Bill Would Reduce Government's Role in Protecting Species

By FELICITY BARRINGER
Published: July 4, 2005

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.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/04/politics/04species.html

Sounds good... but what does it mean? what would the result of a bill like this passing be? It doesn't sound like the obligations were going away... just that they were going to let the ACoE, USFS, etc. do their jobs and not just be the "yes men"

Sounds like the greenies are opposed to it... they wouldn't be able to strong arm the gov't into the access restrictions and stop developments like they have... but wouldn't they be able to do just the same... maybe even easier with less red tape to the USFS, ACoE, etc.... or is it that these smaller agencies aren't elected officials and they don't think that they'll be able to strong arm them or intimidate them at all?