Bozeman Daily Chronicle - Oct 23, 2005
Reforming the Endangered Species Act might be a popular
idea, but it won't be easy and it certainly won't be cheap.
The ESA is arguably the most important environmental law in the nation.
Without a doubt, it's one of the most controversial.
Its often labyrinthian rules and procedures mean all
sorts of projects -- from hydropower dams and timber sales to bridge building
and grazing leases -- undergo an extra layer of scrutiny, one that can take
years to complete. Sometimes projects are delayed, changed or canceled because
they might harm an obscure bug or sucker fish.
From the snail darters of Tennessee to the northern spotted owls in Oregon,
the ESA affects how people live, work and recreate in places where listed
species are found. Many people say the act improves human life and protects
nature from greedy industries. Others say it costs too much money and saves
too few species while enriching environmental groups.
Understandably, the act has never been popular with extractive industries or
property rights activists, and there have been numerous attempts to rewrite or
eviscerate it. None have succeeded.
Now, the ESA looks vulnerable.
"If I was an extractive industry, I would say this is the
best time in decades to gut the act," said Brock Evans, a longtime
Washington, D.C., environmental activist and president of the Endangered
Species Act Coalition, a collection of 360 environmental, religious and animal
rights groups that support the ESA.
Evans said his opponents smell blood.
"The stars are all lined up for them to do it," Evans said, noting
that Republicans run both houses of Congress and the Bush administration.
TESRA in the House
This year, ESA critics have advanced farther than they've ever gone before.
Late in September, the House of Representatives passed the Threatened and
Endangered Species Recovery Act, a bill by Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Calif. While
its full passage likely would have little immediate impact on the nearly 1,300
species already listed, the Pombo bill would make it easier to delist species
and make it nearly impossible to list any additional species in the future,
Evans said.
"No species is ever going to get listed ever again," Evans said.
"That's the real purpose of Pombo."
The bill would raise drastically the threshold for listing, by allowing
political appointees and industry representatives a greater voice in
decisions. It would require government to pay people who lose money because of
listings. It would eliminate the designation of "critical habitat"
for rare bugs, animals and plants.
That's just fine with lots of people.
Rep. Denny Rehberg, R-Mont., enthusiastically supported TESRA, as does a broad
coalition of ranchers, miners, logging companies, electricity providers and
others affected by the ESA.
But ESA supporters are numerous as well. Pombo's bill passed by a margin of
229 to 193.
"They have all the horses and all the guns on their side," Evans
said. "And they still only won by" a narrow margin.
Now that TESRA has passed the House, the debate moves to the U.S. Senate.
There, the battle will be tougher. Because filibuster rules allow any one
senator to halt a bill, passage of controversial measures requires 60 votes to
overcome a filibuster.
Pombo's bill could have a hard time attracting that much support, especially
since a number of Senate Republicans support the ESA.
However, Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, is drafting his own ESA reform bill. He
told the Idaho Statesman earlier this week, without revealing details of his
pending bill, that he knows he needs bipartisan support. If he gets it, and if
the bill passes the Senate, that's when green groups get really nervous.
Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont, has yet to take a position on the Pombo bill.
"He'll look at the Pombo bill closely to make sure it's right for
Montana," spokesman Barrett Kaiser said.
But Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont., said he likes it.
"We do support the Pombo bill and we're working with Sen. Crapo to come
up with similar language in the Senate," said Burns' spokesman J.P.
Donovan.
Even if the Senate passes a bill environmental groups could endorse, that
version isn't likely to become law.
The Senate and House bills would have to be reconciled in a conference
committee, a closed-door session where, according to tradition, committee
chairmen from both houses hold sway. That would be Pombo and Sen. James
Inhofe, R-Okla. Both have been vehement critics of the ESA as it now stands.
"Those are the key guys," Evans said, adding that any
"reasonable" ESA reform bill passed by the Senate likely would
wither in conference committee. "It's inconceivable that anything
tolerable will come out of conference."
Still, Evans said he remains optimistic about saving the ESA.
"I think we have a very good chance of saving the ESA," he said.
"Our side showed unexpected support."
The stakes
Lots of people wonder if saving the ESA is really about saving rare species.
"Often, it's not about endangered species," said Richard Stroup, a
Montana State University economist and a fellow at PERC, a Bozeman think tank
that advocates free-market solutions to environmental problems. "It's
about land-use planning. It's about who controls the land."
He pointed to the spotted owl debates in the Pacific Northwest as an example.
"If you want to save old-growth forests, you find a spotted owl," he
said. "It's a tremendous victory for the folks trying to save old
growth."
Similar circumstances arise in Montana. When somebody appeals a timber sale,
for instance, or an oil lease, the suitability of that particular ground for
threatened grizzly bears often is cited, and it is often the deciding factor
in court battles.
The debates over listed species can throw big ripples. Wild grizzlies need
wild country, and saving it for them saves it for other animals as well as for
people in an increasingly crowded and developed world.
"Grizzlies have done a lot of the heavy lifting for other species,"
said Louisa Wilcox, a grizzly advocate for the Natural Resources Defense
Council.
Emasculating the ESA would remove a sharp arrow from the quiver of
environmental groups that fight for wild places, and it could open big swaths
of both public and private land to development.
Property rights
While the law affects how land is used, Stroup maintains the current version
contains actual disincentives to save rare life forms.
Grizzlies and wolves, the high-profile listed species in Montana, are
especially difficult cases because they require so much territory, Stroup
said. But other species have site-specific needs.
If a listed species is found on someone's property, the owner can lose all
kinds of rights.
"The major question is, where does the 800-pound gorilla sleep,"
Stroup said.
Most landowners wouldn't care, and likely would welcome, an obscure salamander
or rare plant. But if the species is listed, the federal government can ban
all sorts of activity, from building homes and roads to irrigating or logging.
"What it pays to do is find out what that species likes, then tweak your
land management so that isn't there," Stroup said.
If owners wait until the species is found, or if their property is listed as
critical habitat, they could face fines of up to $25,000 a day for imperiling
the habitat.
In effect, the ESA so burdens and frightens landowners that the rare critter
becomes a perceived enemy.
It doesn't have to be that way, green advocates counter. Adequate funding
could ease the burden that is foisted on private landowners.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is the primary agency in charge of ESA
concerns, but it is funded at only 20 percent of what it needs to do its work
completely, according to a February 2002 article in BioScience by a group of
University of Montana and University of Idaho researchers.
When people argue about the ESA, they tend to take one of two positions:
critics point to the paucity of recoveries (13 total) and say the act is a
failure; supporters point to the number of listed species and argue that the
ESA has kept most of them from going extinct.
The BioScience article took the latter view.
"Our current scenario is akin to starving hospitalized patients and then
grilling the doctors about why more patients are not recovering," the
scientists maintained.
Stroup maintains that money isn't the problem. In the 1920s and 1930s, wood
ducks and eastern bluebirds were incredibly rare. People responded by figuring
out what kind of birdhouses they need, and erecting them.
"Groups were quite successful on just a shoestring budget," he said.
If government scientists are forced to pay people for restrictions on their
property -- the Congressional Budget Office says those payments are likely to
run about $20 million a year under Pombo's bill -- they will start finding
cost effective ways of preserving species, Stroup said.
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