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A Senate hearing to “modernize the Endangered Species Act”
unfolded Wednesday just as supporters of the law had feared,
with round after round of criticism from Republican lawmakers
who said the federal effort to keep species from going extinct
encroaches on states’ rights, is unfair to landowners and
stymies efforts by mining companies to extract resources and
create jobs.

The two-hour meeting of the Environment and Public Works
Committee was led by Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), who said last
month that his focus in a bid to change the act would be
“eliminating a lot of the red tape and the bureaucratic burdens
that have been impacting our ability to create jobs,” according
to a report in Energy and Environment News.

In his opening remarks, Barrasso declared that the act “is not
working today,” adding that “states, counties, wildlife
managers, home builders, construction companies, farmers,
ranchers and other stakeholders” have made that clear in
complaints about how it impedes land management plans, housing
development and cattle grazing, particularly in western states,
such as Wyoming.

Barrasso’s view is in lockstep with the Trump administration,
which wants to cut regulations that impede business,
particularly energy cultivation. Last week, the Interior
Department under President Trump delayed the start date of
protections for the endangered rusty patched bumblebee, which
has lost an estimated 90 percent of its population in the past
two decades. The department said it is reviewing rules set by
the Obama administration only weeks earlier, triggering a
lawsuit from a nonprofit conservation group that called the
delay and the review illegal.

At least one Republican has vowed to wage an effort to repeal
the Endangered Species Act. “It has never been used for the
rehabilitation of species,” House Natural Resources Committee
Chairman Rob Bishop (R-Utah) said, according to an Associated
Press report. “It’s been used to control the land. We’ve missed
the entire purpose of the Endangered Species Act. It has been
hijacked.”

The Endangered Species Act is a 43-year-old law enacted under
the Nixon administration at a time when people were beginning to
understand how dramatically chemical use and human development
were devastating species. It has since saved the bald eagle,
California condor, gray wolves, black-footed ferret, American
alligator and Florida manatee from likely extinction.

But members of the hearing said its regulations prevented people
from doing business and making a living. In a comment to a
former U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service director who testified at
the hearing, Sen. James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.), repeated a point
made by Barrasso that of more than 1,600 species listed as
threatened or endangered since the act’s inception, fewer than
50 have been removed.

That’s about 3 percent of the total, the chairman said. “As a
doctor, if I admit 100 patients to the hospital and only three
recover enough to be discharged, I would deserve to lose my
medical license,” Inhofe said.

There was no discussion on the committee about the stability of
species that were listed and recovered as a result of the act,
and also no discussion of continued human expansion into the
habitats of hundreds of species as their numbers dwindle.

Sen. Thomas R. Carper (D-Del.) tried to make the point with a
question to five members of a panel called to testify about the
act: Former Wyoming governor David Freudenthal, North Carolina
Wildlife Resources Commission Executive Director Gordon Myers,
Wisconsin Farm Bureau Federation President James Holte,
Defenders of Wildlife chief executive Jamie Rappaport Clark and
Association of Zoos and Aquariums chief executive Daniel Ashe.

Referring to research published in the journals Science and
Conservation Biology that the rate of extinction across species
is 1,000 times the rate before human expansion, Carper asked the
panelists whether they believed the finding that Earth is on the
verge of a sixth mass extinction.

Each panelist who testified the act should be significantly
changed — Freudenthal, Myers and Holte — said they weren’t
qualified to answer such a question. Rappaport and Ashe, the
most recent directors of Fish and Wildlife under presidents who
are Democrats, emphatically answered yes.

Amid the din of criticism of the act, Carper asked why it was
needed in the first place: Weren’t states that manage their
individual animal populations aware that some species were
disappearing? Why didn’t they act faster to save them before
federal officials brought regulations?

Freudenthal took a stab at a reply. “Only in the last 15 years
have state game agencies shifted to species management,” he
said. “Now agencies have a much broader mission.”

In the years that states were less engaged, according
Freudenthal, the total number of mammals, birds, reptiles and
amphibians, among others, have declined by half, Ashe said. He
added that the act could use tweaking, but hardly needs an
overhaul.

“The Endangered Species Act is the world’s gold standard” for
government conservation, Ashe said. “It’s not perfect. It can be
better. Your goal is to make it … stronger and better.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy- environment/wp/2017/02/15/the-endangered-species-act-may-be- heading-for-the-threatened-list-this-hearing-confirmed- it/?utm_term=.cc0b9d5211c0

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