23 Aug 2005 U.S. Fish and Wildlife’s Service’s New Math

Husband David Ridenour has a question:

Q: When does 90 days equal 3,074 days?

A:When the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is doing the counting.

The FWS recently issued a “90-day finding” on a petition to delist the slackwater darter, or etheostoma boschungi, from the Endangered Species Act’s “threatened list.” The petition had been filed by the National Wilderness Institute on February 3, 1997.

The FWS is supposed to make such 90-day findings within, well, 90 days.

It missed the mark by 2,984 days. In other words, it took the FWS more than 34 times the amount of time it was supposed to take.

By this standard, President Bush would still have about 136 years left on his second term (or about 269 years left on his two terms combined).

This occurred because — the FWS notes — delisting is its lowest priority under the agency’s Listing Priority Guidance, at tier 4.

Apparently, saving taxpayer money and making sure it doesn’t use its funds to save species that are either fully recovered or completely extinct isn’t important over at the Fish and Wildlife Service.

If we’re going to use new math, how about this? We’ll fund the FWS… at 1/34 of its current level.