http://www.sanluisobispo.com/mld/sanluisobispo/15052922.htm

Rewriting species act is his

Rep. Pombo of Tracy, a powerful environmental legislator, explains why the act isn’t working

By David Whitney
dwhitney@mcclatchydc.com
WASHINGTON — Rep. Richard Pombo, the Tracy Republican who heads the House Resources Committee, stirs conflict with almost every major initiative he launches, from offshore drilling to Indian gaming.

Few members of Congress have as much influence over the nation's environmental laws as Pombo, who thrives in taking on controversial issues. No topic has been more blistering hot than his legislation to overhaul the Endangered Species Act.

The House approved Pombo's sweeping rewrite of the 1973 law on a 229-193 vote in September. It was widely denounced by environmentalists as a disturbing retreat from habitat protection and a paperwork nightmare for agencies seeking to revive the 1,268 threatened and endangered plants and animals in the country, 186 of which are in California.

In the Senate, Pombo's bill was greeted even by Republicans with a measure of skepticism. The Bush administration, while supporting it, is worried about the cost of Pombo's plan to compensate landowners for restrictions on their property use. In an interview, Pombo discussed why he thinks the act signed into law by President Nixon needs an overhaul and how his bill would work.

Q. What are your problems with the Endangered Species Act now?

A. I didn't like the way it treated private property owners. It was heavy-handed. It didn't really matter what the facts were on the ground or what the science was. It was decisions being driven by somebody in Washington who had never even been to the area being regulated.

I felt it was wrong for them to come in and tell someone who had been farming for a hundred years that you can no longer farm it any more because it was endangered species habitat.

But the more I got into it, I began to realize that the act didn't work. At some point, the agency began to focus on land-use control and forgot all about recovering species.

This was driven by lawsuits. (Environmentalists) would file a lawsuit on the designation of critical habitat, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service would lose. As more of a defensive posture, they began focusing on designation of critical habitat and they forgot all about recovering species and whether or not the habitat that was being protected actually did anything.

Q. There have been some reports, peer reviewed, that have shown the act has been working, that species on the list 13 or more years are, by and large, stable or improving.

A. That's not accurate. Less than 6 percent of the species listed by the Fish and Wildlife Service will even qualify as recovering, as moving in the right direction. Nearly 40 percent of the species on the list, they don't even know what their status is.

Q. So you don't think the act is working at all?

A. I wouldn't say it hasn't worked at all. But it hasn't worked the way it should.

Q. How would your bill change it?

A. It completely changes the focus. (By) getting away from the current process of protecting habitat, what we say is that you have to adopt a recovery plan. Once you've adopted a recovery plan, whatever habitat is necessary to fulfill that is what is protected. The focus is on how we recover the species and what habitat is necessary to achieve that.

The other thing is that for about 90 percent of the species, at least part of their habitat is on private property. If you don't bring in private property owners, it's never going to work. What we've tried to do is to place the incentives under the law so that it is not seen as a negative by property owners. It becomes a potential positive, or at worst a neutral, in terms of their land values or what they can do with their property. If it is seen as a neutral or positive on their land value, then there is no reason for them to not protect habitat or to do things that create additional habitat.

Q. The environmentalists claim your bill is just a wholesale elimination of essential habitat.

A. The funny part is (that) the idea for doing away with critical habitat and going with recovery habitat actually came from environmental groups. When they originally brought that up during negotiations over this, I said no, we have to fix critical habitat. But the more I thought about it, I realized they were right, that that was the only way we were going to do this — to completely do away with the current process of protecting habitat and go with something different.

Q. How would that work?

A. This is where science comes in. You identify species as endangered or threatened and you come up with a recovery team. Independent science looks at it and says this particular species needs this kind of habitat, these are the reproduction rates, this is what we have to do to get it to a sustainable population. To do that, this is the kind of habitat we need and this is how much we think we need. So all of the habitat that is protected is tied directly back in to the recovery plan.

When the red-legged frog was originally listed, (environmentalists) sued and won. So Fish and Wildlife responded with a 5 million-acre map of habitat. They just mapped any creek in Northern California and designated it as critical habitat, even if it was a dry creek bed. It had nothing to do with recovering the species. Then they got sued by developers, and that 5 million acres shrunk to less than a million acres. It still has nothing to do with recovering the frog. They don't have a recovery plan. Millions of dollars have been spent, there have been several lawsuits, and they still haven't a clue.

(Under my bill,) you come up with a recovery team that says this is what we need to do and this is the kind of habitat we need. You go to the property owner and say, look, you've got cattle ponds that we think could be potential habitat. If we propagate frogs there, and this is how you have to manage your property to do it, we'll give you a grant or tax credit or something that helps them.

Then all of a sudden the property owner doesn't see it as a negative and you actually do something to recover the species. As it is now, the guy says I might have red-legged frogs there so I'm going to dry up that pond and water my cattle out of a trough because I don't want to lose use of my property.

David Whitney covers Central Coast issues from the McClatchy Washington bureau.