WildEarth Guardians

Thursday, September 22, 2005
The Endangered Species Act's Fight for its Life - HR 3824 Will Gut the ESA

Congress is now considering a bill that would destroy the Endangered Species Act. The power of this law to provide more public oversight on ill-considered water projects, oil and gas drilling, grazing, logging, has generated many opponents.
Contact: WildEarth Guardians

The Endangered Species Act is this country’s strongest environmental law. It has been enormously effective in preventing the extinction of hundreds of species, including the whooping crane, bald eagle, grizzly bear, black-footed ferret, and grey wolf. It enjoys enormous popularity, across political parties, with over 84% of Americans supporting the current Endangered Species Act or an even more protective law to preserve the United States’ natural heritage of diverse native plants and animals. It has a nearly 100% success rate in preventing extinction, and the majority of the 1,300 species listed under the law are either stable or recovering.

These species now face a literal fight for their lives, as does the Endangered Species Act itself. The threat is a bill introduced in the House Resources Committee on September 19, 2005 by Congressman Richard Pombo (R-CA) called HR 3824, the “Threatened and Endangered Species Recovery Act of 2005.” Don’t be fooled by the name - this bill seeks to thoroughly destroy the Endangered Species Act. Pombo has been a consistent advocate for developers and extractive industries and a vehemently vocal opponent of the Endangered Species Act. He also chairs the House Resources Committee, which will vote on the bill on Thursday, September 22. If passed out of committee, it will be voted on by the full House of Representatives as early as next week (the week of September 26). If it passes there, a similar process will be underway in the Senate. As the most anti-environment president in modern history, President Bush will sign into law any bill that weakens the Endangered Species Act.

If Pombo’s bill, or a similar version, becomes law, the impact to wildlife and plants on the brink of extinction would be disastrous. The bill is an industry wish-list of ways to destroy the Endangered Species Act. Here are only the most harmful provisions of the bill:

