As lifelong sportsmen and conservationists, we are alarmed by the efforts of Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Calif., to weaken the Endangered Species Act. His rewrite of this 30-year-old landmark conservation law was rammed through the House of Representatives.
Now the issue moves to the Senate, where, hopefully, more thoughtful approaches will prevail.
When the Endangered Species Act passed with bipartisan support in 1973, the questions were simple but haunting: Would our children get to see a bald eagle soar? Or see a gray whale? Or just know that somewhere, in the country’s hinterlands, the wolf and grizzly run free?
If Pombo has his way, we fear the answer will forever be “no.”
The Pombo bill is a giant step backwards in America’s struggle to balance the desires of humans with our responsibility to be good stewards of our natural resources. Thankfully, Senate moderates are working up an alternative bill that reflects the recommendations of the Wildlife Society, the national professional body of wildlife biologists. That group recently produced an excellent review of the Endangered Species Act – and made sensible recommendations.
There are too many flaws in the Pombo bill to detail in this limited space. But one of the most serious flaws is allowing the secretary of the Interior – a political appointee – to determine the “best” science to follow in managing endangered species. That is the kind of question we hire scientists – not politicians – to answer.
Pombo also would open up a can of worms with a greedy scheme to pay developers for potential lost value on their land, if it happens to be habitat for endangered species. Imagine where all this will lead. Next we will have landowners who want to pollute our air or water and demand to be compensated by the taxpayers if regulations stop them. By this radical and twisted logic, anyone could dream of building a hog farm or Wal-Mart in a residential cul-de-sac could demand to be paid off if zoning regulations prohibit it. We believe in providing incentives for conservation, but this goes beyond common sense.
We have spent our lives seeking the difficult balance between a growing society and the needs of fish and wildlife. We live in a crucial time in the history of wildlife conservation. Wild mammals and fish find themselves squeezed between a rapidly growing human population and an alarming change in our climate. Both factors are already stressing our natural world as never before.
Now is the time for sensible policy improvements to the Endangered Species Act, as recommended by the Wildlife Society. This is no time for knee-jerk, politically railroaded strategies that serve neither landowners, local governments nor wildlife.
One of us is a Democrat and one a Republican. We long to return to the time when natural resource management was a bipartisan issue. The Endangered Species Act itself was signed by a Republican president, Richard Nixon. Theodore Roosevelt was our greatest conservationist president and a Republican. Roosevelt must be turning over in his grave to see where his party has gone on the issues to which he devoted his life – democracy in action to protect our public resources.
Now is the time for sportsmen, conservationists and fair-minded people of both parties to stop the railroading of the Endangered Species Act and to promote deliberate and thoughtful improvements. The question critics of conservation are really asking is, “What’s more important, me or my children?”
Do we need to use up all their choices in our own time? As the richest country in history, do we need to use up all the resources to get even richer now, yet leave a diminished natural world for our children?
No. For 30 years, the Endangered Species Act has served as a safety net against extinction. It’s no time to slice holes in that safety net. If anything, we need a stronger safety net.
The politics of extinction are alive and well in the U.S. House of Representatives. Now the question is what are the deliberations and decisions of the Senate. Sportsmen – and anyone who loves the natural world – owe it to themselves and their children to help us find the right solution.
Jim Martin of Mulino, Ore., is conservation director of the Berkley Conservation Institute and is retired chief of fisheries for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. Dr. Mike Dombeck of Stevens Point, Wis., is a professor at the University of Wisconsin at Stevens Point and a former chief of the U.S. Forest Service.
