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Species Act in the crosshairs: Conservationists say pending law overhaul would harm wildlife

DAVE DOWNEY - Staff Writer
July 18, 2005, North County Times

Political battle lines are being drawn even before a California congressman unveils a proposed sweeping overhaul of the 1973 Endangered Species Act, which has been described as the world's strongest and most significant environmental law.

Conservation groups across the country are sounding the alarm about the rewrite they say would gut the central provisions of a federal law that aims to prevent imperiled species from going extinct, and place those rare animals and plants in serious jeopardy.

Proponents, led by Rep. Richard Pombo, chairman of the 56-member House Resources Committee, say they are simply trying to bring some common sense to a law that lacks it, and make the law more successful in reaching its goal.

Depending on who you talk to, passage of the legislation that is in its embryonic stages could either unravel much-needed protections for imperiled wildlife in Riverside and San Diego counties, or derail habitat conservation plans that clarified where new housing tracts, shopping centers and transportation corridors may be built.

"At the moment, there is no official bill," said Brian Kennedy, House Resources Committee spokesman, in a telephone interview from Washington on Thursday. "There is a bill that is being worked on, as we speak, by Chairman Pombo and the ranking Democrat on the committee, Nick Rahall (of West Virginia). We will have a bipartisan package introduced in the near future."

While declining to speculate precisely when, Kennedy said a bill likely will emerge by late summer.

However, environmental groups say they have seen enough in a draft to know they will not like the finished product, and already they are gearing up to fight the legislation.

"Congressman Pombo's bill ought to be called the Every Species Left Behind Act because it abandons the effort of the last 30 years to achieve a secure future for our most imperiled wildlife," said Michael Bean, wildlife chairman for the group Environmental Defense in Washington.

10 recovered species

Alarm bells also are going off in the West.

"This bill is by far the most anti-recovery, anti-endangered species legislation that we have ever seen on the Endangered Species Act," said Brian Nowicki, conservation biologist for the Center for Biological Diversity in Tucson. "It just removes protections across the board. They are trying to gut the Endangered Species Act."

Conservationists say the draft would protect only those species designated as endangered, or in danger of becoming extinct. It would not, they say, require communities and landowners to set aside areas for threatened species, animals and plants that are in decline and could one day become endangered.

Also, environmentalists say, the rewrite would require only enough land be set aside to prevent a species from disappearing. No longer would there be a mandate to help rare types of animals and plants rebound to healthy, natural population sizes.

As if that weren't enough, Nowicki said, the draft would revoke the law Oct. 1, 2015.

Kennedy dismisses the early criticism as hyped rhetoric. He said the House Resources Committee leadership is not trying to gut the law or set it up for an eventual repeal.

"Most, if not all, federal laws on the books today include a sunset provision," Kennedy said. "What that does is force the Congress to come to the table to take a hard look at programs to see if they are working."

A sunset is a way of ensuring that the law remains up to date, he said.

"It is very telling that many of these environmental organizations have come out blasting a bill that does not yet exist," Kennedy said. "It tells us that, again, partisan politics and vested interests may prevent them from even acknowledging that the act has flaws in it and is in dire need of a legislative update. It is an indefensible position to defend the status quo."

Kennedy points to U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service statistics regarding the law's history to build a case for an overhaul.

"After 33 years, it has recovered 10 domestic species out of roughly 1,300," he said. "That's a less than 1 percent success rate for recovery, which is the intent of the law." Those 10 species include the gray whale, American peregrine falcon and American alligator.

The environmental emergency room

The bottom line, he said, is wildlife haven't fared that well under the Endangered Species Act. According to federal statistics:

·  40 percent of plants and animals covered under the law are classified as having an unknown status. "In other words, they just don't know," Kennedy said. "They could be extinct. They could be declining. They could be increasing. They just don't know."

·  21 percent are in decline.

·  3 percent are believed to be extinct.

·  30 percent have stable populations.

