Trump’s determination to ignore all Science on all things to do with the environment continues. In recent times, his administration has decided many species should lose their protection. The conservationists must now prove that a proposed development, for example, will harm wildlife, instead of the developer having to prove that it won’t.Â
His latest move is to allow hunting of grizzly bears. These bears were once found throughout much of continental USA, but were pushed back to Canada and a small number of other areas. For 40 years hunting grizzly bears had been banned, and over that time populations have started to recover. For instance, within Yellowstone, at the time of the ban only around 136 bears survived. Four decades later more than 700 live in this same area.
At this time there are still few bears relative to their historical population, and people are concerned that these gains could be lost in a few months of hunting. Currently, authorities are setting sensible limits, but we will see what happens.
Update: a federal judge has done a review of this decision and has stated that it does not take account of public science or knowledge of current population levels and therefore had been permanently returned to status of being banned – though unlikely to be the end of it.
