Helping Endangered Property Owners
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July 21, 2004
Over the past 30-plus years, the Endangered Species Act (ESA) has not done a heck of a lot to save endangered animal species, but it has done much to endanger property owners. Countless property owners have lost economic opportunities and control over their own land due to bad decisions and faulty science under this act.
A study released earlier this year from the Property and Environment Research Center (PERC) pointed out that while the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had reported $610.3 million in spending related to the ESA in 2000, “the true costs are probably four times that – not in the millions, but in the billions.” PERC pointed out that “costs absorbed by state and local governments and private parties are not reported at all.”
Of course, the political left will portray any common-sense efforts to reform the ESA as an attack on wildlife and the environment. What’s the real story, though? In a recent release, the House Resource Committee provided some answers about the ESA and two sound legislative efforts. They are worth noting:
• “After thirty years, the law has recovered 12 of 1300 listed species, for a cumulative success rate of .01% (or a 99.99% rate of failure), even under the Fish and Wildlife Service`s own, optimistic reading. Nine species have gone extinct. More than a dozen were listed due to data errors and subsequently removed.”
• “Critical habitat, one of the chief tools in the current ESA toolbox, has been described by both Republican and Democrat administrations as a ‘biological disaster’ that ‘contributes little, if anything, to species recovery.’ But due to floods of environmental lawsuits, critical habitat is what consumes the majority of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service resources.”
• “Poor decision-making, caused by inadequate data, has created an adversarial relationship between government regulators and the people who are most critical to the goal of saving endangered species: America`s farmers, ranchers, Native Americans, and private property owners - the people who own the habitat. More than 90% of endangered species have habitat on private land, but research shows that the ESA has created a regulatory atmosphere that prompts land owners to actually destroy species habitat to rid their property of the government regulations that come with endangered species.”
• H.R. 2933, the Critical Habitat Reform Act, sponsored by Rep. Dennis Cardoza (D-CA), would adjust “the arbitrary and now-untenable deadline under which the FWS is required to designate critical habitat (the tool the agency must use, despite the fact that its experts deem it useless to species recovery). This will also limit the frivolous litigation filed by ESA ambulance chasers - who make a living off of the current broken system - and force our biologists out of the field and into the courthouse. The bill corrects the dysfunctional critical habitat designation process, linking it to the species recovery planning process, and integrating the data accumulated in that process. The result will be a greater focus on species recovery under the Act and improvement of the abysmal .01% success rate.”
• H.R. 1662, the Sound Science for ESA Planning Act, sponsored by Rep. Greg Walden (R-OR), “would strengthen the scientific foundation of species recovery efforts by integrating a peer-review tool into ESA decision-making processes. Unlike laws such as the Safe Drinking Water Act, the Marine Mammal Protection Act, and a host of laws that affect the Food and Drug Administration, the Department of Education, and the Department of Labor, and the Department of Commerce (to name a few), the ESA currently has NO peer review requirement. Peer review is a standard scientific safeguard, but has somehow never been integrated into Washington`s solution for recovering endangered species.”
SBSC has sent endorsement letters to Reps. Cardoza and Walden in support of their long overdue improvements to the ESA. Full support by the House Resources Committee and then the full U.S. House is in order.
The federal regulatory monster has long careened out of control. In the case of the ESA, property owners, including countless small business owners, have paid dearly, while effectiveness has been nearly nonexistent. These basic, common-sense reforms most certainly are in order.
Raymond J. Keating
Chief Economist
Small Business Survival Committee1920 L. Street N.W. Suite 200 | Washington D.C. 20036 | Phone (202) 785-0238 | Fax (202) 822-8118
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