The House Natural Resources Committee weighed in on nine bills to amend the Endangered Species Act (ESA) last week and it was a painful episode to watch. This is without question a highly partisan issue, and with the current polarity in Washington, it will be amazing if the ESA can be amended any time soon. But if it’s going to get done, it has to happen very soon.
The ESA has become a weapon to thwart land development and a cash cow for environmental groups. Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) said that ESA is a failure, citing that only 2 percent of listed species have recovered. He was in the healthcare industry prior to politics and said that a 2 percent success rate for his patients is a dismal success rate. He would be forced to take a step back and reevaluate his procedures to raise his success rate.
That sums up the ESA quite well. The nine amendments deal with transparency, local input in listing decisions, predictability while engaging in a conservation program, the petitioning process to list species, prioritizing species recovery, and a host of other minor adjustments. The opposition claims that ESA is working just fine and that more money will fix it. Their favorite statistic is that 98 percent of listed species are still alive. However, only 2 percent have recovered.
One other huge item discussed was ESA litigation. More and more ESA cases are determined by the courts, which certainly can’t be the final arbiter of ESA because they have no technical skill, just as we recently witnessed with the Yellowstone grizzly bear hunt, reversal, and relisting.
The ESA law worked, but it didn’t in the end. The bear reached its agreed upon recovery level of 700 head established by the feds. Then Wyoming and Idaho took over management as the ESA provides. The states’ wildlife officers decided it was time to manage the bears and have a hunting season with a maximum take of 24 bears.
The environmental groups you all know and love filed a suit and the judge placed a 14-day injunction until they could determine the merits of the hunt or decide not to hunt. According to the Humane Society of the U.S., “A federal district court in Montana held that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service cut corners and ignored science when it rushed to remove federal protections for grizzly bears in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. The court’s order restores federal protection to this celebrated and imperiled population of bears.
The states have a responsibility to protect people and private property and control the species now that they are not under federal inspection.
Claiming grizzly bears are an imperiled species would be a gross overstatement. Environmental groups also said that state wildlife managers unfairly malign bears based on perceived threats to livestock without evidence that individual bears post an imminent threat to cattle or other animals grazing on federal or private land. Apparently, no one bothered to check with the Hoodoo Ranch or other ranchers about the threats, and how many cattle were claimed by both bears and wolves.
In Washington and Oregon, wildlife managers don’t seem to have a problem targeting individual wolves and they realize the problem with wolves and livestock.
Wolves and grizzly bears are apex predators. As the population grows, the problems will grow. States have an obligation to neutralize the problem. Both species are considered recovered by the ESA. State wildlife managers are supposed to have responsibility to manage them, but federal courts don’t seem to see it that way.
The House committee passed 10 bills the day after markup. Committee chair Rob Bishop (R-UT) said, “These bills honor our heritage, lighten regulatory burdens for communities, increase transparency, and strengthen relationships between states and the federal government. Ultimately, these bills aim to bolster our country’s natural resources. I’d like to thank the Western Caucus and my colleagues for helping to move these bills forward.”
So now we have the House working on ESA and then we have Sen. John Barrasso’s (R-WY) amendments to the ESA bill in the Senate. These are two separate efforts to reform ESA. I’m told that Barrasso’s bill is where the industry wants to go. It certainly makes one wonder who are the real predators—environmental litigators or state wildlife managers? Time to reduce the court’s ability to manage endangered species. — PETE CROW
