Act Has Not
Performed Its Mission
Friday, April
21; 1:14 pm
By Rep. Richard Pombo,
Special to Roll Call
Has the
Endangered Species Act of 1973 become outdated
and ineffective? For aficionados of the
endangered locoweed - no, of course it has not.
To the more cerebral, however, the facts speak
for themselves.
In short, after more than three decades of
implementation and billions of taxpayer dollars,
the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service reports to
Congress that only 10 - or less than 1 percent -
of the act's roughly 1,300 species have been
recovered. Of those that remain under its care,
just 6 percent are classified as improving, and
a staggering 70 percent are classified as either
"in decline" or of "unknown" status. Almost 80
percent of listed species only have achieved
somewhere between zero and 25 percent of their
recovery objectives. Critical habitat
designations, though still required by law, do
next to nothing to help species, but they
consume massive sums of conservation resources
through rampant predatory lawsuits.
All of the above amounts to an endangered
species program the U.S. Office of Management
and Budget assesses as "Not Performing," an
understatement even in Washington, D.C.,
bureaucracy-speak. The findings in a recent
Government Accountability Office report on the
endangered species recovery program illustrate
the magnitude of this dysfunction.
The GAO took a statistically significant sample
of recovery plans (107 plans covering about 200
species) and reviewed them to see if they
contained several key elements. The results were
disheartening. Only five recovery plans
addressed all of the factors that are considered
when the agencies determine whether a species is
endangered, only 19 percent of the plans had an
estimate of what it would cost to recover the
species, and only 32 percent provided an
estimate of how long it would take.
Worse still, the estimated costs or estimated
recovery dates (for the minority of plans that
had them) do not appear to track with reality.
Of the species covered by the plans that did
have an estimated recovery date, the dates have
come and gone, and not one single species in the
study sample has even been proposed for
delisting.
One species, the Maguire daisy, changed from
endangered to threatened (downlisted), but not
because of any success with the ESA. Studies
indicated that it was, in fact, no different
from other daisies and actually was quite
widespread and abundant. In Washington parlance,
this is called a "taxonomic revision." People
outside the Beltway call this a mistake. Either
way, the ESA has been rife with them.
The population of Johnston's frankenia, a Texas
plant, was believed to consist of some 15,000
specimens. Researchers quit posting their
surveys when they had determined there were
likely more than 9,000,000. Not surprisingly,
"erroneous data" is the No. 1 reason cited by
the FWS for removing species from the list, not
recovery.
In fact, of all the species included in the
GAO's review of recovery plans with actual
recovery projections, only four are considered
"improving." But two, the Cumberland sandwort
and Virginia sneezeweed, are classified as such
because of mistakes - the discovery of
additional populations.
Each mistake and faulty plan in the ESA draws
money from other species that truly are in need.
Just issuing a proposed rule to list a species
costs somewhere between $75,000 and $125,000.
Then there is the final rule and requirements to
designate critical habitats, which are far more
expensive processes.
At the same time, some claim the many
shortcomings of the ESA are attributable to
inadequate funding. But once again, the data
does not agree. The recovery plan for the
decurrent false aster (a plant), for example,
anticipated its recovery by 1997 at a cost of
$58,000. In 2006, the FWS announced that it will
review this species' status, having spent more
than 800 percent of what it originally
projected. Similarly, the recovery plan for the
least tern (a bird) anticipated that the species
could be recovered by 2005, at a cost of $1.75
million to $2 million. Least tern expenditures
by fiscal 2004 exceeded $23 million.
Those opposed to improving the ESA and its
abysmal record bemoan such analysis, claiming it
is unfair, that recovery takes time, and that
because many listed species have not gone
extinct, the ESA really has worked. It is true
that some species are more secure today (bald
eagle, peregrine falcon and brown pelican) than
in the past, but the credit - or most of it -
does not necessarily lay with the ESA. It lies
with factors unrelated to the ESA, such as the
ban on DDT or the Bald Eagle Protection Act of
1945, which made it illegal to hunt the birds.
And while recovery does take time, one would
hope that after 33 years and 1,300 species we
would have a little more to crow about. The key
is that failing to plan is planning to fail in
any endeavor, which is precisely what three
decades of ESA implementation reveals.
These are just a few of the ESA's shortcomings,
but they make understandable the OMB's
assessment that the program is "not performing"
and that "[i]t is difficult to determine whether
the program, including regulated activities, is
effective, achieving results, and maximizing net
benefits." They are also just a few of the
reasons that the House, with a strong bipartisan
vote, passed H.R. 3824, the Threatened and
Endangered Species Recovery Act.
TESRA provides many of the long-needed
improvements - including eliminating the
wasteful critical habitat provisions and
requiring sound, comprehensive recovery plans,
by a certain date, with strong data reporting
and transparency requirements. The ESA must be
refocused on recovery, and that it is not a
one-way street for species. Ignoring the need to
improve the ESA after three decades of failure
is an unrecorded vote to continue to enable
conservation failure.
Rep. Richard Pombo (R-Calif.) is chairman of the
Resources Committee.
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