Natalie M. Henry, Greenwire Northwest reporter

LA JOLLA, Calif. -- The debate over science in the Endangered Species Act was met with predictable polarization among attendees at a special meeting of the Western Governors' Association last weekend. While different interests could agree upon a number of items over the two-day summit -- among them the need to push recovery and increase state participation -- science is not yet an area that appears to hold promise for consensus.

Rep. Richard Pombo (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Resources Committee, has made it clear that one of his primary goals in overhauling ESA is to change the standard in the act requiring FWS to use the "best available science." According to Pombo, the standard is not strict enough and results in too many mistakes.

"I believe that changing the science within the act has to be our No. 1 priority," Pombo said at the meeting. "The level of science needs to be raised so we can at least have some level of confidence in that science so we don't get the horror stories we get from our districts and our states."

Some of the governors agreed, in particular South Dakota Gov. Mike Rounds (R), who said FWS made a mistake when it determined that the black-tailed prairie dog deserves protection under ESA. FWS put it on the candidate list, meaning the agency had determined it warranted listing but could not afford to formally list it. But putting the prairie dog on the candidate list still caused federal agencies to manage public lands in South Dakota for the benefit of the rodent instead of treating it as a nuisance. The result was prairie dogs eating away at tens of thousands of acres of grasslands until nothing was left, Rounds said.

FWS later determined that the prairie dog does not deserve listing, a move environmental groups disagree with, saying it was politically motivated and they plan to sue over it.

The debate over the prairie dog in some ways epitomizes the larger debate over science in ESA. Conservative members of Congress, ranchers and industry leaders -- supporters of revising the statute -- say the standard for best available science sometimes causes FWS to list a species as threatened or endangered, or put it on the candidate list, when the agency may not have enough information to really know whether the species is imperiled or not. Liberal members of Congress, biodiversity advocates and environmental groups, however, say the efforts to change the standard of science in ESA are thinly veiled attempts to politicize the scientific process.

Critics of ESA also point to the Preble's jumping mouse, which FWS listed as threatened in Colorado and Wyoming. According to WGA, the listing was based on one study of three mice. Later studies have said the Preble's mouse is no different from other mice, leading the state of Wyoming to petition for delisting, which FWS is currently considering.

The mouse provides fuel for ESA critics who say in that case, although FWS had the the best available science, there was not enough data to determine whether the mouse really deserved listing or not.

Environmental groups say the best available science standard is important because it gives species the benefit of the doubt. It is impossible to bring an extinct species back from the dead, so the best available science standard encourages FWS to be cautious, environmentalists say.

Moreover, while ESA critics say all they want to do is require peer review of all science involved in listing decisions, environmentalists charge that the "sound science" bill Pombo helped usher out of his committee was laden with language that would have politicized the science. For instance, the bill would allow a political appointee, the secretary of Interior, to choose the peer reviewers and the eligibility requirements for being a peer reviewer.

FWS actually makes very few mistakes when listing species, according to John Leshy, a law professor at the University of California and former solicitor of the Interior Department under the Clinton administration. The National Academies of Science and Government Accountability Office have both done studies, in 1995 and last year respectively, that have generally supported FWS's decisions for listing species, although the GAO is highly critical of the habitat designation and recovery process (Greenwire, Oct. 7, 2003).

"The outside reviews done have been quite favorable in saying that the species that are on the list are ones that basically have been shown deserve to be on the list and very few mistakes have been made," Leshy said. When mistakes have been made, they've been corrected, he said.

Leshy added that in the listing process, the record stays open after a listing so people can do further studies and challenge the record. But few of those challenges have been successful. "In other words, for nearly all the species listed there is widespread consensus that they should be listed," Leshy said.

Pombo acknowledged that the service has made few mistakes. But, he said, "The problem comes in when they made the wrong decision" because the economic consequences are usually quite severe.

Pombo also said he wants to modernize the act and keep it current with new developments in science and technology. Rob Roy Ramey, a zoologist at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, noted that the standard currently in the act is always current. "Best available science means what's there," Ramey said. "It's a standard that keeps current with the time."

Ramey also noted that independent peer review is already part of both the listing and delisting processes.

Leshy cautioned against using the few mistakes FWS has made to make significant changes to the act. "If you take the sort of handful of high-profile species and try to use them to structure changes within the act, you really sort of throw the baby out with the bath water," Leshy said.