San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
ENDANGERED SPECIES ACT HAS SEEN SUCCESSES, BUT IT MAY BE IN PERIL
Lawmakers over the years have sought to weaken protections
Biologist Ashley Wilson carefully disentangled a bat from netting above a treelined river and examined the wriggling, furry mammal in her headlamp’s glow. “Another big brown,” she said.
It was a common type, one of many Wilson and colleagues had snagged in the Michigan countryside. They were looking for increasingly scarce Indiana and northern long-eared bats, which historically migrated there for birthing season.
“It’s a bad suggestion if we do not catch one,” said Allen Kurta, an Eastern Michigan University professor who has studied bats for more than 40 years.
They didn’t that evening. During 16 nights this summer, they netted 177 bats — but just one Indiana and no northern long-eared specimens.
Both are designated as imperiled under the Endangered Species Act, the U.S. law intended to keep animal and plant types from dying out. Enacted in 1973, it protects 1,683 domestic species.
More than 99 percent of those listed as “endangered” — on the verge of extinction — or the less severe “threatened” have survived.
“The Endangered Species Act has been very successful,” Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said.
Fifty years after taking effect, environmental advocates and scientists say the law is as essential as ever. Habitat loss, pollution, climate change and disease are putting an estimated 1 million species worldwide at risk.
Yet it’s so controversial, some worry it won’t last another half-century.
Conservative administrations and lawmakers have stepped up efforts to weaken it, backed by landowner and industry groups that contend the act stifles property rights and economic growth.
The act is “well-intentioned but entirely outdated ... twisted and morphed by radical litigants,” said Bruce Westerman, an Arkansas Republican and chair of the House Committee on Natural Resources.
Environmentalists accuse regulators of slow-walking new listings to appease critics and say Congress provides too little funding to fulfill the act’s mission.
“Its biggest challenge is it’s starving,” said Jamie Rappaport Clark, president of the advocacy group Defenders of Wildlife.
The act made it illegal to kill or harm listed animals and plants or ruin their habitats. It ordered federal agencies not to authorize or fund actions likely to jeopardize their existence, although amendments later allowed incidental kills from otherwise legal projects.
Congress passed it overwhelmingly, and Republican President Richard Nixon signed it. But backlash emerged as the law spurred regulation of oil and gas development, logging, ranching and other industries.
Rappaport Clark, who headed the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service under President Bill Clinton, said there were enough GOP moderates then to help Democrats thwart sweeping changes sought by hardline congressional Republicans.
“Fast-forward to today, and support has declined pretty dramatically,” she said.
Former President Donald Trump’s administration ended blanket protection for animals newly deemed threatened. It let federal authorities consider economic costs of protecting species.
Pending bills would prohibit new listings expected to cause “significant” economic harm.
“Science is supposed to be the fundamental principle of managing endangered species,” said Mike Leahy, a senior director of the National Wildlife Federation. “It’s getting increasingly overruled by politics.”
Since the law took effect, 64 of roughly 1,780 listed U.S. species have rebounded enough to be removed, while 64 more have improved from endangered to threatened. Eleven have been declared extinct, a label proposed for 23 others.