Apr 7, 2007

Endangered Species Management Needs More Thought

A few years ago, the world’s leaders in science, medicine and politics were faced with an ethical dilemma. Having driven smallpox disease to the brink of annihilation, should they take the last step and snuff it out?

Before that question had to be answered, they discovered that the Russians had a secret stash of the disease in storage ¬– kept as a potential weapon in the Cold War era ¬– so the question became moot.

But is it really moot? When our country made the Endangered Species Act the law of the land, did it mean that humans may act to force a different balance between people and diseases or bugs, as long as they never take the final step?

Is it OK to kill all the codling moths in your orchard as long as we don’t wipe the species out? If we find ways to eradicate Colorado potato beetles or codling moths or malarial mosquitoes or athlete’s foot or the thousands of other poxes in our lives, must we hold back?

It doesn’t make sense, but it seems like we do that. Either by accident or design, we drive some species to the brink of extinction and then treat the remnant with holy deference.

As an individualist, I don’t see how it can be OK to kill off 99 percent of some group then preserve the remaining 1 percent, just because it’s part of a species. In the final analysis, every individual is its own species – unique unto itself. If a million Chinese die in an earthquake, it’s not less a tragedy just because there are so many Chinese left ¬¬– nor would it be more a tragedy because loss of a million would be a genocidal blow to the less-numerous Eskimos.

It seems to me the Endangered Species Act is built on a false premise. Humans need to evaluate their relationships with other creatures on some other basis than the number of critters left in a species.

I don’t know if there is some grand scientific principle we can use in making decisions. Some species – pests of all kinds – have earned the right be endangered. I know I’ll feel a lot worse if the world loses gorillas and elephants than I will if we lose codling moths and mosquitoes, but should feelings be the base of our decisions?

Farmers, as major land users, are greatly affected by thoughts and feelings that get put into law. It seems rude to make rules that compel a person to carry out another’s wishes, and farmers have been quite concerned that others can take away the value of their property, making them involuntary caretakers of birds and flowers instead of the farmers they want to be.

Recently, the American Farm Bureau Federation testified before Congress, seeking amendments to the Endangered Species Act. It would like to see the use of “cooperative conservation” as a way to implement the ESA.

In Farm Bureau’s view, cooperative programs should:

• Be voluntary with the landowner.
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• Emphasize active management activities, instead of just restrictions on land use.
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• Not focus on land sales or easement purchases.
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• Remove existing regulatory disincentives, such as land-use restrictions.
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• Recognize plans that are locally developed and contain practical solutions.
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• Be flexible with landowners and government agencies so they can develop creative solutions.
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• Avoid the need to designate land as critical habitat because it is unnecessary and counterproductive.
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• Provide certainty to landowners that once an agreement is in place, no further management obligations or restrictions will be imposed.
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Some of those suggestions are sound, but others are not. If saving an endangered species is fairly decided to be in the overall public interest, then, obviously, the cooperative program can’t be voluntary.

Farm Bureau is right that it doesn’t make sense to transfer all sensitive habitat into public ownership, nor does it make sense not to compensate landowners if the use of their land is restricted. But how can a species be protected without restriction on land use? And if certain land is critical habitat, that should be recognized and declared.

Farm Bureau is known for its hard line on property rights. On land-use issues, it opposes tools of public policy such as use of eminent domain and does not favor planning or zoning if it restricts the rights of property owners.

Farm Bureau has supported right-to-farm laws that protect farmers from high property taxes, restrictive local ordinances and nuisance lawsuits, but does not support farmland preservation if it restricts a landowner from trashing his land with a bulldozer.

The federal government has long used “cooperative programs” to foster land conservation, only to see conserved land fail to be preserved when farmers cash in their property, as if conversion and development were merely key parts of a retirement plan.

To be taken seriously, Farm Bureau leaders need to think ahead about long-term environmental consequences of landowner actions, whether it’s loss of farmland or loss of species. If I were a member of an endangered species, I wouldn’t want my fate to rest on a voluntary cooperative arrangement.

On the other side, the EPA and other federal agencies need to learn to develop management programs more carefully. You can’t close down a whole county’s agriculture because of one butterfly somewhere in the middle of it.