·  6 percent are rebounding.

"When you look at those results after 33 years of implementation and add the tremendous amount of conflict that the law has caused, together you have a very clear mandate for legislative improvement," Kennedy said. "We certainly can and must do better."

Monica Bond, a biologist with the Center for Biological Diversity office in Riverside County, said her group does not dispute the need for improvement.

"To say that we want (the act) to be frozen in time is absolutely false," Bond said.

Bond said she would like to see tax incentives offered to landowners who protect species, recovery plans required for all imperiled species and significantly more funding provided for wildlife agencies that enforce the law.

"The Department of Interior has been starving its endangered species program for years, and then they turn around and say that the Endangered Species Act doesn't work," Bond said. "It's extremely hypocritical."

On the other hand, she said, the act is working.

"The ESA is an emergency room, and just to have prevented extinction is success in itself," Bond said. "As for the 10 recovered species, that's 10 species that might have been utterly wiped off the face of the Earth."

The fact that there are stable and rebounding populations is more proof, she said.

Local bird recovering

"We should be proud as Americans to have this law," Bond said. "It is one of the most comprehensive environmental laws in the world."

While few species have been removed from the endangered species list, the Fish and Wildlife Service is studying whether others should be taken off.

A year ago, the agency launched a study to see if the Stephens kangaroo rat should be removed. Results are expected out shortly.

Meanwhile, earlier this month, the agency announced it was beginning a five-year-long review to determine if 31 species of plants and animals in California and Nevada have recovered enough to no longer require federal protection.

Among those is the least Bell's vireo, a rare songbird that had nearly been driven out of its native Southern California and that has rebounded in the willow thickets along streams in Riverside and San Diego counties. The little vireo has fared particularly well on Camp Pendleton Marine Corps Base and in the Santa Ana River basin behind Prado Dam near Corona.

Bond called the songbird's rebound strong indication the law is working.

Working or not, in Southern California, the law has been at the center of many conflicts between landowners, developers, environmentalists and government regulators over where people can and cannot build, and what they can and cannot do with their property.

In 1993, local tempers flared when a wildfire destroyed 29 homes in the Winchester area of Southwest Riverside County. Some blamed the devastation on a local agency's order to avoid mowing vegetation considered to be important Stephens kangaroo rat habitat, although a federal report later concluded the agency's action did not cause the destruction.

A much-needed fix

Kennedy said the act has fostered a hostile relationship between the government and landowners, who should be working together to protect wildlife. With 90 percent of imperiled species having at least some habitat on private land, the government needs property owners' help to save species, he said.

While declining to discuss specifics, Kennedy said the legislation is likely to hold out tax incentives for, and offer federal grants to, landowners. Nowicki countered that federal funds should be spent on enforcement, not to fill pockets of landowners.

Kennedy also said the legislation would encourage development of "holistic" regional conservation plans that set aside habitat blocks for preservation of many species, not one in isolation.

Such conservation plans have been adopted in recent years to set aside hundreds of thousands of acres of private land in Riverside and San Diego counties as permanent open space for wildlife. They make clear what land is needed for species protection, and which may be opened up for development.

Borre Winckel, executive director for the Riverside County Chapter of the Building Industry Association of Southern California, helped craft the 153,000-acre plan for Western Riverside County, approved by wildlife agencies in 2004.

Winckel suggested that, because of a 2004 court decision, such plans are in jeopardy. That ruling said critical habitat designations ---- sweeping maps of the territory that might be needed for a species' recovery ---- must remain on the books even if a conservation plan later sets aside land for the animal or plant.

If, under a plan, one can develop his or her property, but the land is on a critical habitat map, development is still likely to be restricted, he said.

"We are squarely in favor of this bill," Winckel said. "It is very much a fix we need to save our multiple species habitat conservation plan. ... This legislation will overturn this horrible court case."

Contact staff writer Dave Downey at (951) 676-4315, Ext. 2616, or ddowney@californian.com.