Oil, gas could help endangered animals

Bill would use royalties to fund conservation work

The Texas horned lizard. Moose in New Hampshire. The pygmy rabbit of Iowa.

These and thousands of other wildlife species are slinking, trotting and hopping toward endangerment or extinction. A bill making its way through Congress could give them a much-needed reprieve by using an innovative source of revenue to save their habitats: oil and gas royalties.

In an initiative that has garnered backing from unlikely allies — energy giant Shell Oil, conservationists and hunting and fishing retailers — the Recovering America’s Wildlife Act has also gained support from both Democratic and Republican lawmakers in Congress, a rarity these days.

“This is Teddy Roosevelt-style conservation,” said Virgil Moore, president of the Association of Fish & Wildlife Agencies and director of the Idaho Department of Fish and Game. “This is the biggest game changer that’s out there.”

There are 716 species of animals listed on the U.S. Fish and Wildlife endangered species list, from the Atlantic sturgeon to the yellow-crested cockatoo. State wildlife officials also count more than 12,000 species of animals at risk of becoming threatened or endangered without more proactive conservation measures, according to the Alliance for America’s Fish & Wildlife, a group created to lobby for more funding.

The bill’s goal would be to keep animals off the endangered list by redirecting $1.3 billion a year in oil, gas and mineral royalties to a wildlife conservation fund that would be dispersed to all 50 states. Those royalties usually go into the federal treasury.

U.S. Rep. Jeff Fortenberry, R-Neb., said he was intrigued by an initiative backed by oil companies, hunters and conservationists. Fortenberry is sponsoring the bill, which had an initial subcommittee hearing last month, along with Rep. Debbie Dingell, a Democrat from Michigan.

Some lawmakers have said they would like to see the oil and gas royalties given to other projects, such as coastal restoration, but overall the bill is gaining support on both sides of the aisle, Fortenberry said.

“It transcends all the messiness that’s here right now,” he said. “This has real implications for real change.”

For Texas, the act would bring an annual infusion of $63 million to help save species such as the Guadalupe bass, Texas horned lizard and whooping crane, whose numbers have rapidly diminished, said Janice Bezanson, a longtime conservationist and member of the Texas Alliance for America’s Fish and Wildlife, a conservation group.

Instead of asking the federal government to enforce costly regulations protecting different species, the bill shifts the responsibility to the states to proactively draw up protection plans and keep species off endangered lists, she said.

One of the most graphic plights is that of the moose in Maine and New Hampshire, said Collin O’Mara, president and chief executive of the National Wildlife Federation. Clusters of winter ticks are attaching themselves to moose cows and calves and sucking them dry of blood, killing off about 70% of the moose calves in those states. With shorter winters, the ticks live longer and do more damage.

More conservation money would allow state wildlife officials to find a way to save the moose from their bloodsucking hitchhikers, O’Mara said.

“It transcends all the messiness that’s here right now.”

U.S. Rep. Jeff Fortenberry R-Neb., a sponsor of Recovering America’s Wildlife Act

Moose are struggling in the forests of Maine and New Hampshire. JIM COLE/AP