Endangered Species Act At Risk
The West’s Imperiled Wildlife Need A Strong ESA
Meeting this week in Denver, the Western Governors’ Association is continuing its efforts to revise protections for endangered species.
The association’s “species conservation and ESA initiative” seeks Congressional reauthorization of the Endangered Species Act with a general aim of increasing the role of states in managing endangered species like sage grouse or wolves.
This may sound harmless, but given the hostility of some states to endangered species and the scant resources many states are able to dedicate to saving at-risk plants and animals from extinction, many of the association’s proposals will weaken the act and put more species in danger.
I spent more than 25 years working to protect endangered species at various federal agencies, most recently as the field supervisor of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Pacific Islands Office. Unfortunately, I often butted heads with state officials opposed to strong protections for creatures on the brink of extinction.
Imperiled plants and animals can’t see state boundaries, and their survival is too important to leave to the unpredictable political winds that blow in individual states, particularly since powerful special interests like the oil and gas industry often drive state positions.
Congressional Republicans and others frequently argue that the Endangered Species Act needs fixing because too few species have fully recovered and had protections removed. But the reality is that it took decades for most species to decline to the point of endangerment — and it will take decades and a lot of hard work to bring them back.
The truth is that the Endangered Species Act is working. To date, it has been almost 99 percent effective at preventing extinction of species under its protection and has put hundreds more on the road to recovery. Scientists estimate that without the Act, as many as 227 species would have gone extinct by 2006. Species like the peregrine falcon, green sea turtle, and many more owe their very survival to this law.
As a longtime scientist now with the Center for Biological Diversity, I am here in Denver participating in workshops organized by the association, as I have in previous meetings. I know that many of my fellow meeting participants have a sincere desire to improve the management of endangered species. I hope our collective desire to protect and restore species is heard.
There certainly are ways the Endangered Species Act could be improved. Despite the fact that many of our medicines and food sources come from plants, for example, the act provides little protection to plants on private lands.
But that’s not the kind of change being contemplated by the industry-backed efforts in Congress to revise the Act.
Instead, behind euphemistic talk about “modernizing” the Endangered Species Act, there’s an effort to return to an era when the American public was excluded from decision-making, political corruption was rampant, and public lands were bought and sold to benefit political donors.
The Western Governors’ Association should strive harder to ensure that they do not belong to that disturbing movement, which draws far more support from special interests than popular opinion.
Indeed, efforts to gut protections for endangered wildlife are totally out of step with the American public. Poll after poll shows that strong majorities — including a majority of Republicans — support the Endangered Species Act and strong protections for endangered species.
It’s time for opponents of the Endangered Species Act to stop distorting and dominating discussions about the survival of our remarkable natural heritage. Concerned citizens from across the West, from Hawaii to Colorado, who care deeply about endangered species deserve to be heard.
Endangered species can’t speak for themselves — and their very survival hangs in the balance.
