Explainer: What's at Stake in the 2020 Rollback of Migratory Bird Treaty Act Protections?
What just happened?
In January 2020 the U.S. Department of the Interior proposed regulations to codify the Trump Administration’s 2017 legal opinion that Migratory Bird Treaty Act protections do not include so-called “incidental take.” This new rule would reverse a half-century of federal policy that held industry and companies liable for irresponsible actions that resulted in preventable (if unintentional) bird deaths, such as the 1 million birds killed in the Gulf of Mexico in the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
The MBTA Was a Powerful Tool
Prior to this policy reversal, the MBTA was a powerful tool in promoting productive dialogue among industry, environmental groups, and the federal government to prevent bird deaths. “Numerous common sense solutions [stemming from the MBTA] have reduced the incidental, wanton killing of millions of birds by such hazards as open oil waste pits, oil spills, unprotected pesticide residues, unmarked transmission lines, and lethally situated wind farms,” wrote Cornell Lab of Ornithology director John W. Fitzpatrick in a 2018 column for Living Bird magazine.
“Under [the Trump Administration’s] new and extremely narrow interpretation, whole industries (e.g., energy, mining, chemical production) are suddenly freed from legal liability even if their actions result in predictable, avoidable, and massive killing of birds.”
You Can File a Public Comment
https://www.regulations.gov/document?D=FWS-HQ-MB-2018-0090-0002
Whatever your own thoughts about the proposed rule change, you can let the government know them. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has established a public comment period to last through March 19
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