
Freedom Foundation notes,
The USFWS budget totaled $3.1 billion as of 2011. Of these funds, $1.2 billion were grants to local governments or other groups for habitat improvement programs. Basically, USFWS is a financial middleman for over one-third of its budget. Much of its remaining budget funds ESA-related issues, which includes paying rewards to groups like the Center for Biological Diversity to sue the government. Other budget items include “plans” to recover species (but not the “action” to save them) and about $100 million per year for land acquisition.
The Barred Owl is just one local example of these corrupt, inefficient operations at work. The USFWS listed the Northern Spotted Owl in 1990, causing financial ruin for many Pacific Northwest communities. Now, after more than 20 years of massive restrictions on human activity, the USFWS has been forced to admit that the process of natural selection has more to do with the dwindling Spotted Owl population as it loses out to its bigger and more adaptable cousin, the Barred Owl.
Human activity was irrelevant to this inevitable outcome. The Barred Owl will eventually exterminate the Spotted Owl. I wrote about this story here. However, now that USFWS intends to reverse nature and deny natural selection, it is worth looking at this agency and realizing the Spotted Owl fiasco was just a template of future behavior by this arm of our government.