Bill would overhaul Endangered Species Act

Benjamin Grove

Thursday, Sept. 22, 2005 | 11:11 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- A House panel was poised today to approve a fast-moving bill that would overhaul the Endangered Species Act, with Republican bill supporters arguing that the landmark 1973 legislation is woefully ineffective.

The legislation would strip away the designation of "critical habitat," potentially opening more land for development, and aims to focus more effort on actual recovery plans. Bill advocates stressed that some habitat protections would remain.

The act has failed in its 32 years, bill advocates said, and they point to a tiny fraction of more than 1,200 listed endangered and threatened species that have made full recoveries.

"Right now the facts speak for themselves," bill co-sponsor Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., said today. "The bill is broken and we need to fix it."

But critics say the bill is a dream for developers and bad news for vulnerable plants and animals like Clark County's desert tortoise.

Critics also are worried that the legislation could allow developers to bypass local agreements such as the five-year-old Clark County Multi Species Conservation Habitat Plan.

The plan aimed to protect 78 species in the rapidly developing county, including 16 currently threatened and endangered, such as the threatened desert tortoise and the endangered southwestern willow flycatcher, a bird, and the endangered Moapa dace fish.

The county habitat plan was developed to both protect species and allow for development and economic growth in a fast-growing county still largely owned and managed by the federal government.

It requires developers to pay $550 an acre, or to pay to set aside land elsewhere, for species habitat.

In exchange, developers are allowed to "take" -- kill -- protected species as part of the development. For example, under the plan developers pay fees that often are used to protect desert tortoise habitat on designated Bureau of Land Management lands.

But the bill language could offer developers a new federal avenue around established plans such as the one in Clark County, critics said.

"It's designed to completely undermine the HCPs (habitat conservation plans)," said John Kostyack, senior counsel for the National Wildlife Federation.

Not so, said Brian Kennedy, spokesman for bill author and House Resources Chairman Richard Pombo, R-Calif., who today said the bill in no way affects habitat conservation plans.

Paul Seltzer, a longtime legal consultant to Clark County on the Endangered Species Act, agreed. The federal law would not give developers the ability to opt out of the $550-per acre fee, he said.

"There is nothing in the bill that would threaten our plan," said Seltzer, who today was drafting a memo on the issue for the county.

But the bill could affect county development, Seltzer said. Landowners who currently live in designated critical habitat and may be limited in development would no longer have that restriction, so it could be easier to develop a mine or housing, he said.

The bill is an "abomination" because it removes basic protections and does not reflect what a majority of Americans want -- critical habitats and strong federal regulations that protect species, said Jane Feldman, conservation director for the Sierra Club's Southern Nevada chapter.

"Just because you buy a parcel of land doesn't mean you get to develop it any way you want to," Feldman said.

The bill also could speed development projects by bypassing some environmental reviews, critics said. The bill would give the government, typically the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, just 90 days to respond to a development proposal. If the agency missed the deadline, the developers could be free to launch their projects, critics said.

In another controversial provision of the bill, the government in some cases would have to compensate landowners if it blocked a development project. Critics say that invites abuse by developers who would propose unlikely projects just to claim the compensation.

Gibbons said current federal rules and reviews will prevent that kind of abuse.

Still, that provision could end up costing taxpayers billions of dollars, analysts said. The Resources Committee has not released a cost estimate.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has not taken a position on the bill because it was just introduced on Sept. 19, Craig Manson, the Interior Department's Assistant Secretary for Fish and Wildlife at the Interior Department, told the House Resources Committee.

The panel was likely to approve the bill today. Pombo plans a full House vote for the bill as early as next week. Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., opposes the bill. Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., hasn't endorsed the bill but said the work being done by the panel was "very encouraging."

Four Resources panel Democrats in a written statement blasted Pombo's bill and said the panel should be focused on the environmental disaster left by Hurricane Katrina, not fast-tracking a bill that guts "a critical environmental safety net for the benefit of special interest groups."

The Senate is also considering changes to the Endangered Species Act, although the Environment and Public Works Committee has not yet voted on legislation.