"In government, there are two ways to destroy something," says one federal biologist. "If you can't do it directly, then just don't pay for it." Environmentalists in the executive branch ought to know: This Earth Day, President Bush is scheming to snap the wallet shut on the Endangered Species Act.
Bush's proposed 2002 budget limits Interior Secretary Gale Norton to $8.46 million with which to respond to citizen-filed suits requesting the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to list a species as endangered, and to designate specific habitat for that species. (Citizen-suits have traditionally been the main pathway for species listing.) Once that funding is spent, Norton would choose which species to protect and which to ignore. This provision would backhandedly nullify the 28-year-old Endangered Species Act via the appropriations process, giving Norton permission to ignore court orders. She wouldn't even have to defend her decisions on the basis of sound science.
The provision has activists up in arms. Some charge that the provision is unconstitutional because it suggests that the executive branch can ignore the courts. Given that judges' rulings pertaining to endangered species have, one more than one occasion, characterized Interior Department actions as "arbitrary and capricious," imagine the level of power the current proposal would unleash -- particularly considering that Norton once filed a brief challenging the constitutionality of the Endangered Species Act itself. A power-grab of this magnitude is breathtaking.
So is the chutzpah with which Norton spun the grab.
"For the most part, what we're talking about are ways of expanding protections," Norton reportedly said.
Thus is black, white -- and up, down.
According to a Bloomberg.com report, Norton advocates giving landowners more discretion over classifying endangered species. How would that work? This animal is endangered on one man's land, but not another's? Aren't decisions about which species are listed as endangered supposed to be based on scientific data?
This is not a partisan issue. Many members of both parties are appalled. Yesterday, a spokesman for Massachusetts Senator John Kerry said the senator intends to take immediate action on this issue -- and on any other anti-environmental riders the administration may have tried to slip into the proposed budget. News reports last week connected Kerry with a threatened filibuster, but his spokesman yesterday said the senator hopes to rid the budget of such items long before they reach the floor for debate.
The truth is, this is just one more action in the unsuccessful campaign by right-wing business interests to destroy the Endangered Species Act. First approved in 1973 by a stunning 355-4 vote and eagerly signed by Richard Nixon, the Act was initially seen as something all Americans could get behind.
It has produced some tremendous results. Endangered species protection has brought back the American bald eagle, the American buffalo, and American alligator, and countless other, less charismatic animals. All these achievements have given the legislation superior status.
After the law went into effect, business interests began to feel the financial pinch. It was one thing to save the American buffalo by putting them on what was essentially a ranch -- the Wichita Forest Reserve -- and raising them like cattle, and quite another to save an endangered owl by setting aside forest habitat that logging interests had expected would be available for their personal use.
Since then, there have been a series of direct assaults, all of which have failed. The newest conservative propaganda line claims that the 100-plus lawsuits currently in process are hampering Fish and Wildlife staff. Allegedly, agency biologists are so tied up by these lawsuits that they cannot do their fieldwork.
After 20 years of visiting refuges and writing about this agency, I know a bunch of blarney when I hear it.
In fact, the in-the-trenches field biologists like these citizen-engendered lawsuits. The lawsuits relieve the working biologists of a great deal of political pressure. "Hey," federal biologists get to say, shrugging their shoulders, "it's not up to me. The court says we have to protect this animal."
There's a lot of behind-the-scenes teamwork going on here. Fish and Wildlife biologists supply data; the independent biologists push the issue publicly.
What's really at issue here is the shift in focus of the federal Fish and Wildlife Service over the past 10 years or so. While this shift is scientifically based, it's been divisive. It's pitted (1) agency biologists against agency politicians; (2) agency field employees against high-level officials who enjoy nice lunches and go on pleasant junkets to interesting foreign places; (3) young against old.
The foundation of these conflicts has a 100-year history. Our national wildlife refuge system -- with more than 500 properties, one of the nation's crown jewels -- was not founded as an environmental agency. In 1903, Florida's Pelican Island became our first wildlife refuge. Its purpose was to raise a plentitude of white herons and other birds, which had been hunted nearly to extinction because their mating plumage made great hats. In other words, it was a chicken farm.
In 1907, the Service sent a few of the nation's remaining bison -- most had been slaughtered at the behest of the nation's railroad barons -- to what is now the Wichita Forest Reserve and Game Preserve in Oklahoma, where the Service ranched them much like any other cattle.
Our best understanding of wildlife conservation in those days was to treat the animals like livestock. White herons in short supply? Start a heron farm in Florida. Too much buffalo slaughter? Begin a bison ranch.
These were good ideas, but science has advanced since then. Now we know that, in the long run, ranching and farming individual species is bound to fail. Without the ecology to support the species, our efforts are in vain. Although the Fish and Wildlife Service still maintains many old-style "farming" and "ranching" properties, over the last decade the agency has come to emphasize the preservation of entire ecological systems, rather than individual species.
Private interests accustomed to having free rein on federal lands have been furious. In 1997, conservatives introduced an outlandish proposal that would have destroyed the Act's effectiveness, but few elected officials supported them publicly. That same year, Rhode Island's Republican Senator John Chaffee brokered a middle-of-the-road compromise that would have resolved many of the dilemmas cited recently by Norton. That compromise, however, went nowhere.
Certainly there is room for fine-tuning the Endangered Species Act. All but the most extreme of the non-profit environmental groups agree that reasonable discussions could yield important advances for all stakeholders. But approaching the problem through backdoor budget manipulation is bound to further alienate the various parties.
"The example of the Gingrich years taught us that what could never be passed in the light of day can often be accomplished in the late hours of the appropriations process through anti-environmental budget riders," Kerry said this week. "I hope the Bush Administration, if they're serious about changing the tone in Washington, wouldn't try to sneak this agenda through Congress that way." Bush is already the Arsenic President. It won't do him good to become the species killer too.
