Developers and cattle ranchers are pressuring the United States Fish and Wildlife Service to delist the golden-cheeked warbler from the Endangered Species Act. It's the only bird that breeds exclusively in Texas. This warbler breeds exclusively in a twenty-acre area in Texas, mostly in juniper trees and occasionally in oak and cedar. The Koch brothers-backed Reason Foundation is arguing that the bird's scarcity has been exaggerated.
At the same time, according to a local radio station, Texas land owners have, for several decades, practiced a "shoot, shovel, and shut up" policy on the warbler. It appears that the rights of property owners to get the top price on their farmland trumps the warbler's right to exist.
The truth is that the golden-cheeked warbler is still hovering on the brink of extinction. An Audubon Society survey reports only 716 singing males within an area of thirty-nine acres. Please join me in asking the United States Fish and Wildlife Service to stand firm and keep the golden-cheeked warbler on the Endangered Species list.
Dear United States Fish and Wildlife:
We the undersigned thank you for your vigilant efforts to protect the golden-cheeked warbler from habitat destruction. We understand that you are now under considerable pressure from ranchers and other land owners to take this bird off the endangered species list. You should resist that pressure, and stay the course. The people who are arguing for delisting are clearly motivated by greed and profit, despite deceptive sounding organizational names like "Endangered Species Project at the Reason Foundation." That name cynically disguises the organization as being in favor of ecological conservation when its true aims are to bulldoze and develop forests and other conservation areas. The Audubon Society has reported that there are only 716 male golden-cheeked warblers within the birds' breeding range in Texas. Please apply a grain or two of salt to assertions by greedy land holders that the number of golden-cheeked warblers has risen to the point where they are no longer in danger.
