The U.S. Supreme Court will hear a Louisiana family’s case against the federal government’s decision to designate their land as critical habitat for an endangered frog species that hasn’t lived there for decades.
Justices will decide if the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service erred in designating 1,500 acres of private land in St. Tammany Parish as critical habitat for the endangered dusky gopher frog. The high court, however, declined to hear a case on the bearded seal.
NEW: Supreme Court takes up a case about the fate of the dusky gopher frog (pictured) but turns away a fight over the bearded seal pic.twitter.com/4vsAXUIdwy
— Lawrence Hurley (@lawrencehurley) January 22, 2018
A federal appeals court declined to rehear the dusky gopher frog case in February 2017, but lawyers for the Poitevent family appealed their case to the Supreme Court. The family faces a $34 million price tag to make their lands more suitable for gopher frogs.
The Poitevent family, represented by the Pacific Legal Foundation, argues the government can’t commandeer private property to the benefit of an endangered species that hasn’t lived there for decades.
Six dissenting appeals court judges agreed last year and penned a 31-page dissent challenging the majority’s ruling. The judges wrote that the Endangered Species Act “and its implementing regulations have no ‘habitability requirement.”
“Louisiana land is ‘essential for the conservation of’ the frog even though it contains just one of three features critical to dusky gopher frog habitat,” the judges wrote.
However, courts have yet to rule against the federal government. The feds argue the Poitevent family’s land is necessary to keeping the dusky gopher frog from going extinct.
Federal officials listed the dusky gopher frog under the Endangered Species Act in 2001 in response to a petition from the environmental group the Center for Biological Diversity. Officials said Poitevent family land is among the last known dusky gopher frog habitats in Louisiana.
Officials designated 6,477 acres as critical habitat for the endangered dusky gopher frog in 2012. About 1,500 acres of that designation was on private land.
Read more at Daily Caller
Sneaky, non? A Montreal and frogs non-sequitur.
Its just like with the Red Cockaided Woodpecker no one had ever seen one of theirs birds in this area but the Buricrats would not allow the property owners sell wood becuase of the trees having woodpecker holes and as everybody knows all woodpeckers peck holes in trees for their nests and for food i mean the ESA ned to be either amended or repealed and the Greens oppose this becuase this lines their pockets