ESA meeting reveals areas of consensus in usually polarizing debate

Natalie M. Henry, Land Letter Northwest reporter

Nearly all the governors and stakeholders at the meeting stressed that they wanted more emphasis put on recovery and more public involvement in that process. They also agreed states should take a broader role in ESA and that the law should be changed to provide greater incentives for landowners, but federal funding for both state programs and incentives was lacking.

The governors made it clear that they want species recovered and removed from the Endangered Species List. The states would like to be a part of helping species recovery, but most of the time they do not know what it would take to get a species off the list because the federal agencies have failed to lay out clear recovery goals within a mandated time frame.

"I would like to see a clear recovery goal put in place within a certain period of time after listing. It could be five years, it could be three years, and I would obviously hope that the goal would be enforceable," said Colorado Gov. Bill Owens (R), chairman of WGA. "I would suggest that that's reasonable in terms of the ESA."

One of Owens' aides echoed his comments, saying that while ESA does require FWS or NMFS to publish a recovery plan, it is unenforceable because there is no deadline.

"In Colorado, we didn't get recovery goals set for four species of fish for 14 years. We need deadlines that require recovery goals upfront," said aide Joel Harris.

Without those recovery goals, the governors said they often feel hamstrung. They are hesitant to put resources into conservation efforts that in the end might not help delist the species. Recovery -- and ultimately delisting -- is the goal because it reduces the pressure ESA often puts on farming, ranching and development and reinstates state authority to manage that species.

Environmental groups have been pushing to put deadlines on recovery plans, and Rep. Richard Pombo (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Resources Committee, has also been agreeable to it. In July, Pombo helped amend a bill in his committee to institute such deadlines (H.R. 2933). But the bill failed to make it to the House floor because environmentalists and Democrats opposed language in it that they said would allow the Interior Department too much leeway to rule out critical habitat in tight budgets or other circumstances (E&E Daily, July 22, 2004).

The governors suggested, and several environmentalists agreed, that while there should be a deadline for establishing recovery goals, the method of meeting those goals should not be mandated.

Brian Nowicki of the Center for Biological Diversity said ESA should require FWS to issue recovery plans with clear criteria, but the plans should not mandate how each agency or state will meet those criteria.

"We could put regulatory weight behind the recovery plans, but probably a more effective way is to have the agencies and states that deal with that species write management plans that address the recovery criteria and the recovery plan," Nowicki said.

Jamie Rappaport Clark, former director of the Fish and Wildlife Service under the Clinton administration and currently an executive vice president with Defenders of Wildlife, added that determining how to meet those recovery goals offers vast opportunities for involving the public because all the stakeholders have an interest in recovery. "FWS should assign what recovery is, then have a stakeholder process to determine how to achieve it," she said.

States are one of the stakeholders that want to be more involved not only in recovery but in all aspects of ESA implementation. And FWS officials, environmentalists and industry leaders agreed states should be more involved, saying FWS has not fully explored all the ways it can involve states.

Section 6 of ESA allows the Interior Department to enter into cooperative agreements that give states the authority to conserve threatened and endangered species, when they have an adequate program set up. It also allows Interior to provide wildlife grants for state activities. Interior offered $70 million in state grants last year and again this year.

Craig Manson, assistant secretary for fish, wildlife and parks at the Interior Department, said when he began analyzing Section 6 in depth, "I wondered why we didn't use it more. ... We frankly think [Section 6] can be, within the existing authorities, extremely useful. And we're certainly open to seeing where it can be expanded and adding more authority to Section 6."

Sue George of Defenders of Wildlife agreed that Section 6 offers broad opportunity for state involvement that has not yet been fully realized. Moreover, states have broad opportunity to help species before they are listed.

"A federal listing is costly, it's controversial and it needn't happen if the states can take this bull by the horns and do the protection that is needed prior to the species reaching that level of imperilment," George said.

Industry leaders also stress the need to involve states more in ESA. But the consensus breaks down over whether to grant the states more authority by making changes to the act.

Mac McLennan, chairman of the National Endangered Species Act Reform Coalition and vice president of Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association in Colorado, said he wants to "actually add provisions to the act that give states additional authority." That might include making ESA a bit more like the Clean Water Act, where states have primacy over certain programs.

George said the environmental community wants to keep the existing federal umbrella over ESA implementation intact and work within the existing authorities of ESA to include the states.

She also said if FWS would fully fund the state wildlife grants, states would be in a much better position to collaborate, something Duane Shroufe of the Arizona Game and Fish Department agreed with, saying his state has requested more funding for the grant program for years.

Another broad area of agreement among most stakeholders is that there should be more rewards for good land management practices that help endangered species.

"Incentivizing ESA is probably one of the single greatest accomplishments that we could achieve," Clark told a panel of Western governors at last week's meeting.

But while both environmentalists and ranchers support landowner incentives, the consensus can break down when discussing what those incentives should be and how to encourage them.

Preston Wright of the Nevada Cattlemen's Association said habitat conservation plans and Safe Harbor agreements are not enough. "HCPs and Safe Harbor agreements are an insurance program, basically, and I feel like that's not an incentive," Wright said.

"There should be some mechanism ... that if the species actually increases, they'd reap some sort of financial benefit. If you've got a mechanism in there that actually rewards people for the species increasing -- in other words they can actually displace some of their production because they're gonna make it up somewhere else -- I think that's really the simplest and cheapest way to go about it," Wright said.

But one of the biggest challenges with regard to landowner incentives is finding funding for the programs, several stakeholders said.

Bill Howard of the Wildlife Habitat Council, a nonprofit that works to enroll companies into HCPs and Safe Harbor agreements, said, "Across the board we find ourselves in a situation that many of the things that are being criticized about the act, like more species aren't being delisted and that sort of thing, is because there aren't more resources to do the work that needs to be done."