• Repeals critical habitat provision of the ESA. Pombo’s bill completely eliminates the critical habitat provision of the ESA. Some 85% of species listed under the ESA are imperiled in part due to habitat destruction. Pombo’s bill would, at minimum, seriously set back recovery of these species and may even usher in their extinction. Critical habitat has been an essential provision to help endangered plants and wildlife recover, with studies demonstrating that listed species with critical habitat designations are twice as likely to be recovering as those without. Without critical habitat protection, the Endangered Species Act’s ability to protect whole ecosystems through protection of species habitat would be undermined.
• Bankrupts the Endangered Species Act. Pombo’s bill would require the Interior Department to pay private property owners for the market value of any development they could no longer undertake on their land if it is found to be endangered species habitat. While landowner incentives are widely supported as a way to encourage landowners to improve endangered species habitat, Pombo’s bill amounts to extortion: the federal government would be paying private landowners, developers, and other extractive industries not to kill endangered species or destroy their habitat. This provision would bankrupt the already underfunded Endangered Species Act. It would also be a dangerous precedent for the government to pay developers for any profits lost to environmental protections. Unscrupulous landowners and developers would deliberately plan development in key ecological areas so as to reap the financial windfall from the government. This would be a setback not only for endangered species but for government fiscal responsibility.
• Weakens federal oversight by undermining consultation requirements. Pombo’s bill significantly undermines the requirement that federal agencies not jeopardize the continued existence of listed plants or animals. In the thirty years in which the ESA has been in existence, the duty of federal agencies to consult with the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) has provided important habitat protections for species on the brink on federal lands. Without such a requirement, there would be major backslides on current protections for species such as the grey wolf, grizzly bear, and spotted owls on federal lands. Harmful projects on federal lands such as oil and gas drilling on Otero Mesa in southcentral New Mexico (Otero Mesa webpage) would be fast-tracked, as would be harmful projects on private lands that require federal permits. Without the consultation requirement, citizens’ abilities to seek oversight on poorly designed projects that imperil federally listed species would be undermined. In addition, Pombo’s bill allows the politically appointed Interior Secretary to exempt broad classes of projects from FWS oversight; weakens the definition of jeopardy to permit actions which harm a species’ recovery potential based on speculation that it will recover in an undefined “long-term”; and eliminates the Endangered Species Committee, which is a Cabinet-level body created by Congress in 1978 to resolve rare irreconcilable conflicts between species conservation and federal projects.
• Look before you leap replaced by blanket go-ahead to industry. Pombo’s bill would allow projects to go forward if federal agencies do not review them within 90 days. Federal scientists’ review of the impacts of a proposed project on endangered species is vital to ensuring a species’ existence is not jeopardized by those projects. Pombo’s bill shifts the burden from those proposing development projects to the already overburdened agency scientists reviewing their impacts and imposes a timeframe that even the Bush Administration admits agency scientists could not keep up with.
• Best Available Science at the mercy of politicians. Pombo’s bill gives the Interior Secretary - a political appointee - authority to define the “best available science” and arbitrarily limits the type of science that can be used in decisions on the fate of endangered species. This is very dangerous, particularly given the present Interior Secretary, Gale Norton, who is utterly beholden to precisely those industries that are thrusting species toward extinction. Currently, the best available science is left up to the scientific community to decide, and thereby provides a sound scientific basis for listing, consultation, and other key decisions. Pombo’s bill will codify the junk science approach of the Bush Administration that has resulted in widespread censorship of federal agency biologists politicos in FWS. The result has been widespread demoralization of federal biologists struggling to ensure that endangered wildlife and plants do not disappear.
• Weakens recovery efforts. Pombo’s bill would allow the federal government to select which species receive recovery plans, replacing the current law’s mandate for such plans. Pombo’s bill would also allow agencies to ignore recovery plans and would permit delisting in certain states even if a species is plummeting downward throughout its broader range. While Pombo claims to support recovery efforts, his bill would undermine them.
• Further threatens threatened species. Pombo’s bill would eliminate the current policy of providing automatic protection from take for threatened species and would require special rules be developed for each threatened species in regard to take. Given the importance of protecting threatened species from habitat destruction, killing, harassment, and other forms of take, FWS has issued a blanket regulation prohibiting take of threatened species, except for a small number for which special rules under ESA Section 4(d) have been issued. This regulation would be undone, and Pombo’s bill therefore adds another costly layer of bureaucracy - and more obstacles and delays to protection - for threatened species.
• Other harmful provisions. Pombo’s bill codifies the “No Surprises” policy, which was outlawed in federal court and widely condemned by scientists. Pombo’s bill makes it harder to list “distinct population segments,” which has been an important way to act early to prevent species extinction. Pombo’s bill allows the FWS and National Marine Fisheries Service to sign an agreement with individual states prior to a species being listed, which would prohibit new protections for that species.

While a coalition of conservative, property-rights, landowner and corporate groups (including the American Conservative Union, Frontiers of Freedom, and the Christian Coalition of America) have criticized Pombo’s bill as too weak in overhauling the Endangered Species Act, this is a ruse from the right meant to make Pombo’s industry wishlist appear less extreme. The Pombo bill’s combination of making endangered species habitat destruction easier (and more profitable) and making endangered species protection harder to obtain are rabidly extreme.

The Endangered Species Act was passed in 1973 out of a national commitment to safeguarding the rich natural heritage of our country. The law’s passage was based on the recognition both that a healthy natural environment benefits humans and our moral obligation to ensure that human actions do not cause wildlife and plants to go extinct. It has served as a vital safety net for endangered wildlife and plants for more than thirty years. With increasing development, oil and gas extraction, and other ecological degrading activities threatening our last remaining best places that host imperiled wildlife and plants, the Endangered Species Act is urgently needed now, more than ever. Pombo’s bill seeks to unravel the more than three decades of conservation progress made under the visionary Endangered Species Act and is therefore not only a threat to our rich natural environment, but mocks the deep and widely shared commitment by Americans to honor our duties toward the natural world. HR 3824 must be defeated.

What you can do:

Contact your Representative and Senator and ask him/her to vote against the Pombo bill, or similar versions that weaken the Endangered Species Act. Call the US Capitol Switchboard: at (202) 224-3121 and ask for your Member of Congress’s office.

Sign up as an Endangered Species Act Guardian Be a part of a community of people determined to protect the vital safety net the Endangered Species Act provides to endangered and threatened native wildlife and plants and the ecosystems they call home. Well-informed, steady, and insistent pressure from all of us is required to ensure the survival of the Endangered Species Act and the endangered wildlife and plants who depend on this strong, visionary, and popular environmental law.

Read more about the Endangered Species Act