for the Endangered Species Act, and not a weakness."

Full story:

Environment & Energy Daily Thursday, July 5, 2012

Lawsuits not hurting Endangered Species Act -- FWS director
By Laura Petersen

The House GOP's campaign against environmental groups that sue the federal government over endangered species management is not the way to improve the Endangered Species Act, according to Fish and Wildlife Service Director Dan Ashe.

"On the scale of the challenges that we face implementing the Endangered Species Act, litigation doesn't even show up on the radar screen," Ashe said in an interview this week marking his one-year anniversary as director.

Invasive species, habitat fragmentation, water scarcity, climate change and availability of reliable scientific information are all much more pressing issues than lawsuits, Ashe said.

In an effort to overhaul the Endangered Species Act, House Natural Resources Chairman Doc Hastings (R-Wash.) has focused particularly on the high number of lawsuits brought against the government under the law's provision that allows citizens to sue if they disagree with a listing decision or a delayed decisionmaking process and have their legal fees paid for if they win.

Hastings has characterized the environmental groups that file suits regularly as "lawsuit-happy organizations that make a living off of suing the federal government" and called litigation costs "one of the greatest weaknesses" of the Endangered Species Act (E&E Daily, June 20).

Ashe dismissed the attacks as a "good sound bite," noting that the amount of money the agency has paid out in legal fees is a small fraction of the $200 million a year it spends to implement the ESA and hardly enough to support entire nonprofit organizations.

"Can I get frustrated at [Center for Biological Diversity] and WildEarth Guardians, or my good friend Jamie Clark at Defenders [of Wildlife] when they decide to sue us? Yeah, I can," Ashe said. "But on balance, I think it's a strength for the Endangered Species Act, and not a weakness."

The provision has been especially beneficial during presidential administrations that "did not have a friendly view" of implementing the law and protecting imperiled plants and animals, he said.

Last year, FWS struck a massive settlement agreement with environmental groups that set a six-year timeline for the agency to make decisions on 251 candidate species and initial findings on hundreds of other species. In exchange, the groups promised to not file more lawsuits.

The settlement has been "quite a success," with both sides being "faithful" to the bargain, Ashe said.

Asked how he would reform the Endangered Species Act, Ashe said "reform is too strong of a word."

However, he said the law can be better. The biggest improvement he would like to make is to increase financial incentives for endangered species conservation.

Ashe is a good politician.  He is groveling. 

I'm not following your logic in dismissing Dan Ashe's statements. Do you think he's groveling to the Center? What power would the Center have to make the director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service grovel?

Why do you say the ESA doesn't work? Aren't the majority of listed species are on a recovering trend and have an increased population size since listing?

One of the main reasons the ESA is dysfunctional is that the CBD petitions and sues for every species in Christendom, thereby destroying the ability of the Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service to recover the species that are in most serious trouble. Federal biologists have to cease working for wildlife in order to spend days and weeks consulting with Justice about the meritless petitions and suits filed by the CBD. The dwarf seahorse is a good example. There is absolutely no data to indicate that it should be listed, yet it occurs in the Gulf and provided the center with some publicity during the oil spill. 

Re. Ashe’s statement: He knows the system and one can’t know the system and honestly believe that the litigious onslaughts of the CBD are in anyway salubrious.  That’s why he comes off as groveling.  I've learned from my reporting that if you want accurate and honest statements about highly sensitive fish and wildlife issues you need to interview an official who has retired or is about to.  Here’s what Jamie Clark--another Fish and Wildlife Service director (now retired and running Defenders of Wildlife) told me:

"Back then, the suits came mostly from CBD. Now I think CBD and WildEarth Guardians are trying to see who can sue most. Bruce (Babbitt), who was committed to saving endangered species, gave me the air cover I needed. I have yet to see that kind of commitment in this administration. The Service isn't making progress. Citizens need to be able to petition for species in trouble, but this has become an industry."

But National Marine Fisheries Service biologists themselves did a biological status review and determined that the seahorse may require Endangered Species Act listing. See below. Thus you claim of absolutely no data supporting the Center's petition seems not to be true.

Are the Fisheries Service biologists also groveling?

MSNBC May 3, 2012

Smallest seahorse in US waters might get endangered protection
by Miguel Llanos

A species of seahorse that's just an inch tall, the smallest in U.S. waters, appears to warrant endangered protection, the U.S. said Thursday in kicking off a year-long review process.

Found in seagrass beds in the Gulf of Mexico, as well as in the Atlantic off Florida and the Caribbean, the dwarf seahorse caught the attention of the Center for Biological Diversity, a conservation group that petitioned for protection a year ago.

"The petition and information in our files present substantial scientific or commercial information indicating that the petitioned actions may be warranted," the National Marine Fisheries Service said in its decision.

"Declines in the dwarf seahorse population have been documented in a number of Florida’s estuaries and bays," the agency added. "It is evident that the dwarf seahorse is inextricably associated with seagrass and the inferences made about the species’ declining status due to habitat loss are supported."

Seagrass is critical habitat for the seahorses, and the center said that Florida alone has lost more than half of its seagrasses since 1950.

