< Return to Articles

Endangered Species Act may be
amended at last

Wally Reemelin, guest columnist
October 16, 2005, The Auburn Journal

California congressman Richard Pombo, chairman of the House Resources Committee, is shepherding a bill through Congress that will reasonably amend the Endangered Species Act (ESA) that was the product of the Nixon Administration and passed in 1973.

One of the most onerous and poorly written pieces of legislation, purportedly to protect endangered plant and animal species, the ESA has become a club for environmentalists to browbeat landowners and farmers. Of the nearly 1,300 species on the endangered list, the act has "recovered" only 10 - a success rate of less than 1 percent.

This badly drawn law, like much of the command-and-control environmental legislation, has been mired in litigation and red tape. Since the ESA allows anyone, not just an involved party, to bring legal action and require the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) to determine that a species is "endangered," groups like Environmental Defense, Defenders of Wildlife, Natural Resources Defense Council and Sierra Club, among others, have brought thousands of lawsuits against the FWS to enforce the law.

Because of this costly litigation load, the FWS has had to devote so much time and dollars in court, and not in the field protecting species, the benefit rate of "success" is paltry.

Landowners and farmers unlucky enough to discover a possibly "endangered" species on their land, who may face crippling regulations with no compensation, have preferred to "shoot, shovel and shut up."

Under the Pombo bill, property owners who discover that they host an endangered species, can apply to the Interior Department, parent of the FWS, for permission to use their land for private purposes or be entitled to a conservation assessment/ grant.

If the government forbids land use, the owners would be compensated so that everyone, not just the landowner, would share the cost of conservation and protection.

By placing all taxpayers on the hook, the government would finally have to set priorities and make scientific decisions about which species to protect and how to do so.

Landowners would be more likely to enter into an agreement with the FWS if they understood that a conservation land use resulting in economic loss will be compensated by the government.

The Pombo bill, which has had exhaustive hearings open to all interests, proposes several reforms to the ESA. One provisions requires the FWS to have a peer review of experts comment and approve any new species "listing." This will ensure that the new listings are, in fact, endangered.

Flimsy standards have led to serious errors by the FWS. In 2001 the FWS required a shutdown of water to farmers in Klamath, Ore., on behalf of sucker fish.

Some months later the National Academy of Sciences peer-reviewed the so-called biology behind Klamath and said there was "no sound scientific basis" for stopping the water. Klamath farmers suffered great economic loss.

Another Pombo reform focuses on real recovery plans, requiring that every species listing be accompanied by a concrete strategy. Current practice has set listing rules designating thousand of acres off limits to aid in the "recovery."

Environmental groups abuse such designations by litigating to make huge areas of private land untouchable without scientific basis or plan.

Critics of the Pombo bill, which received House approval and is now in the Senate, include urban members who mainly represent silk-stocking districts where endangered species have long since disappeared. Other critics claim the Pombo bill will "gut" the ESA, but what such naysayers really care about is losing the immense leverage that the current law provides them, in courtrooms and in Washington, to control the property rights of middle America.

Wally Reemelin is president of the League of Placer County Taxpayers.