SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California is suing the Bush administration to block last-minute endangered-species regulations that are intended to reduce input from federal scientists, state Attorney General Jerry Brown announced Tuesday.
Brown said the president is trying to gut the Endangered Species Act before he leaves office next month.
“Unfortunately, the Bush administration has had an antipathy to using sound science,” Brown said in a phone interview with The Associated Press. “This is the latest assault as Bush goes out the door. It’s intolerable.”
The lawsuit was filed late Monday in U.S. District Court in San Francisco.
The Interior Department issued the revised rules this month.
They allow federal agencies to issue permits for mining, logging and similar activities without getting a review from federal wildlife biologists if their own research shows the project will not affect plants and animals.
The changes also block agencies from using the Endangered Species Act to consider the effects of greenhouse-gas emissions on ecosystems when reviewing projects such as new roads or coal plants on federal land.
Interior Department spokeswoman Tina Kreisher said the revised rules will continue to protect threatened and endangered species and noted that the law says federal agencies will ensure no listed animals are killed.
The lawsuit also names the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the U.S. Department of Commerce and the National Marine Fisheries Service as defendants.
Brown is asking the court to block the new rules, which could give the incoming administration of President-elect Barack Obama time to review them.
Obama has said he would work to reverse the changes.
