The Bush Administration Versus the Black-Footed Ferrit

CNN's Broken Government aired a program titled "Scorched Earth" which included a section on the problems that the Fish and Wildlife Service is having protecting the Black Footed Ferret population against ranchers supported by the Forest Service under Mark Rey. The ferret program has succeeded in bringing the numbers of the cute little guys back to a few thousand, but the Forest Service is working to destroy part of the most important ecosystem in which they are being reestablished in the wild.

The Undercover Activist Blog has a useful posting focusing on the departure of Mike Lockhart from his job protecting the ferrets, with a link to has sad memo protesting the political hamstringing of the FWS program.

I also suggest that you read Source Watch's article on Mark Rey, the former industrial lobbyist and Republican Congressional Staffer (who reputedly used that position to continue his fight to gut environmental laws) who is the Undersecretary for Natural Resources and Environment of the Department of Agriculture. I kid you not! The Bush administration put the fox in charge of protecting the hen house (or in this case the voice of the anti-environmentalists in charge of protecting the prairie dogs and ferrets). Rey was interviewed by the CNN program, and came off as badly as usual.