Lynx sacrified to free trade and leghold trapping
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1997:
WASHINGTON D.C.––The Department
of Commerce and U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service have escalated efforts to avert the long
pending European Union ban on imports of pelts
which might be taken by leghold trapping––and
the U.S. population of Canadian lynx may
become the first species extirpated by the Bill
Clinton/Albert Gore administration defense of
free trade at any cost, as on May 23 the USFWS
ruled in that an endangered species listing of the
lynx is “warrented but precluded” by other priorities.
The ruling came in response to a
March 27 verdict by U.S. District Judge Gladys
Kessler that the USFWS did not properly weigh
the evidence that the lynx is endangered in
refusing to list it in 1994.
Officially, the so-called other priorities
precluding listing the lynx involve a backlog
of other species awaiting listing. Unofficially,
the USFWS top priority may be avoiding the
necessity of protecting the lynx from hunting,