A mental disorder we should name "green fever" is the only explanation I can come up with for suicidal environmental policies, such as the cutoff of water to California's San Joaquin Valley, impoverishing farmers and creating a new dust bowl, in the name of "saving" a supposedly "endangered" species - in this case the Delta Smelt, a tiny and useless fish.

Another instance comes from Maryland, where houses are about to tumble down a cliff, with authorities preventing the owners from saving their homes because an "endangered" beetle's habitat consistes of burrowing into and weakening the cliffs. WJZ TV in Baltimore reports:

Earlier this year, we revealed why almost 100homes are in danger of falling down a cliff. (snip)

In February, an investigation revealed 90 other homes are also in danger of collapse but nothing is being done because of the rare Puritan Tiger Beetle.  Only 5,000 of the endangered species are left on the planet.

"How much is this tiger beetle worth, compared to a bald eagle, a polar bear or that bush?" said Glenn Thierres, DNR.

Last winter, WJZ spoke to a state official in charge of endangered species.  He said because of the way these beetles burrow and lay eggs, they need the fast-eroding cliffs to reproduce or they could become extinct.

"If erosion doesn't occur on the cliff faces, then vegetation establishes itself.  It's detrimental to the beetle," Thierres said.

Conservationists are overestimating the number of species that have been driven to extinction, scientists have said. (I still want to question every thing every "scientists" says...as should all of the press)

A study has found that a third of all mammal species declared extinct in the past few centuries have turned up alive and well.

Some of the more reclusive creatures managed to hide from sight for 80 years only to reappear within four years of being officially named extinct in the wild.

The shy okapi - which resembles a cross between a zebra and a giraffe - was first discovered in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 1901.

After increasingly rarer sightings, it vanished from the wildlife radar for decades from 1959, prompting fears that it had died out.

But five years ago researchers working for the WWF found okapi tracks in the wild. 

Other mammals ‘back from the dead' include the rat-like Cuban solenodon, the Christmas Island shrew, the Vanikoro Flying Fox of the Solomon Islands, the Australian central rock rat and the Talaud Flying Fox of Indonesia.