[env-trinity] Urgent Alert: Urge No Vote on Pombo's Wildlfe Extinction Act!

[Daniel Bacher]

Urgent Action Alert September 19!

I urge everybody to call their Representative and urge NO VOTE on Richard 
Pombo's Wildlife Extinction Bill tomorrow morning (Tuesday). Under the Bush 
administration, the Endangered Species Act is one of the few recourses we 
have left to protect fish and wildlife against the ravages of corporate 
polluters and habitat destroyers.

Thanks
Dan


Legislation Introduced to Gut Endangered Species Act (courtesy of Alameda 
Creek Alliance)

 
First vote will be this Thursday morning

If you contact your member of Congress over just one issue this year, please 
make it the survival of the Endangered Species Act. 

Dozens of animals and plants that would have gone extinct have been saved by 
the Endangered Species Act since it was signed into law by President Richard 
M. Nixon on December 28, 1973.

Many more are on the brink, along with the special places they call home.  
Your phone call can make the difference for well-known animals such as the 
grizzly bear, polar bear, orca (aka killer whale), Mexican gray wolf, 
Mexican spotted owl, and California condor. 

It can also mean the difference between life and death for hundreds of 
obscure creatures struggling to survive, such as the Chiricahua leopard frog 
that lives in streams in the desert, the spectacled eider that nests on the 
Arctic coast, and the coral in the Carribean along with the many fish that 
thrive in the architecture of coral reefs.

The House Resources Committee will vote this Thursday, September 22, on a 
bill introduced by the committee chairman, Richard Pombo (R-CA), that would 
tear gaping holes in the safety net that is the Endangered Species Act in 
order to expedite development of the last natural habitats for wildlife in 
the United States.  Details are described below.  The bill will first be 
voted on in the House Resources Committee, then if it passes will go to the 
full House of Representatives, and if it passes there a similar process will 
be underway in the Senate.

Imperiled animals and plants need your help to stop this bill.  Please call 
your Representative in Congress first thing Tuesday morning and ask them to 
oppose Representative Pombo's extinction bill, H.R. 3824, that would 
eliminate key protections of the Endangered Species Act.

It is especially important that members of the House Resources Committee 
hear from people who live in their districts. You can look up those members 
at:  http://resourcescommittee.house.gov/fullcommittee/members.htm .

To learn who your Representative is and his or her direct phone number, go 
to:  http://www.house.gov/writerep/ .  The congressional switchboard 
number is 202-224-3121.

Please make these calls even if your Representative is known to be hostile 
to conservation.  We may be able to swing some votes from members of 
Congress nervous about their re-election.

Thank you for your help.

Highlights of Rep. Pombo's Wildlife Extinction Bill


 


Eliminates Independent Federal Oversight.  The Endangered Species Act 
requires that U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service or Fisheries Service biologists 
review all federal actions that may harm endangered species. The review is 
done only on the basis of the best available science. It is conducted by 
scientists who are completely independent of the federal agency proposing 
the harmful action.


 


The Pombo bill allows the exemption of individual projects and entire 
categories of actions from independent review and instead substitutes 
undefined "alternate procedures.”  As Pombo and the Bush administration have 
consistently pushed to shield federal agency actions from environmental 
review by the Fish and Wildlife Service, it is clear that the "alternate 
procedures" will eliminate independent oversight over a vast array of 
habitat destruction projects.


Eliminates Critical Habitat.  The Endangered Species Act requires the 
designation of mapped-out “critical habitat” areas for all threatened and 
endangered species. Critical habitat is the only portion of the Act which 
directly protects ecosystems in themselves, regardless of whether an 
endangered species currently reside there -- because it may need to reclaim 
that habitat in order to recover. Critical habitat is the only portion of 
the Act which expressly establishes a recovery management standard. It 
works:  Species with critical habitat are twice as likely to be recovering 
as species without it.

Pombo’s bill completely eliminates critical habitat from the Endangered 
Species Act. .

Makes Recovery Plans Optional.  Recovery plans constitute road maps for 
specific actions that will lead to a species' resurgence and eventual 
removal from the threatened and endangered species list.  The Endangered 
Species Act requires development of recovery plans. 

