Freeloading salmon and good for nothing salamanders
on the federal dole
by ERIC DE PLACE
Dust off your sense of outrage, fellow taxpaying Americans. Endangered species are freeloading to the tune of $1.4 billion in state and federal spending, according to a new report from the US Fish and Wildlife Service. " Millions spent to protect Northwest salmon," blared a Seattle Times headline. "A question of protection," the Sacramento Bee huffed.
Under a banner reading "The True Cost of Protection?" the Washington Post sneered that Chinook salmon are also called king salmon because recovering those wastrel fish cost the princely sum of $160, more than any other species. And the Post went on to imply that if spending $5 million on gray wolves is magnanimous, then $11,000 for a rare species of beetle is the height of absurdity.
The newspapers' disdain was not anachronistic. The report on species' price tags was timed to coincide with new federal legislation that may severely weaken the government's ability to enforce protections for dwindling species. That legislation, in fact, just passed the House of Representatives. And though it faces longer odds in the Senate, the one-sided accounting tips the scales against endangered animals.
What's truly absurd is not a few thousand bucks to protect a rare species of beetle, but the implication that somehow the species themselves are to blame for their costly predicament. Are we to believe that like so-called "welfare queens," these imperiled animals should pony up? Never mind that wild Columbia king salmon are perhaps one percent of historical abundance because a welter of industries were given free rein to destroy them. Clearcuts, dams, voracious fisheries, nuclear plants, pesticides--the list of culprits is long. A fairer way to count that $160 million for salmon is not as a cost of protection, but instead as the cost of heedlessly trampling whole ecosystems.
In truth, none of the dollar figures cited in the Fish and Wildlife report actually amount to the true cost of protection. Like a blinkered accountant tallying only expenses but not revenues, there is no mention of the monetary benefits of species recovery. (Not to mention the inestimable non-monetary ones.) Study the "costs" of protection for a moment and it turns out that the figures just don't add.
In the Yellowstone region, for instance, University of Montana economists estimate that gray wolves have generated $23 million dollars in tourism to gateway towns. Add in the many millions generated by rebounding gray wolves in central Idaho and the Upper Midwest, and it turns out that wolves not only pay for themselves, they pick up the tab for those good-for-nothing salamanders, and still return a hefty dividend to taxpayers.
In Idaho, fully functioning sport salmon fisheries have been valued as high as $544 million per year. Though that estimate is disputed, it is for just one year of economic activity in just one of the several states where that $160 million was spent on salmon recovery. Not only that, the figure ignores the reality that the salmon support not only lucrative fisheries, but also 137 other species--including bald eagles, killer whales, grizzly and black bears, and sea lions--that themselves generate wads of cash through wildlife viewing.
There are plenty more examples, but the point is that the true cost of endangered species' protection is not the same thing as the greenbacks that the Fish and Wildlife Service lays out. In fact, the $1.4 billion investment may actually be a net benefit for the economy, when one bothers to factor in the revenues of wildlife-based tourism, ecosystem services, and sport (and commercial) fisheries. And that only counts the dollars and cents, which is a lamentably poor way to value our natural heritage.
Even if they never do hold steady jobs and pay back what they rightfully owe us taxpayers, protecting and restoring endangered species is worth the price. Endangered species are unique in geography and history and they are irreplaceable emblems of the nation's wildness.
To protect endangered species, Americans spent $4.77 per person in 2004, not counting the returns on that investment. In the context of protecting species from coast to coast--Florida manatees to Northwest salmon--$1.4 billion may not be very much money at all.
Eric de Place is the senior research associate at Northwest Environment Watch.
A version of this article appeared on NEW's Cascadia Scorecard weblog. You can comment on this story there.
Source: http://www.tidepool.org/original_content.cfm?articleid=186325