In 2008, the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) enacted a ruling that shut down the pumps controlling irrigation of the San Joaquin River Valley (California) in an attempt to protect an endangered native fish. It is estimated that this ruling cost the local economy thousands of jobs and nearly wiped out the region’s farming industry. When several state and local entities challenged this decision in 2009, a US District Court judge overruled the FWS’s “arbitrary and capricious” decision, citing their use of “sloppy science” and stating that the “best available science” had been ignored. The judge also criticized the FWS for their failure to consider the cost this decision would, and did have on the general public and economy (see: Decision). This was only the second time in history that a FWS decision was overturned.
Rather than take and implement the constructive criticism doled out by the US District Court, however, the FWS has chosen to ignore it and continue to arrogantly pursue its own agenda yet again.
The FWS is now seeking to make the interstate trade and transport of Boa constrictors, Burmese and Indian pythons, and several other large constricting snakes a felony based entirely on a pair of highly criticized reports published in 2008 and 2009 by Gordon Rodda and Robert Reed of the US Geological Service (USGS). (It bears mentioning that the FWS and the USGS are sister organizations under the Department of the Interior).