[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 36 (Friday, March 25, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: March 25, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                       THE ENDANGERED SPECIES ACT

  Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, this evening as we debate a variety of 
topics destined toward a time late this evening when we will vote on a 
very important issue that the Senate has decided to deliberate in a 
fairly unique way I would like to talk about an issue that I think not 
only is the chairman interested in, because he is chairman of the full 
Appropriations Committee, but also chairman of the Interior 
Appropriations Subcommittee, and that is an issue that for some time 
has caused the American people a growing concern as to the application 
of public policy. I talk about the Endangered Species Act passed in 
1970 for the purpose of identifying plants and animals endangered or at 
risk with extinction because of a change in their habitat or their 
environment that might have been caused by the actions of man.
  This week in a public press conference the National Wilderness 
Institute released a study that I think spells out in a very clear way 
why this act needs to be revisited and why it needs to be reformed and 
why I would hope this year that the Environment and Public Works 
Committee could move toward comprehensive legislation that recognized 
what I believe to be the misapplication and misuse of the Endangered 
Species Act.
  So for a few moments this evening before we get on with the business 
of the Senate and some legislation that needs to be dealt with, let me 
speak about the study itself and some of the problems that are being 
faced especially in the public land west where many species are being 
reviewed today by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service or by the National 
Marine Fishery Service and the kinds of problems that these particular 
approaches are causing to the human species in its attempt to co-exist 
with the native species of plant and animals on these public lands.
  The study that was released this week examined 306 recovering species 
under which recovery plans will be established by the two agencies that 
I have referenced. These plans were developed between 1970 and 1993. 
The plans included 8 amphibians, 72 birds, 57 fish, 58 invertebrates, 
35 mammals, 135 plants, and 27 reptiles.
  That does not mean those were all of the species that were concerned. 
There were 466 other species that were found to be at risk or 
endangered or threatened during this period of time that recovery plans 
were developed on. There were also 3,882 species that we call candidate 
species or ones that these agencies are now examining to consider 
whether there ought to be a listing of them as threatened or endangered 
and whether a recovery plan ought to be established.
  But the point I would like to make this evening is the application of 
recovery plans toward 306 species by these two agencies and what these 
plans have meant and, most important to the chairman of the 
Appropriations Committee, what these plans have cost the American 
taxpayer.
  The top 10 species of the 306 that I would like to talk about tonight 
have cost these dollars of the American taxpayers.
  Let me talk about the Atlantic green turtle first. Over the course of 
the last 15 years, the National Marine Fisheries Agency has spent 
$88,236,000 to save this species of turtle.
  For the loggerhead turtle, the same agency spent $85,947,000 to save 
that species of turtle. And yet both of those turtles are in 
environments today and they themselves, as a species of reptile, remain 
relatively unstable.
  The blunt-nosed leopard lizard. This lizard was found in California 
in the San Joaquin Valley. To recover that lizard by the management of 
its habitat cost the American taxpayers $70,252,000.
  How about the Kemp's Ridley sea turtle, another reptile--$63,600,000.
  And then several years ago, while I was serving in the House, along 
with my colleague from Colorado, Ben Nighthorse Campbell, I worked with 
him to get an appropriation to begin the building of a dam very 
important to southeastern Colorado, to a semi-arid desert environment. 
That dam was blocked because environmentalists said it would throw into 
jeopardy the environment of the Colorado squawfish.
  Well, the dam has not been constructed yet. The Colorado squawfish, 
which just years before the Colorado Fish and Wildlife Management 
Agency had killed and poisoned because it was threatening other species 
of fish, is now, I am told, a pretty happy fish. Its habitat has been 
secured. And it cost the American taxpayers $57,770,000 to save that 
fish, along with the humpback chub, the bonytail chub, and the 
razorback sucker.
  And, oh, by the way, saving those fish cost a whale of lot more than 
building the dam that would have provided water for irrigation, and 
provided flood control, and recreation, and created a warm water 
fishery that would have been a marvelous recreation facility for the 
citizens of the local area.
  And then candidate number 9, in this list of 10 of the 306 that I am 
talking about this evening, is the black-capped Vireo. Now I am not 
sure what it is, but I think it is a bird. And it cost the American 
taxpayers $53,583,000 to save that.
  The last, number 10 in this candidates list, is the swamp pink. That 
cost $29,026,000.
  Well, you say, Senator Craig, what in the heck are you talking about? 
I am talking about the Endangered Species Act. I am talking about an 
act that, in my opinion, has been allowed to run wild and no one, 
including the Appropriations Committee, or the chairman, or myself, or 
any other Senator, has taken the time to see what this act is costing 
the American taxpayer or, more importantly, what it is doing.
  It is now estimated that all of the species that have been listed to 
date--those 306, incorporated with the 460 others--have cost the 
American taxpayers $884,000,772, according to this study done by the 
National Wilderness Institute.
  Now that is just today. That does not include the listing of the 
other 3,880 candidates of at risk or endangered species and the 
recovery plans that they will cost the American taxpayer.
  The costs that I am referring to are only the costs to the taxpayer. 
They are not the costs to local or State fish and game management 
agencies, or to the private sector that in some way either was stopped 
from performing on the jobs that were lost as a direct result of man's 
inability to operate in a given area that became restricted to protect 
the environment of a given species of plant or animal.
  Here is another example of the problem we are dealing with. Some of 
these other species, the recovery plan for the black-footed ferret was 
estimated by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services to cost $3,546,000. 
The amount that we have identified in the study that the agency spent 
was over $4,200,000, or a cost overrun of about 119 percent. This 
occurred in 1967.
  The red-cockaded woodpecker. Now that is a bird down in the 
southeastern part of the United States that is today dislocating 
loggers, that has changed the management and the habitat of both public 
and private forests, has cost $8,315,000 to date in the saving of that 
particular woodpecker. I should say, that was the projected cost of the 
recovery plan. The actual cost to the U.S. Forest Service, U.S. Fish 
and Wildlife Service, was over $14,887,000, or a cost overrun of about 
180 percent.
  The big winner in cost overruns came with the Florida scrub jay. This 
is a bird that it was believed would cost the American taxpayers 
$65,000 to secure its habitat. With a cost overrun of 33,000 percent, 
$21,671,000 later, I am told the Florida scrub jay is now happy and 
secure in his or her nest. I do not know about the nest of the humans 
that were dislocated as a result of the $21 million of their tax money 
that this Government allocated to be spent in the security of that 
bird.
  There is another bird that is becoming relatively famous at this 
time. That bird is the spotted owl. The spotted owl is a bird out in 
the forests of Oregon, Washington and northern California.
  This administration, when it first came to power, said we are going 
to solve the spotted owl issue because we are told it would put a lot 
of people out of work. They created a summit. The President went to 
Oregon. The summit was convened. Proposed recovery plans were 
announced.
  To date, recovery plan option 9 is being proposed as the solution to 
the spotted owl. It is believed that that recovery plan will put 60,000 
men and women out of work in the logging industry. That recovery plan, 
if it puts that many people out of work, will cost $775 million 
annually just in workmen's unemployment compensation.
  Now that is a darn tragedy. But that is because this Congress and 
this Senate, in my opinion, has not been responsible in reviewing this 
law, in doing the necessary accounting processes that this new study 
points up about a public law that has run rampant in costing now over 
$884 million.
  I believe we are now ready for some unanimous consents and other 
legislation to move. I would be happy to yield to Senator Ford for 
those purposes.
  The PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Kentucky [Mr. Ford].

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