By Bob Irvin
February 22, 2006
In 1996, he wrote a book about his ambition, "This Land is Our Land." When former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay made Pombo chairman of the Resources Committee, he did so largely because he shared Pombo's antipathy toward the Endangered Species Act. Thus late last year, when Pombo convinced a narrow majority of the House to adopt his bill - the so-called Threatened and Endangered Species Recovery Act - he appeared on the verge of achieving his ambition.
After withering criticism of Pombo's bill, both for its disastrous effect on endangered species conservation and the American taxpayer, its future in the Senate looks bleak. Sen. Lincoln Chafee, R-R.I., chairman of the subcommittee with jurisdiction over the Endangered Species Act, recently warned that any Senate bill to amend the act must not be "Pomboized," to use Chafee's word, when the Senate and House confer to work out their differences concerning what the final legislation should say.
Perhaps that is why Pombo is trying to dress up his bill in a recent article ("Update the Species Act") distributed by the Knight Ridder/Tribune news service that The Bee published Feb. 15 on its Web site. But as the old saying goes, "You can put lipstick on a pig, but it is still a pig."
In his effort to make his bill more appealing, Pombo blatantly mischaracterized its provisions. Rather than owning up to the enormous potential cost of a provision in his bill that requires taxpayers to pay developers not to build projects that will kill or injure endangered wildlife, no matter how expensive the proposed project, Pombo wrote that his bill would require only a "one-time" payment based on the value of the land's "current use." This is flatly and patently false.
Pombo's bill provides that a developer can propose a use of his property and, if the government concludes that the use will kill or injure endangered species, taxpayers must pay the developer the value of the proposed use - not the "current use," the proposed use.
Even more outrageous, the Pombo bill does not limit in any way the number of times the developer can propose a new use for the same property and force taxpayers to pay him not to do it.
Thus, a developer can propose to build a shopping mall amid an endangered species habitat and demand and receive payment from taxpayers for the value of the shopping mall. The same developer can then propose to build a casino on the same land and force taxpayers to pay him not to build that project as well.
Similarly, while Pombo painted his bill as one that will enhance species recovery, he failed to mention that his bill eliminates the protection of critical habitat for endangered wildlife, without providing any substitute means of protecting that habitat. As any scientist will tell us, unless we protect habitat, we can never hope to recover endangered plants and animals.
While recognizing that Californians are "greatly concerned with the health of their environment," Pombo neglected to mention that his bill completely exempts one of the greatest threats to environmental and human health - pesticide use - from the requirements of the Endangered Species Act.
The Pombo bill is an all-out assault on the Endangered Species Act and an unmitigated disaster for endangered wildlife. No amount of lipstick can hide this simple truth.
About the writer:
- Bob Irvin is senior vice president of conservation programs for the Defenders of Wildlife. Reach him at BobIrvin@defenders.org