You can bet your bottom dollar that Congress isn't going to get everything
right. You can usually bet even more against it correcting its mistakes.
Which is why last week's U.S. House vote to reform the Endangered Species
Act was so stunning, and yet so historic.
House members passed a complete overhaul of the ESA last week by a 229-193
vote, and it doesn't come a day too early. Both House and Senate members,
including Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, have waged a long fight to get the
reforms rolling.
Passed in 1973, the Endangered Species Act has become a futile piece of
legislation. For starters, it usurps the rights of private property owners
in the name of protecting endangered species. With only a few exceptions,
those who own property cannot use their land if it has critical habitat for
species recovery.
That's bad enough. But even more compelling is how the ESA has failed to
achieve the intended goal. Recovery efforts have mostly been a bust.
Of 1,269 threatened or endangered plants and animals listed under the ESA,
only 12 have recovered sufficiently to go off the list, according to the
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
That's a success rate below 1 percent -- a new low, even for the federal
government.
Recovering threatened and endangered species remains a worthy goal that can
be shared by politicians, environmentalists, hunters, anglers and
landowners. But success should be more than keeping an endangered species
barely alive.
Instead, the new reforms would compensate private landowners who are forced
to comply with ESA critical habitat measures. By enlisting them to protect
the most vital lands in species recovery, landowners will lose less and play
more of an active role in the process.
The legislation also forces the government to pay fair market value on land
that would be used for development, but is deemed necessary for habitat
protection.
Perhaps most important, the new law would eliminate critical habitat, and
push a new policy for designating land for threatened species. The law will
require "recovery plans" within two years of listing, with habitat
designations being a part of the full equation.
Environmentalists will bemoan any payment to landowners for following
federal laws. Their concern will be how the law doesn't adequately hold paid
landowners accountable for habitat progress.
That's a fair question. But odds are, when private landowners get involved,
they'll be far more effective in reaching recovery goals than federal
bureaucratic agencies. For far too long, the act has served as a weapon
against landusers, rather than a tool to involve them with the recovery
effort.
If the ESA's track record has proven one thing, it's that members of the
wild kingdom are more likely to flourish with more of God's green earth, not
a web of red tape. Here's hoping the Senate sees the promise of that
possibility in the new bill.
| Our view: The move to overhaul the Endangered Species Act is valid
and long overdue. |
