In a move that, sadly, has surprised almost no one, Bush’s last insult to the natural world has been to gut the Endangered Species Act by allowing federal agencies to permit commercial activities on federal land without evaluating their environmental impact.

The State of California, Natural Resources Defense Council and the Sierra Club have all filed lawsuits against the federal government to overturn these changes.

During Bush’s term in office, the endangered species act was hardly taken seriously. A recent report has shown that Julie Macdonald, the head of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, took every opportunity to manipulate scientific reports and avoid protecting species or land, resulting in hundreds of thousands of dollars fighting lawsuits filed by environmental groups.

“Scientists were concerned that they would be subject to MacDonald’s verbal assaults and potential personnel actions,” a federal official told investigators. “The concern caused them to take into consideration how to produce a project that would please MacDonald, instead of focusing on the science.”

Macdonald resigned in May 2007 after investigators discovered she had tampered with scientific evidence and given internal documents to oil industry lobbyists.

Read more about Bush’s new regulations at the Center for Biological Diversity, and sign their petition to fight the changes. Sierra Club also has a petition here.