Pombo's bill would allow the federal government to choose which creatures 
get a recovery plan and which do not

Destructive Projects Proceed by Default.  The Endangered Species Act 
currently requires that a destructive project can not proceed until it is 
reviewed and approved by government scientists. The review can not take 
place unless the agency or corporation proposing the project provides 
detailed information about the project and its likely effects.

Pombo’s bill turns this precautionary process on its head by specifying that 
destructive projects are allowed to proceed unless government scientists 
intercede to stop it. The scientists will have little information to make 
such an intercession, because the Pombo bill allows agencies to simply 
provide the “nature, the specific location, and the anticipated schedule and 
duration of the proposed action.” This is not enough information to support 
a scientific review.

Eliminates and Politicizes Science.  The Endangered Species Act currently 
requires that all decisions be made on the basis of “the best available 
scientific information.” Wisely, the Act does not define “best available” 
because scientific technology, knowledge, and methods constantly change. The 
Act leaves it up to the scientific community to determine the best science 
available. Pombo’s bill requires a politically appointee, the Secretary of 
Interior, to issue regulations predetermining the definition of best 
science.

The Pombo bill also codifies a Bush Administration policy that has been 
widely condemned by scientists and rejected by courts. The policy, and the 
bill, prohibit the Fish and Wildlife Service and the Fisheries Service from 
updating conservation plans for private lands that recieve government 
funding or permits to destroy habitat, even if those plans are not working 
as intended -- unless the private land owner holding the permit agrees. Thus 
new scientific information and the results of biological monitoring no would 
longer require updating of conservation plans.

Eliminates Species Protections and Up-To-Date Science.  As currently 
written, the Endangered Species Act provides full protection to each 
new animal or plant added to the endangered species list.  Pombo’s bill 
allows the Fish and Wildlife Service and Fisheries Service to sign an 
agreement with individual states prior to a species being listed, 
which would prohibit new protections for that creature.  If a species were 
to be listed despite the presence of such an agreement, it would indicate 
that the agreement was necessarily insufficient to protect it. But such an 
agreement would have the force of law even though scientists had already 
determined that it allowed the animal or plant to proceed toward 
endangerment.

Slows Species Protections.  The Fish and Wildlife Service has issued a 
nationwide policy protecting threatened species from unregulated take (i.e. 
killing, harming or harassing). Pombo’s bill prohibits this efficient 
national approach, requiring the agency to issue separate regulations for 
each threatened species.

Prevents and Bureaucratizes the Listing of Endangered Species.  The 
Endangered Species Act currently allows the listing of species, subspecies, 
and “distinct population segments.”  Pombo’s bill makes it harder to list 
populations by requiring that it be done “sparingly” -- thus allowing 
different populations of a species to slip away one by one instead of taking 
action early.

The Endangered Species Act requires that decisions to place species on the 
endangered list be done solely on the basis of the best available scientific 
information. In 2003, the Government Accountability Office issued a report 
(at the request of Congressman Pombo) which found that Fish and Wildlife 
Service listing decisions are scientifically sound. Pombo’s bill would 
bureaucratize a system that is already working fine by making petitioners 
supply the agency with documents it already possesses and making the agency 
post all those documents on a website. While this will not affect listing 
decisions, it dramatically increases burdensome, unnecessary paperwork tasks 
for scientists in government, academia and the conservation community

Bankrupts the Endangered Species Act with an Expansive "Taking" Provision.  
Pombo’s bill requires the federal government to pay private landowners for 
the loss of commercial value when an action (logging, development, etc) is 
prohibited by the protections of the Endangered Species Act. Pombo has 
hidden this provision under the misleading rubric of "conservation aid.”  
The bill specifies that "The amount of the Aid is to be no less than the 
fair market value of the forgone use of the affected portion of the 
property" -- meaning that the federal government would have to pay for 
profits that developers hoped to gain by developing that portion of the 
land, including any profits lost due to mitigations asked of the landowner, 
such as retaining riparian corridors or protecting a small part of the land.

Not only would this provision deplete the federal budget, it would set a 
precedent to require the government to pay industry for any profits lost to 
environmental protections, and would reward developers who plan the maximum 
and most potentially profitable projects for the most ecologically important 
habitats. In short, it begs developers to plan projects that allow them to 
extort payment from the government.

Please call your Representative in Congress first thing Tuesday morning!  
202-224-3121.