Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, April 3, 1995 TAG: 9504050056
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: TERRY TANG
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
This dreary, functionalist thinking might make sense if the natural world were simpler (scientists estimate that there are 10 million to 100 million unknown species alive on Earth) and politicians were honest.
But just about every part of the public debate on endangered species is so filled with myth that untangling the real problems of the ESA is nearly impossible. Meanwhile, funding to manage ecosystems so that risks of extinction are minimalized (and reliance on the ESA curbed) is being cut by the Republicans in the name of deficit reduction.
For starters, the spotted owl case - though it is used by ESA opponents to show how the act protects creatures at the expense of humans - teaches a very different lesson.
About 90 percent of the old-growth forests of the Northwest had been logged by the time the owl appeared on anybody's radar screen. The government's recovery plan for the owl set population goals lower than current population estimates. And President Clinton's forest plan - an overt compromise between science and politics - over time will eliminate another 30 percent of the remaining ancient forest.
This hardly amounts to a victory for conservationists.
J. Michael Scott, a scientist with the National Biological Service and former director of the federal project to save the California condor, is intimately familiar with the flaws of the Endangered Species Act - not the least of which is that the law is triggered only when extinction is imminent and largely unavoidable.
``In most endangered species cases, we are managing for extinction,'' Scott says. Despite what the critics say, economic and social factors, although not explicitly considered by the ESA, clearly come into play. A third of listed species with population data had recovery goals set below the population at the time of listing - a good indication that federal scientists are trying to fit survival plans to political realities much of the time.
Species-by-species protection also is inherently inefficient. The backlog of unlisted candidate species has topped 1,000. The average time it takes between listing a creature as endangered and completing a recovery plan is more than five years. Worse, only a tiny fraction of endangered species actually have recovered as a result of ESA protection.
All that said, doing a cost-benefit analysis on a species, as Republicans such as Sen. Slade Gorton propose, only would add foolishness to inefficiency. It would not make the act easier to administer because it won't reduce the number of triggering events.
The outcome of such analysis, of course, would be predictable.
``The long-run benefits of saving species are rich, but they are immeasurable,'' says Harvard biologist Edward O. Wilson. ``So the fight always will be won by the developer because the short-run benefits are easy to see.''
The problem is that the ESA operates like a fine filter, saving single species as they veer toward extinction. It cannot protect healthy ecosystems or encourage appropriate human activity on those lands before extinction occurs.
For years, scientists such as Wilson and Scott have pushed for the ``coarse filter'' of habitat management while species are common. Only recently has there been any effort to move federal policy in this direction.
The National Biological Service, established by Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt 18 months ago, is compiling an inventory of native ecosystems. At the very least, early monitoring would give private conservation groups and government opportunity to purchase or swap lands with an eye toward maintaining biodiversity. Species rare in one area may even be found dwelling somewhere else, thus preventing a listing.
The Republicans, including those in Washington's congressional delegation who've lived through the owl crisis, however, have shown no interest in the ecosystem approach.
The House voted this month to rescind $16.7 million from the 1995 National Biological Service budget (a speck in the federal budget). The Northwest Biological Science Center would be one of four centers out of 15 nationwide that would close. Gorton meanwhile is pushing to rescind $3 million for listing species and critical habitats.
The House's ``takings'' legislation is a greater blow to habitats than budget cuts. The legislation would effectively end enforcement of federal wetlands regulation by requiring payment to private landowners for reductions to their property value. Half of the animals and a third of plants currently listed as endangered or threatened depend on wetlands for survival. More certainly will join the list.
A centrist position on endangered species is intellectually dismal the way economics is dismal, devoid of passion and imagination. Besides, a law that aims only to save some species and not others in time becomes incoherent. What is worth saving simply is unknowable at the time the decision is made, regardless of who makes the decision.
The only way out of the endangered-species dilemma is to minimalize future risks by managing healthy habitats today. Congress, unfortunately, seems headed in the opposite direction.
Terry Tang is an editorial columnist for the Seattle Times
by CNB