Species Act

ON JULY 4 of next year, if all goes as federal wildlife officials plan, the bald eagle will be celebrated as officially "recovered," a triumph for the Endangered Species Act that protected it for 33 years.So why won't Virginia ornithologist Mitchell A. Byrd, dean of the Chesapeake's eagle researchers, be cheering?His reasons are caution about eagles, but also about assuming too readily what a sustainable balance between people and the rest of nature truly requires.Byrd and his colleagues at the Center for Conservation Biology, at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, agree that the bald eagle has made an inspiring comeback.

WASHINGTON -- Officials at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington could hardly contain their delight 16 months ago when a wealthy California real estate developer, Kenneth E. Behring, pledged $20 million in cash to the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History."

AS THE federal Endangered Species Act observes its 25th anniversary, there is little chance of congressional reauthorization this year.But the good news is that the benefits of species diversity and protection are widely accepted; the dispute now centers on how to achieve the goal.More good news: The government proposes to remove 29 animals and plants from the endangered list, recognizing their human-nurtured resurgence. It's the largest number delisted ever.Only 21 endangered species were removed in the previous quarter-century; 14 of those either became extinct anyway or had been erroneously listed originally.

The Chicago Tribune said in an editorial May 22.EVER since Congress passed it 25 years ago, the Endangered Species Act has been taking potshots from all directions. It has placed property owners and developers against naturalists and environmentalists, their disagreements often caricatured in TV news snippets as a battle between a family man about to lose his livelihood and a heretofore unknown critter about to lose its place on this planet.Fortunately for men and critters, this tugging and pulling has led to an uneasy equilibrium that affords the protection of endangered plants and animals a secure place in the law books.

KILLING the majestic African elephant for trophy sport is repugnant. The tusked giant is protected under the U.S. Endangered Species Act; an international treaty banned the trade in ivory in 1989 to curb massive poaching that slaughtered half these pachyderms in the 1980s.Yet American taxpayers are being asked to subsidize this brutal "big game" carnage in Zimbabwe with millions of dollars in a scheme that returns but pennies to villagers it claims to benefit. Those U.S. funds are also used by lobbyists to try to overturn our Endangered Species Act.The Agency for International Development (AID)

SOMERS, Mont. -- Let me just say for the record that I own a fur coat. Of a condition that could kindly be called ''vintage,'' this beaver-pelt coat came into my possession on the occasion of my wedding, a time when my attitude toward nature could kindly be called ''urban.''I remember thinking what a shame it was that the beauty of the Rocky Mountains should be troubled by all those grizzly bears, ++ and I wondered why anyone would want more rather than fewer of them.After moving to Montana, however, neither my urban outlook nor my marriage stood the test of time, and the beaver coat, growing moth-eaten in its storage box, has outlasted them both.

ANYONE WHO OWNS or plans to buy real estate should watch what happens to a key piece of legislation -- the Property Rights Act -- when the Senate takes it up as scheduled before the August congressional recess.The bill (S. 605) attempts to deal with a fundamental real estate problem: When a federal government agency reduces the economic value of the property you own to fulfill a public purpose, such as protecting the environment or saving endangered species, shouldn't you have the right to be compensated for your economic loss?

Upset at what he sees as an unseemly rush to dismantle environmental regulations, Maryland Rep. Wayne T. Gilchrest broke ranks with fellow Republicans last week over the fairness of a congressional hearing on the Endangered Species Act planned in his district.Mr. Gilchrest, a former teacher whose 1st District straddles the Chesapeake Bay, threatened to resign from the House Resources Committee task force that is reviewing the controversial federal law.He was angered because the chairman of the task force -- Rep. Richard W. Pombo, a California rancher -- refused to let him invite several scientists to testify about the need for preserving rare plants and animals.

TO PARAPHRASE the familiar real estate dictum, the three most important things in protecting endangered species are "habitat, habitat, habitat." Preserving suitable habitat is the best means for successful recovery of imperiled animals and plants; the Supreme Court and National Academy of Sciences concur. Robbing fragile fauna and flora of viable habitat is tantamount to a death warrant: their precarious status signals an inability to adapt to man-made changes.That is why congressional legislation to reauthorize the 22-year-old Endangered Species Act must require habitat conservation for threatened creatures.

WASHINGTON -- With the Republican-controlled Congress preparing to rewrite the Endangered Species Act, the Clinton administration proposed changes yesterday intended to increase the law's flexibility and decrease its economic costs without putting rare plants and animals in greater danger of extinction.Among other things, the administration said it wanted to exempt from regulation activities on most small plots, like house lots, allowing owners to disturb the habitats of endangered and threatened species as long as the overall effect on the species was negligible.

WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama overrode the Bush administration on a key step in administering the Endangered Species Act yesterday, restoring a requirement that federal agencies consult with experts on threatened species before launching construction projects that could affect their well-being. Environmentalists said reinstating the requirement blocks the Army Corps of Engineers, the U.S. Forest Service and others from "nibbling away" at critical wildlife habitat. Business and industry groups, on the other hand, warned that it could hamper road-building and other projects that would help jump-start the economy.

WASHINGTON - A coalition of animal protection organizations is suing Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey to stop what they call harsh methods of training and controlling the circus's Asian elephants. The group argues that the chains and instruments shaped like fireplace pokers are inhumane and violate the Endangered Species Act. In a trial that begins here today in U.S. District Court, lawyers for the plaintiffs will argue that Ringling abuses its elephants by using a hooked pole, or "bull hook," that punctures the animals' leathery hide behind the ears, under the trunk and on the legs, where skin is thinnest.

In its final weeks, the Bush administration is pushing changes that could decimate threatened Chesapeake Bay wildlife, along with 1,353 at-risk species across the nation. The Interior Department posted a proposal over the summer for sweeping changes to the 35-year-old Endangered Species Act. They would eliminate mandatory scientific review by experts at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service of all federally approved development projects that might affect endangered plants or animals.

To environmentalists, the Preble's meadow jumping mouse is a scarce creature whose habitat in the grasslands of Colorado and Wyoming is being devoured by development. But in the eyes of Western farmers and developers, it is no more real than the jackalope - a gag-gift cross between an antelope and a jackrabbit. And to California Representative Richard W. Pombo, the mouse is just the most recent example of what's wrong with the Endangered Species Act, a "sacred cow" in desperate need of revision.

The federal government is no longer considering listing the Eastern oyster as an endangered species, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said yesterday. A spokeswoman for NOAA said the agency dropped the idea because the petition to list the oyster, which is native to the Chesapeake Bay, was withdrawn by the Maryland-based environmental consultant who proposed it in January. The consultant, Wolf-Dieter N. Busch, a fisheries biologist who retired in 1999 after 35 years with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said he backed off because the proposal was causing fear of a federal crackdown on oyster harvesting in other parts of the country, such as the Gulf of Mexico.

Rancher and congressman Richard W. Pombo has made no secret of his contempt for the Endangered Species Act. The California Republican believes the 1973 ground-breaking environmental law intended to preserve rare plants and animals imposes too great a burden on property owners for too little return. He's been itching to repeal it ever since he arrived in Congress in 1993. Now, while most lawmakers' attention is heavily focused on the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, Mr. Pombo is making his move.

Fourteen members of Congress unveiled legislation yesterday that would revise the Endangered Species Act by eliminating critical-habitat protections and providing compensation to property owners. California Rep. Richard W. Pombo, the Republican chairman of the House resources committee, said the changes are necessary because the 32-year-old law is too hard on landowners and spawns excessive litigation. "The Endangered Species Act is not working for its stated purpose, to recover endangered species," Pombo said.

WASHINGTON - Commercial fishing advocates from Louisiana to Rhode Island joined Maryland in objecting to the proposed listing of the Eastern oyster as an endangered species, saying it's unnecessary and would kill the troubled industry. "We believe this petition is a misuse of the Endangered Species Act," said S. Lake Cowart Jr., vice president of the Cowart Seafood Corp. of Virginia. "The Eastern oyster is not in danger of extinction; healthy populations exist in the Gulf Coast states and the north Atlantic, which makes up the majority of its range."

SEATTLE - The Bush administration yesterday proposed placing killer whales that reside in Washington state's Puget Sound on the list of endangered species, in an effort to save the last 84 of the acrobatic, often photographed orcas. National Marine Fisheries Service, which ruled two years ago that endangered species protections were unwarranted, reversed itself after a federal judge ordered it to reconsider its legal justifications. "It was never a question of whether we cared about the whales or not," said Robert Lohn, northwest regional administrator of the fisheries service.

STARS ARE ALIGNING tomorrow to produce two seemingly contradictory events in the course of the 30-year-old Endangered Species Act, one of the nation's best-known conservation laws. The eastern gray wolf will be formally proposed for removal from the list of nearly 1,300 plants, animals and birds threatened with extinction, a step touted by Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton as a success story prompted by the wolf's strong resurgence in three Midwest states. Meanwhile, the House Resources Committee is expected to approve legislation that would roll back federal protections that helped save the wolf, the bald eagle and a dozen other once-imperiled species.