CHANGING
THE ENDANGERED SPECIES ACT
NOW OR
NEVER
Representative
Richard Pombo, former Chairman of the U.S. House Resources Committee
wanted
to make changes to the Endangered Species Act that would have made that
federal statute more effective and less harmful to our economy and
our citizens. Most
Montanans know that the “original
intent of the ESA was to conserve and protect American species of
plant and wildlife that are threatened with extinction”[i]
and they agree with Chairman Pombo that the law has
been seized by environmentalists, with the help of activist judges,
for their own “political,
ideological, and fundraising goals.
Under the mantra of species protection, radical environmental
organizations use the ESA to raise funds, block development
projects, and prohibit legal land uses of nearly every kind.”[ii]
Pombo
faced a lot of opposition to revising the ESA. The revision
bill did not pass Congress in 2006 and he never got another
chance. He was targeted by well-funded environmental
organizations
in the 2006 election campaign who spent millions to unseat
him. They won and we are still stuck with a bloated
bureaucracy and distorted legislation that is harmful to America and
does not accomplish what it was intended to do.
Examples
of bureaucratic abuse
arising from the ESA are legion.
Here are a few:
*
Weak levees went without repair because the work might have
disturbed the habitat of the
endangered longhorn elderberry bark beetle. The result: a huge flood
broke the Arboga levee at the exact point where repairs were needed.
Three human beings lost their lives. Approximately 500 homes, 9000
acres of prime farmland, and the four largest employers in the
poorest county in the state were flooded.
Overall, 35,000 people where displaced. [iii]
*
The government stopped the construction of a California hospital
because it found eight endangered desert sand flies on the property.
The estimated cost to set aside the “habitat” for the fly? About
$400,000 per fly.[iv]
*
An Oregon Federal district judge issued a logging moratorium on
privately held land when two spotted owls were found nesting about
one mile from the 94-acre plot. It was not known if, in fact, the
owls used the land.[v]
*
“Taung Ming-Lin, a Chinese immigrant, bought land in Kern
County, California...to grow Chinese vegetables for sale to the
southern California’s Asian Community. Lin claims to have been
told by the county the land was already zoned for farming and that
no permit was needed. When Lin began farming, his tractor allegedly
disturbed the habitat
of the endangered Tipton Kangaroo rat...[and] ran over some of the
rats. Lin was charged with federal civil and criminal violations of
the Endangered Species Act.... [vi]
*
“In 1973 Margaret Rector bought 15 acres of land on a busy
highway west of Austin, Texas.
In 1990 the golden-checkered warbler was listed as
endangered, and the United States Fish and Wildlife Service says her
property is suitable habitat. The land, in the fastest growing part
of the county, is now unusable.
Its assessed value falls from $831,000 in 1991 to $30,000 in
1992. USFWS says she might be able to get a permit to develop, but
this would require her to finance extensive studies and to mitigate
any impact on the warbler.”[vii]
*
The FWS “threatened to fine a Utah man $15,000 for farming his
land and allegedly posing a risk to the prairie dog, a protected
species.... [T]he USWFS told the man that heshould hire an outside
expert to determine if there are prairie dogs on his land. The
expertprepared a report, which indicated that there were no prairie
dogs. The farmer proceeded to work his land. However, the USFWS has
told him that they will fine him anyway.”[viii]
*
In Oregon’s Klamath Basin, it was determined that the sucker fish
needed the available water more than the area's farmers who had
maintained the irrigation canals for almost a century needed it to
irrigate their crops in order to feed their families. The result was
a devastating loss of family farms, human suffering and economic
decline. After the damage was done, the National Academy of Science
(NAS) determined that the decision by the federal government to shut
off irrigation water to
nearly 1,200 farmers and ranchers had “no sound scientific
basis.”
*
. The snail darter is perhaps the most famous species associated
with the ESA. Because it was believed that construction of the
Tellico Dam in Tennessee would jeopardize the snail darter’s
existence, construction was halted. Several new snail darter
populations were subsequently identified leading to downlisting of
the species.[ix]
Violates
Property Rights
Topping
the list of negative unintended consequences of the ESA is the
violation of Constitutionally protected property rights.
