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Trump Appoints Ex-Monsanto Executive To Head The Fish And Wildlife Service

10.23.18 | 1:04 pm

A building Q sign at the headquarters of the Monsanto Company, in St. Louis, Missouri on September 23, 2016. Photo: Daniel Dreifuss/dpa | usage worldwide (Photo by Daniel Dreifuss/picture alliance via Getty Images)

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump says he is nominating a former executive at agribusiness giant Monsanto to head the Fish and Wildlife Service.

Aurelia Skipwith of Indiana is currently deputy assistant Interior secretary for fish, wildlife and parks.

A biologist and lawyer, Skipwith spent more than six years at Monsanto and has worked at the Agriculture Department and U.S. Agency for International Development.

The Fish and Wildlife Service has been without a Senate-confirmed director since Trump took office in January 2017.

Greg Sheehan, a former Utah official who served as deputy director for 14 months, stepped down in August. Under Sheehan’s tenure as the agency’s senior political official, the Fish and Wildlife Service proposed broad changes to rules governing protections for thousands of species and pushed for more hunting and fishing on federal lands.

The agency moved recently to end a longstanding practice that automatically gave the same protections to threatened species as it gives to more critically endangered species. The proposal also limits habitat safeguards meant to shield recovering species from harm and requires consideration of the economic impacts of protecting an imperiled species.

The changes have alarmed wildlife advocates who fear a weakening of the Endangered Species Act, the landmark law that has been used to save species as diverse as the bald eagle and the American alligator. The proposals were cheered by Republican lawmakers and others who say the endangered species law has been misused to block economic development and needs reform.

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke tried to make Sheehan acting director of the 9,000-employee wildlife service, but Sheehan was barred from that role because he did not have a required science degree.

Skipwith has been at Interior since April 2017. She helps oversee policy planning and regulatory actions for the wildlife agency and the National Park Service.

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MATTHEW DALY

From the Center for Biological Diversity:

Aurelia Skipwith has been at the Department of the Interior since April 2017 and has helped oversee virtually every effort to dismantle protections for wildlife, national parks and monuments.

“Aurelia Skipwith has been working in the Trump administration all along to end protections for billions of migratory birds, gut endangered species safeguards and eviscerate national monuments,” said Brett Hartl, government affairs director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “Skipwith will always put the interests of her old boss Monsanto and other polluters ahead of America’s wildlife and help the most anti-environmental administration in history do even more damage.”

Under current U.S. law, the president cannot appoint a person to run the Fish and Wildlife Service unless the person is “by reason of scientific education and experience, knowledgeable in the principles of fisheries and wildlife management.” Skipwith’s nomination breaks with decades of tradition from presidential administrations of both parties in that she has neither education nor experience in fisheries and wildlife management.

“Skipwith is utterly unqualified to run the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service,” said Hartl. “Putting unqualified ideological fanatics into positions of power continues to be the Trump administration’s game plan. These people have utterly no compunction or shame about destroying the very agencies they’re being appointed to lead.”

During Skipwith’s tenure the Fish and Wildlife Service has repeatedly put the interests of the pesticide industry ahead of imperiled wildlife. In the spring of 2017, the Service scrapped the first nationwide biological reviews that assessed the impacts of pesticides on endangered species. In August it reversed a 2014 decision prohibiting bee-killing neonicotinoid pesticides and genetically modified, pesticide-resistant crops on national wildlife refuges.

Skipwith has also overseen the national park system in her current position and was instrumental in the agency’s sham review of the national monument system that enabled Trump to illegally eliminate Bears Ears National Monument and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.

“The Senate should ask Skipwith hard questions about her tenure at the Service, because confirming her would be a travesty for our nation’s wildlife,” said Hartl.

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moreyampersand says:

October 23, 2018

From the Center for Biological Diversity:

Aurelia Skipwith has been at the Department of the Interior since April 2017 and has helped oversee virtually every effort to dismantle protections for wildlife, national parks and monuments.

“Aurelia Skipwith has been working in the Trump administration all along to end protections for billions of migratory birds, gut endangered species safeguards and eviscerate national monuments,” said Brett Hartl, government affairs director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “Skipwith will always put the interests of her old boss Monsanto and other polluters ahead of America’s wildlife and help the most anti-environmental administration in history do even more damage.”

Under current U.S. law, the president cannot appoint a person to run the Fish and Wildlife Service unless the person is “by reason of scientific education and experience, knowledgeable in the principles of fisheries and wildlife management.” Skipwith’s nomination breaks with decades of tradition from presidential administrations of both parties in that she has neither education nor experience in fisheries and wildlife management.

“Skipwith is utterly unqualified to run the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service,” said Hartl. “Putting unqualified ideological fanatics into positions of power continues to be the Trump administration’s game plan. These people have utterly no compunction or shame about destroying the very agencies they’re being appointed to lead.”

During Skipwith’s tenure the Fish and Wildlife Service has repeatedly put the interests of the pesticide industry ahead of imperiled wildlife. In the spring of 2017, the Service scrapped the first nationwide biological reviews that assessed the impacts of pesticides on endangered species. In August it reversed a 2014 decision prohibiting bee-killing neonicotinoid pesticides and genetically modified, pesticide-resistant crops on national wildlife refuges.

Skipwith has also overseen the national park system in her current position and was instrumental in the agency’s sham review of the national monument system that enabled Trump to illegally eliminate Bears Ears National Monument and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.

“The Senate should ask Skipwith hard questions about her tenure at the Service, because confirming her would be a travesty for our nation’s wildlife,” said Hartl.
tiowally says:

October 23, 2018

“Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power.”
— Giovanni Gentile, the philosopher of fascism
asturcot says:

October 23, 2018

If I did not know better, I would say the Dotard is trolling us…
26degreesrising says:

October 23, 2018

This is just laughable. Except it’s not.
benthere says:

October 23, 2018

Fox, enter hen house, and eat!

Continue the discussion at forums.talkingpointsmemo.com

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