Slipping Towards Oblivion
Tampa Tribune – December 21, 2003
By Keith Epstein
WASHINGTON – They come in all shapes and sizes. A woodpecker that makes its home in century-old pines an hour north of Tampa. A nocturnal mouse that lives in Florida Panhandle dunes favored by condominium builders. The lumbering manatee, beloved by some but gashed by the pleasure boats of others. Hundreds of species are slipping toward oblivion – some slowly, some quickly – under an advancing human tide.
Public attention is focused more on war and politics than nature. But especially in recent months, federal and state authorities have managed to compound the ill effects of years of government sluggishness and neglect in safeguarding species under siege. Little noticed by many, these actions by President Bush’s administration, Congress, governors, legislatures, bureaucrats, commissions and courts have whittled away at a once-popular mission to preserve and protect threatened species.
Wild things didn’t fare well even before the recent actions. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the chief federal agency charged with restoring plants, animals and insects “to a significant portion of their range,” is limited by lawsuits and court orders. It is also hundreds of millions of dollars in the red. This year it has $12 million to address a backlog of species-saving work that would require $153 million to clear, according to Gary Frazier, assistant director for endangered species.
The agency can’t keep up with reports to Congress, required every two years, on the status of species it is supposed to monitor. The latest report, in 2000, found that only 39 percent of listed species were stable or improving. The rest were in decline or faced uncertain futures. Florida agencies, meanwhile, list 117 animals as endangered, threatened or “of special concern,” and 413 endangered, threatened or commercially exploited plants. Only California and Hawaii have more endangered species.
Of all Florida vertebrates, 44 percent are known or suspected to be declining in numbers or distribution, according to data compiled by the Center for Natural Resources at the University of Florida. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. The Endangered Species Act, passed by a nearly unanimous Congress and signed into law by President Richard Nixon almost 30 years ago – Dec. 28, 1973 – was designed to do more than list protected plants and animals. It was written to preserve the communities they inhabit, the places they traverse, and the living things they eat and that influence their survival. “Nothing,” the Republican president declared, “is more priceless and more worthy of preservation than the rich array of animal life with which our country has been blessed.”
Since then, eagles, whales, grizzlies, condors, ferrets, alligators, pelicans, wolves and many other animals and plants have been helped back from the edge of extinction. But nationwide, only seven protected species no longer need protection. And seven on the federal list have been lost forever. Many more imperiled species – some say up to 350 – have not been added to the protected list because of a lack of money to review their status, according to the Fish and Wildlife Service.
“Piecemeal Attack’
Under Bush, some conservationists predicted wholesale demolition of the Endangered Species Act, worrying about the influence of business and property interests on the Republican president and Republican-led Congress. That hasn’t happened. Destroying the law would be politically untenable.
Public opinion surveys consistently show broad support for protecting species, even when the economy is poor. Americans love wildlife. Some 66 million people fed, photographed or found other ways of watching animals in the wild in 2001, spending $38 billion on trips, equipment and related items. “The Bush administration knows there’s still strong public support [for the law], and they know going to Congress and openly gutting it won’t fly,” says John Kostyack, senior counsel at the National Wildlife Federation. “So they’re doing a piecemeal attack strategy,” he says. “Piece by piece, they’re taking specific species off the list, downgrading them, denying them protection, reinterpreting the law – basically weakening its implementation.”
It’s a pattern of “tinkering with administrative changes, budgetary allocations, and other below-the-radar maneuvers,” says Michael Bean, chairman of the wildlife program Environmental Defense. “A lot can be done that doesn’t trigger the same alarm bells a frontal assault in Congress on all species would trigger.” In the last year, Bush’s administration has: Given the military more leeway to sidestep wildlife protection laws to train personnel within habitats of endangered species and to test sonar systems that may injure marine mammals.
Drafted regulations to make maintaining viable wildlife populations in national forests discretionary rather than mandatory. Wrested decision-making away from Fish and Wildlife Service experts on whether pesticides harm endangered species. Tried to remove Fish and Wildlife Service experts from helping decide whether fire and logging plans on federal land harm endangered species.
Removed from the endangered list species viewed by many as still endangered, such as, in September, a fish called the Sacramento Splittail. Refused to add many species to the list. When Bush’s father was president, his administration added species at a rate of 64 per year; 25 have been listed since 2001. Proposed allowing hunters, circuses and the pet industry to buy endangered animals from other nations.
Conservationists aren’t the only ones protesting. “I think you misled me. I think you misled the plaintiffs. And I think you are in violation of this order,” U.S. District Judge William Alsup wrote in May 2001, admonishing a Bush administration official. The case involved a plan to limit desert grazing in critical tortoise habitat in California deserts.
