Editorial: House Bill Would Limit Endangered Species Act

For years we have urged Congress to revise the Endangered Species Act (ESA). On September 29 the U.S. House passed by 229–193 a bill that would substantially rewrite ESA, originally passed in 1973, roughly nine years after Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring hit the book shelves. (She is listed as the founder of the contemporary environmental movement.)

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch described the issue as “one of the most contentious…in Congress” and described the bill as one “that narrows the reach of the Endangered Species Act and pays farmers and developers for saving threatened creatures.”

The bill would eliminate critical habitat protections, removes provisions from scientific review and lifts restrictions on pesticide use, according to the Post article. Incidentally, the insecticide DDT, described by Dixie Lee Ray as “remarkable” and one that had saved millions of lives around the world, was banned in the early 1970s.

High on our interest list was the provision that would require the federal government to compensate property owners whose land becomes devalued when complying with the law.

Carson, who joined forces with the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries in the early 1930s as the writer of the radio show “Romance Under The Waters,” passed her civil service test in 1936 and the bureau hired her full-time as a junior biologist. Over the next 15 years she rose in the ranks until, finally, she became chief editor of all publications for the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. We have no doubt that she believed firmly what she wrote in Silent Spring. But we wonder if she foresaw how (beyond improving the landscape for wildlife) a law such as ESA would impact our nation, arouse such controversy and, in our opinion, be so unfair. She was, by the way, author of at least half a dozen other books related to the environment.

We have never believed environmental laws to be wrong per se. It is radical enforcement and abuse of them that gets to us. Where this movement has led is to a point where government agencies responsible for parks and refuges cannot maintain them for lack of funds. Where we have gotten to is a point where, for the sake of kangaroo rats, California residents were prevented from clearing brush from their property (rat habitat no less), and their property burned.

In his Gettysburg Address in 1863 Abraham Lincoln said, “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”

Environmental law and the latest Supreme Court ruling on eminent domain have made a shambles of fairness and the meaning of “equal.” Owners whose property has been devalued are victims of law run amok. Lincoln, we suspect, had a different perspective of what is fair and equal.

It has always been our contention that government has ignored “by and for the people.”

The GOP “Contract With America” addressed the unfairness of this environmental mechanism. But it did not correct it. Nowadays, use of eminent domain means the legal transfer of property without the consent of the owner.

The bill to revise ESA was introduced on September 19 and sped through the House without the usual public hearings. According to the Post article, Rep. Nick Rahall (D-W.Va.) said that “months of negotiations broke down over key provisions, among them the insistence that landowners be paid for losses.” And then he said—in a remark that befuddles us—“What is next, paying citizens to wear their seat belts?” Is he suggesting that we can save lives by causing huge financial losses?

The endangered species laws are at the very heart of a sometimes very destructive environmental movement. Overly ambitious enforcement of them is at the very core of thousands of legal actions that impede economic progress and, for that matter, have held up modernization and maintenance of the Upper Mississippi and Illinois rivers. Missouri River water control has been a common target for environmental litigation. Radical environmental advocates have gleefully watched the deterioration of a water transportation infrastructure that facilitates the movement of upwards of 15 percent of all domestic product at a cost of an estimated 2 to 3 percent of the nation’s transportation cost.

There are many things to sort out following the devastation of New Orleans by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. We will be amazed at how many preventative measures could have and should have been taken but weren’t. We know that lawsuits by Save Our Wetlands played a big role. But at the heart of the litigation targeting the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and leaving New Orleans less protected than it should have been are environmental laws.

Perhaps Congress sees that now. The laws need revision to remove ambiguity and provide wiggle room when the welfare of endangered species comes into conflict with the welfare of people. We can no longer sacrifice much-needed economic growth to poorly penned environmental laws.

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