Woo-Woo That Smell

B.O. may be putting to fine a stink on the newest outrage from Bu$hCo. &, predictably, it's from Florida.

The federal agency that is charged with protecting Florida panthers, manatees and other endangered species has let developers write part of opinions on whether their projects would doom the animals to extinction.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has allowed developers and their consultants write “biological opinions,’’ or “BO’’ for short, because the agency is swamped with paperwork, according to a March 2005 Fish and Wildlife Service e-mail obtained by The St. Petersburg Times.

“To speed things up (due to our heavy workload) we are asking the consultant for each project that adversely affects panthers to prepare a BO based on a template BO that we will send you,’’ federal biologist John Wrublik wrote in the e-mail to RaeAnn Boylan, a consultant for a Lee County project to widen a road through panther habitat.