Under Section 9 of the
ESA, landowners can be prosecuted, fined, jailed, and ordered to pay
restitution if they “harass, harm, pursue, hunt, shoot, wound,
kill, trap, capture, an listed species.
The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that “harm” includes
adversely modifying listed species habitat. “As U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia argued in a
1995 dissent, the current interpretation of the law “imposes
unfairness to the point of financial ruin—not just upon the rich,
but upon the simplest farmer who finds his land conscripted to
national zoological use.” (Babbitt v. Sweet Home 1995)
Isn’t it ironic that the U.S. Constitution plainly forbids
the army to force citizens to provide food and lodging for soldiers
even in time of war but the USFWS uses the ESA to force property
owners to do the same for all kinds of “endangered” critters,
bugs and plants?
Based on Junk Science
The
science used to justify the listing of species is often inadequate
because there is just not enough information about the species or
the research is biased. Many
environmental scientists become advocates of the species and/or the
science they work with. Advocacy
compromises the objectivity of the research.
The falsification by federal scientists of a lynx hair
sampling research project to determine the presence of lynx in
Washington is a good example of scientists turned advocate.
Science-advocates have created entire new scientific
disciplines and concepts which reinforce their preconceived notions.
The new “science” of Conservation Biology grew out of the
study of ecosystems. The
notions of CB and ecosystem management have resulted in the listing
of the grey wolf in the lower 48 even though 40 to 60 thousand
wolves roam through Canada and Alaska.
Lynx,
bull trout and a long list of many other species have been protected
under ESA even though there is very little known about them. Many of these species, like the snail darter, have been
either downlisted or removed from ESA protection after more thorough
investigations disclosed larger numbers and a greater range than
originally thought. Because radical environmentalism would rather be
safe than sorry, these advocates agitate to list species that appear
to be declining but which are in fact just naturally scarce or
reclusive. They don’t
give a fig about the cost to humans of
these hasty and unnecessary ESA listings.
Driven by Litigation Rather Than a Real
Need for Protection
Daniel Gattusso wrote that “The FWS
reports that as much as two-thirds of its budget for placing
endangered species on the protection list is consumed fulfilling
court orders and settlement agreements.”[x]
Clinton's FWS Director Jamie Rappaport Clark protested that
litigation "has turned our priorities upside-down.
Species that are in need of protection are having to be
ignored."[xi]
Reading between the lines of Clark’s statement, it is
apparent that some species would not be protected if FWS were
allowed to set the priorities rather than environmentalists through
their judicial allies.
For every suit to list a species or
designate habitat there are hundreds of court actions filed against
federal, state and private parties to require compliance with the
ESA. Every one of the
examples of abuse listed above resulted from some kind of legal
action. It would be
interesting to search out who benefits more from the ESA –
biologists or lawyers. It certainly would not be truly endangered
species because the ESA has been remarkably ineffective in
recovering species.
Ineffective
According
to Pombo’s report only 10 out of 1304 species listed under ESA
have been recovered and “Moreover, numerous qualified studies
assert that none of the species listed
by the FWS to have been “recovered” in the United States may
reasonably be claimed to have recovered as a result of the ESA.” Pombo comments on the Hotel California syndrome of ESA
species listing, “a program
that checks species in for protection, conservation, and recovery,
but never checks them out.”[xii]
Many species cannot be recovered.
Extinction is a natural process that has been occurring for
millennia. That process
will continue no matter what federal bureaucrats, science-advocates,
environmentalists or judges do to try and stop it. It is not possible to recover some species to pre-Columbian
conditions without massive dislocations and disruption that would
destroy our civilization, which would be OK with many
environmentalists. Trying
to do the impossible takes resources away from achieving the
possible.
Too Expensive
“From 1989 to 2000, the FWS estimates that a little over 3.5
billion of taxpayer dollars as
spent on ESA-related activities.”[xiii]
In their report on ESA accounting, Simmons and Frost provide
a long list of costs that are not included such as:
