Friday, May 29, 2009Last Update: 4:29 PM PT

     WASHINGTON (CN) - Three years after listing the North American green sturgeon population south of California's coastal Eel River as threatened, the National Marine Fisheries Service plans to makes it unlawful for anyone to kill them.
      No one may "take" the fish, which includes fishing, and any activity resulting in significant habitat modification or degradation that has potential to kill, injure or harm the fish. The restrictions extend to all uses of habitat next to the population of fish, including agricultural use of pesticides, flood control, power generation and logging.
     Exceptions include "take" during restoration efforts, certain research or monitoring activities, NMFS enforcement activity, emergency fish rescue and salvage activities, and fish taken by Indian nations when the fishing is covered under a tribal fisheries management plan.
      The Endangered Species Act provides for civil penalties of up to $25,000 per violation, and criminal penalties of up to $50,000 plus one year imprisonment per violation.

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     WASHINGTON (CN) - Reverting to the Clinton Administration's policies on federalism, President Obama has admonished his departments and agencies not to steam-roll over states' rights without a sufficient legal basis, and has asked them to review all federal regulations in the last 10 years intended to preempt state law.
     Quoting U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brandeis, the president asserted that states have the privilege to try "novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country," and that the federal government should stay out of it without legal justification, which includes principles outlined in President Bill Clinton's Executive Order 13132.
     President George W. Bush's administration had scattered preemption provisions throughout federal regulations whether legally justified or not, often aiding businesses in getting around unfavorable state laws. Bush's agencies also included in some introductions to regulations that the agency planned to preempt state law, even when the federal regulation's having precedence over state laws actually was not part of the regulation.