At Greenwire, Jeremy P. Jacobs: Legal fight over prairie dog could chew hole in ESA (giving interesting background on People for the Ethical Treatment of Property Owners v. U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, the endangered species/commerce clause case discussed here). It begins:
The Utah prairie dog — tawny-furred, with black eyebrows and white-tipped tails — looks like it hopped out of a Disney cartoon.
But the little burrowing rodent is seen as a monster in southwest Utah.
"Go talk to five people who live here and ask about the prairie dogs, and you're going to get an earful," said Matt Munson, a lawyer leading opposition here to federal efforts to protect the prairie dog under the Endangered Species Act. "Everyone has been impacted. People have lost businesses, people have lost their homes. People have been bitten. Their dogs have died. You name it, there have been all types of issues."
Munson and a group of property owners took the Fish and Wildlife Service to court over species law's "take" provision, which bars killing or harassing prairie dogs. And last November, a federal district judge in Utah sided with the Cedar City group, striking down the prohibition because it violated the Constitution's Commerce Clause. The law, the court held, cannot regulate the activity of a species that exists in just one state and has no impact on interstate economic activity.
The ruling shocked environmentalists and emboldened conservatives who had long questioned the take provision's constitutionality.
…
Suddenly, the government's appeal of the prairie dog decision has become one of the country's most important environmental cases.
Also one of the most important commerce clause cases.
Posted at 6:26 AM