The Goon Squad Redux
The federal endangered species Goon Squad is going to hell.
The federal Endangered Species Act Extinction Committee (Goon Squad) is going to hell. But they just keep doubling-down on their depraved indifference to endangered species, national parks & public lands and the natural environment that we all live in and depend upon.
Today, Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum (a.k.a. Drill Baby Doug) announced that the Interior Department will undergo a major reorganization, including the National Park Service (NPS), so that Interior employees can be more efficient and dedicated in their primary roles, as the Secretary sees them, in oil and gas exploration and providing “world-class service” in more public-facing (e.g. tourist service) roles in the parks and public spaces of the NPS.
So much for the NPS at Golden Gate Natural Resource Area providing any help in saving the Snowy Plovers from all the Friends of Sunset Dunes people and their dogs trampling their nests and their habitat and scaring the living hell out of all the plovers down on Ocean Beach, especially during FOSD’s “Ploverfest,” which has to be the most oxymoronic name for an event in recent memory.
Secretary Burgum’s most recent double-down on his road to perdition comes just one day after word came down that the entire National Forest Service was being dismantled. And why not shut down all of the NFS offices and some 30 NFS research stations, I mean, it isn’t like we're facing down potentially the worst wildfire season in history in the western half of the U.S… wait, umm, OK, it is like we’re facing that but who needs Forest Service research stations when we can just give out a bunch of rakes and tell people to go rake the forest.
And of course, the day before that ludicrous decision, Secretary Burgum presided over the first convening of the Endangered Special Act Extinction Committee (Goon Squad) in 35 years, which I wrote about last night and published this morning. You can read a full, updated report on that $%*+ Parade immediately below:
The God Goon Squad has lost its Mind
I doubt it ever had a soul.
On the morning of March 31, 2026, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum convened the Endangered Species Committee, which is also referred to as the Extinction Committee — or even more cynically, The God Squad — because this convening possesses the authority to allow species to go extinct.
Prior to Tuesday, The God Squad had not been convened in 35 years. Moreover, this God Squad convening, at the behest of SecDef Pete Hegseth — because that’s the person that everyone wants influencing endangered species decisions — was called to consider a “national security” claim as rationale (excuse) to waive ESA wildlife protections. Such a claim had never been used for an ESA waiver in the 53 year history of the Act and the panel, until Tuesday.
SecDef Pete Hegseth requested the waiver and was allowed to attend the meeting as a guest. He argued that “legal conflicts over endangered species protections could interfere with domestic oil production.”
After approximately 20 minutes of discussion, the committee voted to exempt oil and gas operations in the Gulf of Mexico from Endangered Species Act restrictions.
The six-member Endangered Species Committee voted unanimously for the exemption. The God Squad members are:
Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum — Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Lee Zeldin — Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll — Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins — Administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Neil Jacobs — Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors Pierre Yared.
Anyone with even a sliver of concern about wildlife, public lands & waters or the integrity of federal environmental law should be concurrently repulsed and enraged by this decision.
Deep water, deeper trouble, the Rice’s Whale
However, I am troubled by something even deeper than the alcohol-riddled, fever-dream machinations of SecDef Hegseth.
There are believed to be no more than 51 Rice’s Whales alive today. Their habitat is the Gulf of Mexico, they live no where else on the planet.
The most unironic fact in this entire matter is that the Deepwater Horizon incident killed over 20% of the Rice’s Whales that existed at the time and the population in the Gulf, which again, is the global population, has not recovered.
And now the oil and gas industry wants to take another stab at the Rice’s Whales, with the help of SecDef Hegseth and the Trump administration’s environmental Goon Squad (no, I’m not correcting that, I said what I meant and meant what I said).
In accepting this ESA exemption, the Goon Squad has likely moved one of the rarest marine mammals on Earth — the Rice’s Whale — to the edge of the extinction abyss. And that’s the thing about extinction, once a species goes over the edge of that abyss, there is no tomorrow, no “we’ll do better next time,” zero is zero, done is done.
As for the ruling itself, the waiver does nothing more than override a National Marine Fisheries Service requirement that ships operated by oil and gas companies must monitor the location of whales and travel at a safe speed (safe for the whales that is).
Ponder that for a moment, the regulation at issue does not prohibit drilling or oil & gas production, does not prohibit vessel traffic even a little. It simply requires that the ships observe a speed limit and try to avoid hitting and killing whales, Rice’s Whales in particular.
Deep Ecology
There are two things about the Goon Squad’s decision that disturb me the most:
It concerns me deeply, not because I am a “whale hugger.” I’m fine if you all want to call me that. I love animals, more than a fair number of people I know. But there is a larger set of issues at play here. We all — people, pets, livestock, wildlife, crops, plants and all the rest of us — exist in and are part of ecosystems that we know so little about.
To capture fully what I mean about the unexpected behaviors of ecosystems, watch the documentary video about the reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone National Park. In a 4 minute video you’ll learn about the trophic cascade that occurred when wolves were brought back to Yellowstone after a 70 year human-induced hiatus. How the the presence of the wolves altered not just the number of deer and elk in parts of the park but their behavior. They began avoiding certain areas, such as the river gorges, and that avoidance had cascading impacts on the trees, shrubs and grasses as well as the bears, beavers, birds, rodents, reptiles and amphibians that eat and live in the new plants and trees in the valley. And after just a few years of the wolves living in the park, the flow of the rivers itself was altered as well, because the wolves came back and with them the bears, beavers, songbirds, eagles, otters, muskrats, trees, bushes, grasses, frogs and lizards and all of the rest.
Seriously, watch the video, you have no idea how interesting it is to learn about a trophic cascade.
The absence of the Rice’s Whales will alter our world. I don’t know precisely how but neither do you all and sure as hell Pete Hegseth has no clue whatsoever.
Perhaps a close second, for my depth of concern at least, is seeing this kind of decision emanating from regulatory agencies and environmental organizations on such a regular basis that it seems almost daily. When the Sierra Club, California Environmental Protection Agency and California Coastal Commission all hold hands and sing Kumbaya together in support of Upzoning or industrial development over environmental protection, it feels very much the same. When every issue has to be measured first by what the industrialists, the billionaire-boys-club and tech-bro & cyber-bro set think about it and how it might effect them and their wants, needs and bottomlines… When before government can concern itself with impacts to our lives and, God-forbid, the survival of the Rice’s Whales… When that is what I see almost every day these days, I know that we have lost our way.
One last thing, as a person of faith, it offends me deeply that the fractional men and women working under Trump’s administration would embrace in anyway the moniker of “The God Squad.” I won’t use it anymore for that reason I know that if I am ever going to be able to find my way back from wherever we ended up after we lost our way, it will be because of my faith.
So, for you Extinction Committee boys and girls, The Goon Squad it is. And now, let’s find our way back from this God-forsaken Trumpian wilderness. I hope we can make it back in time for the Rice’s Whales… John
Though the Heavens Fall... by John Crabtree — If you subscribe I have a better chance of finding my way back from the fascist, dystopian Trump nightmare described above. Every subscriptions helps… jbc