Let the public have its say.

Byline: The Register-Guard

The Bush administration wants to squeeze the time allowed for public comment on its proposal to undermine the Endangered Species Act. Its motivation is no secret - to finalize the regulatory overhaul before the next president is sworn into office.

Not that the administration really gives a spotted owl's hoot what the public thinks about its latest environmental rollback. President Bush made that clear in 2005 when he overturned, without a single public hearing, the Roadless Area Conservation Rule - a rule the Clinton administration issued after holding 600 public hearings and gathering more than 2 million public comments.

The Interior Department recently set a 30-day comment period on the proposal to eliminate mandatory independent scientific reviews of projects that could harm an endangered species living on federal lands. That was half the time allotted in an earlier draft - and a fourth the time more than 100 conservation groups recently sought in a letter to Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne.

Currently, any project that may affect an endangered species and requires approval by a federal agency must undergo independent review by scientists at the Fish and Wildlife Service or the National Marine Fisheries Service. The proposed rules would leave it to agencies in charge of projects to decide whether reviews are necessary.

That's a lousy idea for everyone except the industry groups that chronically complain that the act needlessly delays projects and drives up costs. Left to their own, many agencies, especially those that have no experience assessing risks to wildlife and that are often susceptible to industry influence, will decide that independent scientific assessments are unnecessary.

Kempthorne insists the change is necessary to keep the act from being used as a "back door" means of regulating the greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global warming. If the administration were willing even to crack open the front door, that might be a reasonable argument, but it has gone to extraordinary lengths to block any meaningful action to limit emissions.

By "back door," Kempthorne is referring to the polar bear, which Interior listed as threatened in May. The reason for the listing was climate change, and global warming continues to melt the bears' sea-ice habitat at a pace that far exceeds earlier predictions. Last year, summer sea ice shrank to a record low - roughly 40 percent of its long-term average between 1979 and 2000. Most climate modelers predict an Arctic Ocean that's ice free during summer months by 2030 - and that could prove cataclysmic for the polar bear, which relies on the ice for mating, foraging and denning.

Earlier this month, federal wildlife monitors off Alaska's northwest coast spotted nine polar bears in one day swimming in open ocean, once a rare occurrence. The scientists were working for the Interior Department's Minerals Management Service, which recently leased 2.76 million acres of prime polar bear habitat for offshore oil exploration. It's classic Bush administration policy: More fossil fuels. More emissions. Less sea ice. Fewer polar bears. Keep looking the other way.

Kempthorne should abandon the proposed rule change or, failing that, extend the public comment period. If he refuses, Congress should block the changes and protect the Endangered Species Act itself from extinction.