Historic ESA overhaul clears major hurdle

In what could be the most significant legislation for the protection of threatened and endangered species, as well as the rights of property owners, the U.S. House of Representatives last week passed the Threatened and Endangered Species Recovery Act of 2005.

The bill is an overhaul of the Endangered Species Act of 1973 that over the years failed to accomplish many of its intended species recovery goals.

"Under the leadership of Representative Richard Pombo, the House took a historic step in making endangered species law more protective of species and more workable for private landowners who help protect those species," California Farm Bureau Federation President Bill Pauli said. "The Endangered Species Act revisions update a law that was in serious need of modernization and of better tools to help save species from extinction. Instead of penalizing landowners, this law makes partners of private landowners who want to help with species recovery."

San Joaquin County Farm Bureau Executive Director Bruce Blodgett reported from House chambers last week that the House approved Pombo's ESA reform bill, H.R. 3824, by a final vote of 229-193.

"While debate over Pombo's bill and a substitute bill offered by Rep. George Miller. D-Calif., and Sherwood Boehlert, R-NY, was intense, it was encouraging to see that virtually every speaker in the debate agreed that the 30-year-old ESA needs to be updated and revised," Blodgett said. "The vote was generally along party lines, although about 40 Republicans voted against the bill and a roughly equal number of Democrats voted for it.This is a great victory."

CFBF mobilized county Farm Bureaus and FARM TEAM members by encouraging them to contact their members of Congress to thank the original co-sponsors of the bill and encourage additional support from new members. Jack King, CFBF National Affairs Division manager, noted that Farm Bureau members should be recognized for their involvement in the bill's recent success.

"The new ESA legislation is extremely important to our members. We've been seeking meaningful changes in the law for many, many years. Finally this was our opportunity to make it happen," King said. "This was an all out grass roots effort on the part of our members and they responded by making calls and sending messages. We've still got a lot of work to do, but this is an encouraging start."

Farmer and rancher Kenny Watkins, San Joaquin County Farm Bureau past-president, traveled to Washington last week to show support for the legislation.

"This is pretty historical. We got the ball moving, we got everybody to agree that the ESA needs to be changed. The discussion now is on how we are going to make it happen," Watkins said. "Everybody stepped up and lobbied and worked with all of the legislators to get this through. You do not meet any legislator who doesn't say that ESA is not broken."

H.R. 3824 was introduced by House Resources Committee Chairman Pombo, R-Tracy, and Rep. Dennis Cardoza, D-Atwater. The Threatened and Endangered Species Recovery Act of 2005 tallied more than 96 co-sponsors from 30 states. The issue now moves to the U.S. Senate.

"We are just so proud of Congressman Pombo for laboring on this and creating a bipartisan bill that reflects what America should be thinking about, instead of the same old debate. Finally, we will move forward to make the law something that can work for the species and for the people who are most affected by it," said Brenda Southwick, managing counsel for the CFBF Natural Resources and Environmental Division. "This is the beginning of a long journey, but it is a very hopeful beginning."

The failure of the ESA to recover endangered species was noted by Pombo, who cited figures from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Agency data indicates that the ESA has achieved a less-than 1 percent success rate for species recovery. In addition, the ESA has only recovered 10 of the roughly 1,300 species on the list.

Pombo's legislation fixes the long-outstanding problems of the ESA by focusing on species recovery, providing incentives, increasing openness and accountability, strengthening scientific standards, creating bigger roles for state and local governments, protecting private property owners and eliminating dysfunctional critical habitat designations.

"During debate, the entire House of Representatives seemed to agree the ESA is in need of updates and improvements," Pombo said. "It's incredible how far we have come. But what surprised me most was the strong ideological differences about whether homeowners should be compensated when their property is taken, as the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution requires. Upholding this right and partnering with the landowner is the only way we are going to improve the ESA's failing results for recovery. This legislation does just that."

Former cattlewoman Jeanette Sainz of Los Alamos, now retired, was one of the first people in Santa Barbara County to find a California tiger salamander on her property. That was 30 years ago. Researchers were excited about the species find because, at the time, they did not know that the California tiger salamander existed as far south in the state as Santa Barbara County. Sainz' intent, by having the species analyzed and donating 140 acres of property to a professor for university research, was to show that the species and farming could co-exist.

However, since that time, the issue of the now threatened California tiger salamander has impacted her personal income. The cattle ranch was to be her and her husband's retirement.

"Pombo's legislation is absolutely necessary," Sainz said. "Little by little, inch by inch, it gets ridiculous enough that the pendulum has to come back. When it comes to the ESA, we need to be in the gray area where neither side is completely happy. If one side is happy all of the time then there is something wrong."

The modernized ESA legislation would mean that agencies would spend less time fighting lawsuits and more time in the field recovering species. U.S. Interior Secretary Gale Norton noted that the bill would change the critical habitat provisions of the act that have generated huge amounts of litigation and very little conservation benefit for threatened and endangered species.

"As both the Bush administration and previous administrations have testified before Congress, the conservation and restoration of habitat is vitally important to the recovery of species, but the critical habitat provisions of the act have proven an expensive and ineffective way to achieve this goal," Norton said. "In fact, for all the millions of dollars and thousands of hours of staff time invested in mapping critical habitat areas, these provisions have not created even one acre of new habitat, but have diverted scarce resources from other conservation efforts."

(Christine Souza is a reporter for Ag Alert. She may be contacted at csouza@cfbf.com.)