Yesterday, as a part of Republican efforts to gut protection of endangered species, House Resources Committee Chairman, Rep. Richard Pombo (R-Calif) released a misleading report that is critical of the Endangered Species Act (ESA).
(OS) Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Calif., chairman of the House Resources Committee, said the report by his staff shows little success from the 1973 act."No reasonable individual can conclude that the ESA is sustainable in its current form," Pombo said. "It checks species in but never checks them out."...
...Brian Kennedy, spokesman for the Resources Committee, said the legislation is likely to create more rigorous requirements before a species is considered endangered or a habitat is classified as needing protection, which limits its development.
On the very same day a group of ten prominent biologists submitted a letter to the Senate urging them to strengthen ESA, calling it a bulwark against the loss of our biological heritage. Their interpretation of the data is in sharp contrast to the self-serving analysis of Pombo and his associates.
Find an analysis of these contrasting viewpoints below the fold.
Here's what the letter from E.O. Wilson et al. to the Senate had to say:
(Mysan)"The Endangered Species Act represents our nation's most determined effort to take responsibility for preserving its precious biological diversity. By offering strict federal protections to the species that are included on the list, the government has drawn a line which it will not allow human pressures to cross over. That line is extinction"...
..."In both its scope and its irreversibility, extinction is the most frightening, most conclusive word in our language. When a species has been declared extinct, not only have all its individuals died, but the possibility of any such individuals ever existing again has been foreclosed. The variety of life with which we share the earth is sadly in rapid decline. Life is grounded in biological diversity, and the fate of this diversity, which created and sustains us, is now in our hands."
In contrast, Pombo's report concludes that ESA has been an ineffective tool for saving endangered species, because so few of the 1,300 listed species have recovered. The Republican's solution is to make it harder to list species in the first place, to make it harder to protect endangered species habitat, and to give states greater say in decision making.
ESA has several goals. First, is to identify species that face extinction. Second, is to put in place stopgap measures to prevent species for sliding into an irretrievable abyss. Third is to put into place plans to begin population recovery. And finally, after the species has recovered, to claim success and delist the species. The Republican plan wouldn't even give many species the chance to make it to step one and would make it impossible to ever claim success. Their approach would put up roadblocks to recovery for species that are listed by restricting habitat protection. In addition, because species populations do not conform to state boundaries, endangered species management requires an ecoregional and not a State-by-State focus.
The progress of endangered species recovery is slow, but the principal problems are not with ESA, but rather with the biology of the species facing extinction and the lack of funding for recovery efforts.
The Center for Biological Diversity has issued a press release debunking the Republican report and they have their own report on the State of ESA. Their analyses credits ESA with improving the status of species that are afforded adequate attention.
1) Scientists Say Recovery Will Take 30-50 Years on Average; Often Over 100 Years
Over 3,000 scientists have reviewed that status of nearly every endangered species and concluded that recovery could not possibly be achieved within the 15.5 years they have averaged on the endangered list.
1,082 species have official federal recovery plan created by university, industry, and federal scientists. The plans establish recovery goals, implementation steps and estimated time to recovery. A systematic review of all those plans shows that the average length of time projected for recovery is 30-50 years. Many species will require over 100 years..
2) U.S. Fish and Wildlife Report Show Most Species Are Stable or Improving When Protected for at Least Six Years
Claiming to summarize a 2004 report by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Pombo report states that 60% of endangered species are uncertain or declining, 30% are stable, and only 6% are improving. This is voodoo statistics. It is statistical nonsense to lump known trends in with unknown trends. It is also nonsensical to lump together species which only been on the endangered list for six months and species which has been on the list for 15 years. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife report actually shows that 68% of species with a known trend which have been listed for at least six years are stable or improving. Just 32% are declining.
Of those species with a known trend, 68% are stable or improving and just 32% are declining.
3) Peer-Reviewed Scientific Studies Show that the Endangered Species Act Works
In April 2005, BioScience, a peer-review scientific journal published a study entitled "The Effectiveness of the Endangered Species Act: A Quantitative Analysis". The study examined 1,095 species whose status was assessed multiple times by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service between 1989 and 2002. It found that:
Endangered Species Improve Over Time. The longer species were protected under the endangered species, the more likely they were to be improving and the less likely they were to be declining.
Critical Habitat Helps Recovery Species with critical habitat for at least two years were twice as likely to be improving as species without critical habitat.
Recovery Plans Help RecoverySpecies with dedicated recovery plan were more likely to be improving and less likely to be declining than species without recovery plans. Only 81% of species currently have recovery plans.
These three main points of the CBD's report make excellent talking points to debunk the manipulative interpretation of the facts in the House Republican's report.
Please, get those fingers clicking and send out those Letters to the Editor. If the Repubs succeed on this one, the damage done to endangered species will be inarguably irreversible.