Last week, a federal judge in Seattle struck down an administration decision against protecting orcas, criticizing it for not considering the “best available science.” Cooperative Conservation The administration counters its critics by saying that in many instances, it takes a more pragmatic and effective approach to conservation. There often are better ways to spare species with less effect on people than traditional policing, officials say.Rather than being ensnared in squabbles, saddled with lawsuits and prodded with court orders, the federal government should focus on recovery programs that work.
Administration officials increasingly call these times “a new era for cooperative conservation.” In October, Interior Secretary Gayle Norton described the resolution of a fierce conflict over an imperiled bird as “a win-win partnership that is essential to successful conservation of our wildlife and its habitat.” The bird is the mountain plover, which nests in ranch and farm fields in the West.
Under the resolution, farmers and ranchers agreed to report voluntarily any plovers found in their fields, thus avoiding the government telling them when and where to plow. “By not listing the bird, we’ve actually saved the bird,” says Alan Foutz, president of the Colorado Farm Bureau, which assembled a coalition that succeeded in keeping the plover off the federal endangered species list. “If it had been listed,” Foutz says, “there probably would have been a rebellion.People wouldn’t have reported its existence on their property. But now we all have an opportunity to take care of this bird and manage it.”
When migrating plovers return to Foutz’ 1,800 acres of wheat, millet and sunflowers in March, he and other landowners will have a toll-free telephone number to report nests, which can be marked with red flags so tractors avoid them. A video tells farmers what to do. “This is an historic case,” Foutz says. “Secretary Norton told me it’s going to be used as a model around the country for endangered species. More people are willing to help if they don’t have a club over their head.”
“Fearing Endangered Species’
At least one study appears to lend credence to that argument. The Preble’s meadow jumping mouse favors areas near streams within sight of the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains. So do people, who have fueled one of the nation’s biggest real estate booms. In Colorado – as in many states, including Florida – developers complain that concern for small living things has spiraled out of control. The Endangered Species Act is misused to halt development, they say.
In 1998, when the Preble’s mouse was listed as a threatened species, the Mountain States Legal Foundation filed a lawsuit. The government’s stance held, but it didn’t translate into victory for the mouse. A study in the December journal of the Society for Conservation Biology, based in Gainesville, found that once the mouse was listed as threatened, landowners became as likely to destroy as to enhance the creature’s environment. To avoid regulation, people dug up the mouse’s favored waterside habitat. More than half of 397 landowners in the study said they would refuse to allow a biological survey of their property. That survey would collect important information to help scientists determine the extent of protection the mouse needed.
Such reactions suggest the “current regulatory approach to rare species conservation is insufficient to protect the Preble’s mouse,” the study’s authors wrote. “We have learned that command and control approaches have their strengths and their limitations,” Norton said in a speech Dec. 15. The Endangered Species Act’s “punitive aspects intimidate otherwise law-abiding citizens into fearing endangered species.”
A “Move To Placate’
Some conservationists regard such arguments as rhetorical cover for placating commercial interests and campaign contributors who typically say the law threatens development and jobs. “It looks systematic to us, as if there’s a strong anticonservation bent to this administration,” says Jeff Kessler, conservation director of the Biodiversity Conservation Alliance, which was stunned at losing its battle to gain species act protection for the mountain plover.
“I think it was a political move to placate the Bush administration’s large corporate clients, like the minerals industry and the agriculture industry,” Kessler says. The plover and the mouse are just two examples of the creatures caught up in tugs of war among humans. Hundreds of conflicts over species fill the dockets of agencies and courthouses from Tallahassee to Anchorage.
The federal government is involved in at least 34 active lawsuits over 42 species, is being directed by court orders involving 73 species, and foresees 33 fresh lawsuits soon over 54 species. As species fade, such contentious litigation fuels a growth industry among lawyers.
Robert Wiygul, an environmental attorney in Biloxi, Miss., is fighting Florida Panhandle business interests with Gulfside land plans threatened by the tiny, dune-loving St. Andrew Beach mouse. Only 500 dwell between Mobile Bay and Apalachicola. “I’m certainly not one of those people who say the Bush administration is putting me out of a job,” Wiygul says. “They’re keeping me in one.”
QUICK FACTS – CHART
First it was ice ages. Then giant asteroids. Entire lines of reptiles and mammals were wiped out. Now there’s a sixth wave of extinction, the first attributed to the spread of people. The Endangered Species Act, passed in 1973, was meant to slow the rate and restore imperiled animals and plants to sustain themselves. On the law’s 30th anniversary, here’s what is really happening: Each year, at least 3,000 species become extinct worldwide. Sixteen animals and plants have made comebacks, including gray whales, bald eagles, grizzly bears, brown pelicans, peregrine falcons, American alligators and Aleutian Canada geese. For every recovery of a species, 126 more qualify for U.S. designation as threatened or endangered. The Endangered Species Act is supposed to protect, at latest count, 1,263 U.S. species and 558 foreign species.