Some disturbing charges here.  Please don't vet Clausen's political leanings or anti-environmentalism.  Please respond to the specific charges.  Shoplifting, for example?  Can these charges be true?

http://www.newswithviews.com/Clausen/barry101.htm

Here’s a comment that got lost in cyberspace and that I was able to retrieve.  The CBD employee wrote:
A new low - Personal attacks about alleged incidents that supposedly happened EIGHTEEN YEARS AGO have no place on this forum. Especially when they are based on a web posting by a right wing anti-environmentalist. Shame on you Ted.
Here's Barry Clausen attacking salmon conservation:

Are you going to quote him on that too?

http://www.newswithviews.com/Clausen/barry105.htm

--

My response: How have you divined that this is a “new low” or any kind of a low or a “personal attack”? The piece is less than a year old.  If these kinds of charges are made in public media, the CBD needs to respond to their veracity, not their age.  And please note that only one of the charges is 18 years old.  What’s more, I asked you to address the specific charges, not comment on the author’s political leanings or anti-environmentalism.  If the charges are false, please set the record straight.  As for the link you provided,  I read the piece carefully and have no problem with the reporting.  So I’ll do more than quote the author, I’ll invite everyone to read it:  Here, again, is  the link:

http://www.newswithviews.com/Clausen/barry105.htm

Moreover, here’s why my linking a piece about Suckling's alleged shoplifting conviction is not a “personal attack” or a “low.”  It is relevant to the discussion at hand for the following reasons.  First, while it is by no means the most serious charge brought against the Center for Biological Diversity, it raises some very disturbing questions about the person who directs that organization and therefore the organization itself.  If the report is false, Clausen’s accusation is an open-and-shut case of libel.  So how is it that Suckling, who runs the ultra-litigious center, has not filed a libel suit against Clausen or others who have made the same charge or even issued a denial that I can find on Google?  If the charge is true, then he was thieving as a 30-year-old adult.  (Eighteen years ago he was 30.)  The many people whom he savages as dishonest in their critiques of the center did not steal things as adults.  These would include but are by no means limited to Clausen, Karen Budd-Falen, and even wise-use guru Ron Arnold.  So why should we believe Mr. Suckling when he tells us that all the copious condemnation of the center come from anti-environmentalists like these blighted souls or veteran environmentalists who have spent their careers in the trenches fighting for fish and wildlife but who have allegedly been duped by anti-environmentalists.  These alleged brain-poisoned enviros include but are by no means limited to Amos Eno who wrote the strengthening amendments to the ESA at Interior, went on to run the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, and now Resources First Foundation; Jamie Clark who ran the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and now runs Defenders of Wildlife; and Ted Williams who raises hundreds of thousands of dollars for environmental organizations as a board member of two foundations and since 1975 has written about fish and wildlife conversation for such national publications as Audubon, Sports Afield, Outdoor life, Sierra, High Country News, National Wildlife, Defenders of Wildlife, Mother Jones, and Smithsonian.

Why are you talking about stealing from the Forest Service?

See edit.

I can see why you'd want to change the subject from environmental to personal issues: virtually every "factual" complaint you lodge about sea horses, legal fees, opinions of Fish and Wildlife Service directors, results of petitions and effects of litigation ends up being shown as an exaggeration if not an outright error.

But personal attacks are a sign of desperation. They only weaken your position.

BTW, since you hold out Jamie Clark as proof of the Center's over-litigiousness, what do you make of the current Fish and Wildlife Service director lumping Ms. Clark in with the Center as groups which sometimes annoy him by suing too much? Pretty ironic, eh?

Suckling directs the Center. Therefore his criminal record reported by Clausen is relevant when vetting the Center. It does not qualify as a “personal attack.” Re. the USFWS director’s alleged annoyance with the center: You can’t have it both ways. Earlier you claimed that while he sometimes finds center’s litigious onslaught’s “frustrating,” they are salubrious because they amount to “a strength for the Endangered Species Act, and not a weakness." That’s absurd, of course, but that’s what you claimed he said.

It is puzzling that you cite Jim Chilton as an "environmentalist" when charged with spreading anti-environmental accusations. Mr. Chilton fought the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the U.S. Forest Service over protection of the endangered Sonora chub, and is on the board of CESAR a political group associated with Craig Manson and Julie MacDonald which has fought against endangered species protections for the Puget Sound orca and other species.

Ironically, CESAR also sued over the use of Rotenone to restore native fish on public lands in Arizona. Haven't you railed against the Center for Biological Diversity many times for doing exactly the same thing? How does fighting rotenone use make the Center for Biological Diversity evil, but make Chilton an environmentalist?

You’re just finding out about CESAR’s stupidity and ecological illiteracy?  Any group that would fight rotenone use to restore native fish is stupid and ecologically illiterate.  That would, of course, include CESAR, the Center for Biological Diversity, Wilderness Watch and several others.  While Chilton has done some great stuff for fish and wildlife and in many ways qualifies as an environmentalist, I did not “cite” him as an one.  I merely cited him as the first person to have filed a successful libel suit against an environmental organization and his case as an example of how “the Center bends the truth like pretzel dough.”  This is what I reported: “The Center posted photos on its website depicting what it claimed was Arizona rancher Jim Chilton's cow-denuded grazing allotment, Chilton sued. When Chilton produced evidence that the photos showed a campsite and a parking lot, the court awarded him $600,000 in damages.”  Would you say that this $600,000 expenditure was good use of the donations the Center solicits from a naïve and ill-informed public?