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Bill Would Reduce Government's Role in Protecting Species

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[The sickness keeps on rolling. Rick.]

 

 

 

Bill Would Reduce Government's Role in Protecting

Species

By FELICITY BARRINGER

 

July 4, 2005

 

Source >

http://www.nytimes.com/auth/login?URI=http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/04/politics\

/04species.html & OQ=thQ3DQ26emcQ3DthQ26pagewantedQ3Dprint & OP=6370dd45Q2FZjQ3ENZYQ\

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WASHINGTON, July 3 - Republican critics of the

Endangered Species Act in Congress have drafted

legislation hedging the government's obligation to

take all necessary steps to bring back to robust

health any species on the brink of extinction.

 

The draft envisions more limited government

obligations: ensuring that the status of an endangered

plant or animal gets no worse and helping to make it

better.

 

Representatives of environmental groups who have seen

the draft legislation said that the change, achieved

by redefining the act's interpretation of

" conservation, " would severely undercut the law.

 

The draft measure, said Jamie Rappaport Clark, the

executive vice president of Defenders of Wildlife,

" takes a wrecking ball to the whole Endangered Species

Act " by changing its mission, disabling enforcement

tools and loosening controls on agencies like the

Forest Service and the Army Corps of Engineers.

 

But Jim Sims, the executive vice president of

Partnership for the West, a group representing Western

ranchers, farmers and industries, said that the draft

has a " common-sense " emphasis on incremental

improvements that are achievable, rather than on

long-term recovery that may take decades. " The

aspirational change is necessary, " he said. " It's more

important to incrementally improve the species' health

as much as we can rather than set the bar at total and

complete recovery, and nothing else. "

 

The draft legislation, prepared by the Republican

staff of the House Resources Committee, also narrows

the law's reach, potentially exempting many federal

actions that are now subject to review. In addition,

it requires that the authority to list subgroups of a

species of fish or wildlife as endangered be used

" only sparingly. " The draft would automatically take

the Endangered Species Act off the books in 2015.

 

Richard W. Pombo, Republican of California and

chairman of the House Resources Committee, has long

been a critic of the Endangered Species Act, although

in recent months he has spoken more favorably of its

goals, and indicated that his revisions would make

them more achievable.

 

The draft legislation was given to The New York Times

by a lawmaker opposed to its provisions, who requested

anonymity because the legislation had not yet been

introduced. It has been circulating among interest

groups focused on the issue, which tends to pit

environmental groups against a loose coalition of

Western ranchers, farmers and business interests. Most

lobbyists believe that the committee's legislation

will provide the framework for rewriting and

reauthorizing the act.

 

The law has been a magnet for controversy since its

passage in 1973. It is credited with playing a major

role in preventing the extinction of hundreds of

species of plants, insects, animals and birds in the

United States. Nonetheless, only a handful of the more

than 1,200 species listed over the years have

recovered sufficiently to permit their removal from

the list.

 

The law, as interpreted by a series of federal judges

in the past quarter-century, has been instrumental in

blocking dam construction, ending most logging in the

old-growth forests of the Pacific Northwest,

overturning state or regional decisions on the

allocation of scarce western water, and preventing

some development on public and private land.

 

Over the past decade, efforts to rewrite the law

failed to pass the House or were blocked by Senate

Republicans, but Mr. Pombo said in a recent interview

that he believed he could forge a consensus and win

passage of the bill, given Republican gains in the

House and the Senate in the last election.

 

Some of his supporters are not as sure. But Mr. Sims,

of Partnership for the West, is not among them. " The

prospects for some updating of the Endangered Species

Act are very high in this Congress, " he said.

 

" I think the chairman has a very reasonable marker out

there with this draft, " Mr. Sims added. " It's not too

far to the left, not too far to the right. A number of

my members don't think this goes far enough. "

 

Environmental groups are gearing up their own campaign

in opposition to the legislation as currently drafted.

 

They may find unusual allies in property-rights

advocates who have focused their criticism on the

bill's requirement that the government designate, and

potentially restrict the use of, territory that is

essential to a species' recovery. In a June 16 letter

to Mr. Pombo, representatives of groups including the

Competitive Enterprise Institute, Americans for Tax

Reform and Gun Owners of America urged that the bill

ensure that all property owners be compensated if

their land values drop.

 

The draft legislation permits compensation only when a

property owner shows that a government action

diminishes a property's value by at least 50 percent.

 

On the issue of what constitutes the " best available

science " for making and supporting decisions under the

law, the draft measure takes the unusual step of

giving one scientific method preference over another.

It calls for " empirical data " - which can be hard to

obtain when a species's numbers are small and

scattered - to be used when possible. More common

currently are studies based on statistical models of a

species's number, range and viability.

 

The draft legislation also sets new restrictions for

mapping the territory considered essential for the

recovery of an endangered species. It would limit such

territory, called " critical habitat, " to areas

currently occupied by the species; the law now allows

for the inclusion of a larger portion of the species's

historic range. In the new proposal, expansion of the

current range is possible only if that range is

inadequate to prevent the species's extinction.

 

" It shortchanges habitat protection, " said Ms. Clark

of Defenders of Wildlife. " And habitat destruction is

the primary reason for most species becoming

endangered. " She added that the law " places almost

overwhelming restrictions on sound science. "

 

Mr. Sims, in turn, argued that some of the law's

proponents care more about keeping land unused than

ending threats of extinction. " This is the Endangered

Species Act, " he said. " I would argue that a great

majority of the American people believe that a focus

on efforts to recover a species are more important

than efforts to lock up land. "

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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