The Endangered Species Act recently celebrated its 30th anniversary, culminating three decades of saving species from extinction while allowing responsible land management and development projects to proceed.
Critics of the ESA cite that only 14 species have been deemed recovered since the law was enacted. However, of the more than 1,200 species listed nationwide as threatened or endangered, approximately 99% of them are still on Earth precisely because of the ESA. To absolutely measure success in terms of recovery is therefore shortsighted.
Implementation of the Act has also not thwarted Federal, state, local, or private projects from being completed. Since 1996 only 3.2% (or 13,000) of the proposed projects required consultation with the agency, according the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Since 1996, only two of those 13,000 projects were stopped.
"I have always maintained that changes to the ESA are not needed and that for the law to work, it needs full funding," said Rahall.
The biggest threat to all parties concerned with critical habitat designation isn’t the law, it’s the manner in which this Administration has chosen to address concerns with the law, adopting a deaf ear and a blind eye while choking the purse strings.
- The Bush Administration has not requested adequate appropriations for ESA implementation. The Fiscal Year 2005 budget request cut the ESA recovery program by $10 million below this year’s budget.
- The FY 2005 budget request also would slash about $2 million from the ESA consultation and habitat conservation planning program. These cuts are preventing federal agencies and developers from obtaining timely approvals they need to proceed with their projects.
- In my Congressional District, Snowshoe Ski Resort complains that it cannot get answers from the Fish and Wildlife Service to proceed with their development because the Elkins, West Virginia office does not have adequate resources. Snowshoe wants to comply with the ESA but the Bush Administration is making it almost impossible.
- Even when the Bush Administration had the opportunity in FY 2003 to secure additional funding for the ESA, it opted not to. In this case, the appropriators gave a very strong signal in House Report 108-10 that they would seriously consider a supplemental request from the Administration. Despite Secretary Norton’s complaints in a May 2003 letter to Congress about the lawsuits crippling the ESA program, the supplemental request sent only a few months later did not ask anything more for ESA programs.
- The Bush Administration has failed to propose new regulations to define "destruction or adverse modification of critical habitat" even though a court order threw out the old regulations in 2001. One wonders how the Fish and Wildlife can determine impacts to critical habitat when they have been lacking a definition for 3 years.
- Two GAO reports, including one requested by Chairman Pombo issued in August 2003, criticized the Fish and Wildlife Service for failing to issue a new policy to clarify the role of critical habitat in conserving endangered species. The Bush Administration has ignored the GAO.
- The Bush Administration is not even willing to take a position on H.R. 2933, the subject of today’s hearing.
Rahall concluded, "The Bush Administration is clearly shirking from its responsibility to protect endangered species, a responsibility that is not only codified in United States law, but in the Bible, where passages express humankind’s responsibility to preserve life. Gutting the ESA is not morally or legally advisable."
![[New for the Democrats - Committee on Resources - U.S. Rep. Nick Rahall, Ranking Democrat - 1329 Longworth HOB - Washington, DC 20015]](news_banner.gif)
