Friday, December 26, 2003
Successes include the bald eagle and the gray wolf in Yellowstone.
SCRIPPS HOWARD
Thirty years ago this month, the Nixon administration and a nearly unanimous Congress celebrated the signing of the Endangered Species Act, the nation's premier law for the protection of biological diversity.
That may have been the last time harmony reigned over anything related to the species protection law. Today, the act is more controversial than ever, with both supporters and critics agreeing that species protection has become mired in lawsuits and countersuits by environmentalists and industry.
In just the past three weeks:
UEnvironmental groups filed a lawsuit challenging the Bush administration's decision to abandon efforts to reintroduce the gray wolf into New England forests.
UA federal judge overturned an administration decision that the extinction of Puget Sound orcas in Washington state would not be significant to the species as a whole.
UThe administration, siding with homebuilder groups in Arizona, asked a federal judge to remove endangered species protection from the cactus pygmy owl, even though only 30 of the birds are left in the state.
UA federal judge ruled that the government overstepped its authority with its "no surprises" policy guaranteeing landowners that if they took certain steps to protect the habitat of endangered species, they wouldn't be held accountable for unforeseen circumstances.
Saying act is 'broken'
Administration officials and key Republican members of Congress say the act is fundamentally "broken" and needs to be rewritten.
"The current act and the way it's been implemented has been a failure in recovery of species and, at the same time, it has caused a huge amount of conflict with private landowners," said House Resources Committee Chairman Richard Pombo, R-Calif. "I don't think anybody can look at the act and say it has been a success."
Supporters of the law, however, say it has served as a kind of "emergency room" for the more than 1,200 domestic species listed as endangered, keeping those species on life support until they can improve to the point that they can survive on their own.
Some of the act's high-profile successes include the recovery of the American bald eagle and the reintroduction of gray wolves into Yellowstone National Park. At one time, there were only 30 California condors in existence and none left in the wild. Today, there are 216 condors, 83 of which live in the wild.
The problem is not the Endangered Species Act, supporters of the act said, but a determined effort by the administration to slowly strangle the effectiveness of the law through a series of regulatory edicts and carefully calculated legal positions.
'Hostile to conservation'
"We have an administration that is hostile to conservation generally, and the Endangered Species Act in particular, and the key committees with jurisdiction over the endangered species law are chaired by members of Congress that are openly hostile to it," said Bob Irvin, U.S. conservation director for the World Wildlife Fund.
For example, under a ruling finalized by the Interior Department this month, government agencies can make key decisions on logging to thin forests without consulting with the Fish and Wildlife Service over the activity's potential impact on endangered species.
The administration has also proposed allowing the Environmental Protection Agency to take steps toward approval of the use of new pesticides without consulting the Fish and Wildlife Service on the risk to wildlife.
Another administration proposal would relax prohibitions on international trade in endangered species to allow U.S. trophy hunters and wildlife traders to import more endangered species and body parts like horns, antlers and skins.
Military exemption
At the request of the administration, Congress recently exempted military training exercises by the Department of Defense from Endangered Species Act requirements. The Defense Department controls millions of acres of land that are home to hundreds of rare species.
"I think they are being as creative as they can possibly be to use the administrative process to emasculate the Endangered Species Act," said Rodger Schlickeisen, president of Defenders of Wildlife.
Many of the problems with the act precede the Bush administration. Under the law, the Fish and Wildlife Service is required to designate habitat critical to the survival of a species at the time it lists a species as threatened or endangered.
However, for many years the service often listed species without designating critical habitat. Beginning in about the mid-1990s, environmentalists began suing the government to force the service to designate critical habitat.
Scientists agree that the single most important reason species become extinct is the destruction of their habitat.
As the service began designating critical habitat areas in response to court orders, landowners and industry groups began suing the government and claiming the habitat designations were based on faulty scientific analysis or failed to adequately consider the economic costs involved.
The result has been that most of the Fish and Wildlife Service's budget for protecting endangered species now goes to defending itself in lawsuits.