The attorney general of New York led eight states Wednesday in suing the Trump administration in federal court for easing rules energy companies have to follow on killing birds.
Plaintiffs on the suit, all Democrats, said weakening the rules “subjects migratory birds to increased likelihood of death or injury from industrial and other human activities.”
This would harm the states, the plaintiffs say, because migratory birds benefit citizens who live there by providing “ecological services,” including eating insects and rodents, pollinating, and dispersing seeds.
The birds also provide scientific, recreational, and birdwatching opportunities, and aesthetic benefits, the states said.
“All of these benefits directly or indirectly generate economic activity and tax revenue for the States, which are lost or diminished when bird numbers are depleted,” the states said in the lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
California, Illinois, Maryland, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, and Massachusetts also joined the lawsuit.
The Interior Department recently issued a new interpretation of the 1918 Migratory Bird Treaty Act, which is used to prosecute energy companies for killing birds in the course of their operations. The law is worded broadly, and makes it illegal to “pursue, hunt, take, [or] capture” a migratory bird “by any means whatever [and] at any time or in any manner.”
But the Trump administration said applying the law “to incidental or accidental actions hangs the sword of Damocles over a host of otherwise lawful and productive actions, threatening up to six months in jail and a $15,000 fine for each and every bird injured or killed.”
Interior’s new interpretation of the law said a company violates the law only when it’s “engaged in an activity the object of which was to render an animal subject to human control.” Interior’s Acting Solicitor Daniel Jorjani released a Dec. 22 legal opinion on the matter.
In January, former Interior officials from Democrat and Republican administrations criticized the Trump administration’s change.
“This is a new, contrived legal standard that creates a huge loophole, allowing companies to engage in activities that routinely kill migratory birds so long as they were not intending that their operations would ‘render an animal subject to human control,” said the 17 authors of the letter, which include Interior Department officials from the Carter, Nixon, Ford, George H.W. Bush, Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama administrations.
