AUSTIN – The Texas Public Policy Foundation today released Analysis of the Science in the Whooping Crane Decision: The Aransas Project v. Shaw. The study is authored by eminent scientist Lee Wilson, Ph.D., who brings more than 40 years’ experience in water resources and environmental science. Among his many credentials, Wilson has been qualified in Federal Court as an expert on the Endangered Species Act and consulted for Environmental Protection Agency for 27 years regarding water, wetland, and coastal resources in Texas and Louisiana.
This study analyzes the March 2013 decision of federal Judge Janis Graham Jack in a lawsuit brought by The Aransas Project (TAP). She found the presumed deaths of 23 federally protected whooping cranes at the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) in winter 2008-2009 were caused by Texas Commission of Environmental Quality’s (TCEQ) management of the water in the Guadalupe and San Antonio River basins. She held that TCEQ’s actions led to the deaths of 23 whooping cranes, a fundamental violation of the Endangered Species Act (ESA).
“Unless this federal court ruling is reversed, the Endangered Species Act could impose a formidable obstacle to increasing the Texas water supply,” said Kathleen Hartnett White, Distinguished Senior Fellow in Residence and Director of the Armstrong Center for Energy and Environment at the Texas Public Policy Foundation. “Dr. Wilson’s study provides an intriguing and hopeful story about the growing whooping crane population in Texas, a flock that has continually grown at the same time that consumptive water use has increased.”
As White explains in her forward, “Utilizing more rigorous methodology, in this study Dr. Wilson critiques the flawed assumptions in the court’s methodology, now abandoned by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, for calculating mortality that was accepted by Judge Jack. Most importantly, Dr. Wilson’s analysis provides a more compelling and statistically significant scientific reasoning for the cause of relatively higher whooping crane mortalities observed in 2008-2009 than accepted by the district court.”
This study is significant as The Aransas Project v. Shaw is on an expedited schedule with oral argument before the United States Court of Appeals, 5th Circuit set for this summer.
To read the study in its entirety visit: http://www.texaspolicy.com/library/doclib/Analysis-of-the-Science-The-Whooping-Crane-Decision.pdf.
Kathleen Hartnett Whiteis the Distinguished Senior Fellow in Residence and Director for the Armstrong Center for Energy and Environment at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a non-profit, free-market research institute based in Austin.
The Texas Public Policy Foundation is a non-profit, free-market research institute based in Austin.
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