July 23, 2005, 5:57PM
WASHINGTON - More than three decades after the Endangered Species Act gave the federal government tools and a mandate to protect animals, insects and plants threatened with extinction, the landmark law is facing the most intense efforts ever by White House officials, members of Congress, landowners and industry to limit its reach.
More than any time in the law's 32-year history, the obligations it imposes on government — and, indirectly, on landowners — are being challenged in the courts, reworked in the agencies responsible for enforcing it and re-examined in Congress.
In some cases, the challenges are broad and sweeping, as when the Bush administration, in a legal battle about the best way to protect endangered salmon, declared western dams to be as much a part of the landscape as the rivers they control.
In others, the actions are deep in the realm of regulatory bureaucracy, as when a White House appointee at the Interior Department sought to influence scientific recommendations involving the sage grouse, a bird whose habitat includes areas of likely oil and gas deposits.
Some environmentalists concede the law has long overemphasized the stick and has provided fewer carrots for private interests than it might.
But some also fear the law's defects will be used as a justification for a wholesale evisceration.
The Endangered Species Act of 1973 set out a goal that, polls show, is still widely admired: ensuring that species facing extinction be saved and that populations be restored.
In the past 30 years, lawsuits from all sides have proliferated. And more private land, particularly in the West, has been designated critical habitat for species, potentially subjecting it to federal controls that could limit construction, logging, fishing and other activities.
A "critical habitat" designation gives the federal government no direct authority to regulate private land use, but it requires federal agencies to take the issue into account when making regulatory decisions.
Economic analyses, which the law allows for in decisions on territory, are now the leading reason for reducing the size of species' critical habitat, according to a report by the National Wildlife Federation.
Source: http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/nation/3278789