Battle lines drawn on protection of species

By Julie Cart and Kenneth R. Weiss
Los Angeles Times

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SAN DIEGO — Western governors gathered last week to plan with the Bush administration and Congress how to change the Endangered Species Act, the 31-year-old law they say has cost developers, loggers and ranchers too much money and hassle for the few animals brought back from the brink of extinction.

"Just about everybody agrees the Endangered Species Act is broken," said Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Calif., a cattleman turned chairman of the House Resources Committee. "The only way you are going fix it is with legislative change."

Pombo and Assistant Interior Secretary Craig Manson buoyed spirits at a meeting in a San Diego suburb Friday with the announcement that federal biologists have determined the sage grouse, a bird whose sagebrush territory sits atop oil and gas fields in 11 states, including Washington, is not threatened with extinction and does not need federal protection as an endangered species. The bird's numbers have plunged as agricultural and industrial development have intruded on nesting and breeding areas.

Manson, who oversees the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which enforces the Endangered Species Act, has said the federal government should temper efforts to protect threatened wildlife.

"We have to recognize that, A, we can't protect everything, and B, we have to carefully examine whether we should try to protect everything, and at what cost," Manson said last year.

Battle lines over the Endangered Species Act appear to be forming around two issues. One is critical habitat — the protected area thought to be key to a species' survival and recovery.

The other is at what point a small, distinct population of a species warrants listing for federal protection, if the larger population appears to be healthy.

Federal officials and the 12 Republican governors who dominate the 18-member Western Governors' Association suggested that states can take a greater role in protecting rare species, and don't need the entanglements that come with the act.

"The act has become something other than recovering species," Pombo said. "It's become a tool to stop growth, to stop mining, to stop logging. To stop a freeway from being built. It's become a tool that people are using to accomplish other goals."
 
Pombo said the re-election of President Bush, and the added numbers of Republicans in Congress, suggested voters are behind the agenda for change.

Conservation groups suggest these are part of an orchestrated assault on the law, which began with lawsuits from industry and property-rights groups and a series of rule changes by the Bush administration.

Last week, for instance, the administration proposed a dramatic rollback of its designated "critical habitat" for 20 species of threatened or endangered salmon and steelhead trout from Southern California to Washington state.

The changes, initiated by a lawsuit from homebuilders, have been championed within the administration by Mark Rutzick, a former timber-industry lawyer who last year was appointed legal adviser to the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration.

The other point of contention, critical habitat, has prompted complaints for years from property owners.

After repeated challenges, the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in 2001 that the Fish and Wildlife Service should consider the economic effects of habitat designation. That decision gave critics a foothold into tempering the act's requirements.

Meanwhile, the Department of Interior has designated less than half of the acreage that federal biologists say is needed.

Manson has been crisscrossing the country arguing that critical habitat affords no extra protection for a listed species.

Conservationists say his speeches ignore the Fish and Wildlife Service's statistics, which show endangered species with critical-habitat designation are twice as likely to increase their numbers as species without.