"On Aug. 7, 2012, David Bernhardt went to bat for the American eel.

Theirs seemed an odd alliance — slippery, even, to some.

A Republican lawyer and lobbyist, Bernhardt had previously spent eight years in the George W. Bush administration's Interior Department. There, the Colorado native had served on a team that regularly assailed the Endangered Species Act as rigid and litigation-gorged.

But on that hot August day, when the Washington, D.C., temperature reached 90 degrees Fahrenheit, Bernhardt filed a 14-page lawsuit demanding that the Fish and Wildlife Service act on a petition to protect the American eel as a threatened species under the ESA.

Bernhardt filed the federal lawsuit on behalf of a California-based organization called the Center for Environmental Science, Accuracy & Reliability, also known as CESAR."

Michael Doyle and Jeremy P. Jacobs report for Greenwire February 22, 2019. [2]