[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 41 (Thursday, April 2, 1998)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E576-E578]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




    THE ENDANGERED SPECIES ACT IS NOT ``WAR ON THE WEST, PART TWO''

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. GEORGE MILLER

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                        Wednesday, April 1, 1998

  Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, recently, some of my 
colleagues on the Resources Committee have been trying to convince the 
public that the Administration is placing an unfair burden on western 
property owners by deliberately implementing the Endangered Species Act 
more harshly in the western U.S. The facts simply do not support the 
allegations. While no one can argue that California has far more 
endangered and threatened species than most states (Hawaii has the 
most), my colleagues have confused the simple logic of cause and 
effect.
  The western and southern states are the most biologically diverse and 
unique regions in the nation. In California alone, we have an 
extraordinary range of coastal and upland forests, deserts, grasslands, 
and shrublands--all with large numbers of rare and endemic species 
which are vulnerable to the effects of our economic prosperity. While 
my colleagues would argue that environmental protection laws like the 
Endangered Species Act inhibit economic growth, the facts lead to a 
very different conclusion. In 1996, the average number of housing 
starts per month were 661,000 in the southern states. In the western 
states, they averaged 361,000 a month, while there were only 132,000 a 
month in the Northeast. Florida's growth rate is legendary; Texas is 
growing at a rate of about 6 million new people per decade; and 
California is expected to have 18 million more people by the year 2025. 
The reality is that the West, and California in particular, are at the 
forefront of the ongoing battle between development and open space.
  What is really needed in the West is a means of addressing the loss 
of family farmland and open space while we address the needs of 
endangered species and their habitats. Any rewrite of the Endangered 
Species Act must contain incentives for small, private

[[Page E577]]

landowners--not loopholes for large corporate landowners. We should 
require that all federal actions be consistent with the recovery of 
endangered species. Only then can we get landowners and farmers out 
from under regulatory control and back to the business of driving the 
economy.
  H.R. 2351, the Endangered Species Recovery Act, which I authored and 
which currently has 102 cosponsors, seeks to address these concerns by 
establishing incentives for private landowners and local governments 
that will allow economic planning and development to move forward while 
recovering the imperiled species that are under federal protection. 
H.R. 2351 was not written with large corporate landowners in mind, but 
strives to provide something for everyone, whether they reside in the 
East or the West, and regardless of whether they own a small family 
farm or a suburban development.
  I am inserting in the Record today two editorials from the Casper, 
Wyoming, Star-Tribune championing H.R. 2351--evidence that support for 
the Endangered Species Act is alive and well west of the Mississippi 
River.

             Senate Endangered Species Act Bows to Industry

                        (By Charles Levendosky)

       When the Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt and Sen. 
     Dirk Kempthorne, R-Idaho, work together on a piece of 
     environmental legislation, warning sirens should pierce the 
     air. Kempthorne is one of the Senate's top recipients of 
     donations from the timber industry.
       Last year, Kempthorne introduced the Endangered Species 
     Recovery Act of 1997 (S. 1180)--a bill that would reauthorize 
     but significantly change the original Endangered Species Act 
     of 1973, one of the most important environmental and 
     ecological laws our nation has enacted.
       Kempthorne was first elected to the Senate in 1992. In the 
     years from 1991 to 1996, he has received $341,216 in campaign 
     funds from forestry and forest products, oil and gas, and 
     mining industries. He votes logging.
       A glance at other co-sponsors of S. 1180 tells the same 
     story: Sen. Paul Coverdell, R-Ga, who gathers in even greater 
     amounts of timber PAC money than Kempthorne; Sen. Frank 
     Murkowski, R-Alaska, who never saw a tree that wasn't timber 
     and has the money to show for it; and Sen. Ted Stevens, R-
     Alaska, who took in more than $200,000 in campaign funds from 
     timber and mineral industries in the span from 1991 to 1996.
       The Natural Resources Defense Council calls S. 1180 an 
     industry bill: ``It gives big developers and multinational 
     mining, timber and oil corporations a . . . loophole . . . 
     that lets them destroy endangered species habitat.''
       In an interview Friday, Babbitt wasn't shy about admitting 
     his role in the creation of the Senate bill: ``I don't think 
     it's any secret that I participated pretty intensively in the 
     drafting and the negotiations that led to 1180. It's 
     obviously a consensus product designed to appeal across the 
     center, as much as reasonably possible. I've indicated it's 
     an excellent start. It's the only starting place.
       ``If we're going to re-authorize this act, we have to move 
     this bill out for discussion on the floor of the Senate. . . 
     . Is it perfect? No. But it's got a lot of good things in it. 
     It incorporates most of the innovations that we spent so much 
     time on, kind of inventing over the last five years.
       ``These are ideas that ought to be specifically laid out in 
     legislation, because they're not there now. That would be 
     Habitat Conservation Plans, the species conservation 
     agreements, the safe harbor concept, no surprises, all 
     important concepts. And they're all in this bill.''
       According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 
     approximately 80 percent of endangered species live on 
     private lands. In order to protect those endangered species, 
     some incentives had to be offered to private landowners.
       A Habitat Conservation Plan (HCP) allows a landowner whose 
     lawful activity might harm an endangered or threatened 
     species to negotiate with the Department of the Interior to 
     mitigate and minimize that impact.
       The ``no surprises rule'' means that once a landowner has 
     made a commitment to an HCP, there is assurance that the 
     government won't make additional requests or restrictions. 
     The Senate bill would lock in those agreements for 100 years.
       Species conservation agreements protect rare species 
     through a program of inventory, monitoring, research and 
     public education.
       ``Safe harbor'' allows land developers to set aside a 
     portion of their property to provide habitat for threatened 
     or endangered species in that area. In exchange, the 
     government allows them to develop the rest of the land 
     without legal restrictions.
       These policy developments have been helpful in gaining the 
     cooperation of private landowners. The Senate bill will put 
     them into law.
       Critics, like the National Center for Public Policy 
     Research, contend that it will codify these policies and 
     ``extralegal arrangements large timber companies have 
     negotiated with federal officials that are currently 
     vulnerable to legal challenge.''
       Babbitt recognizes that the Senate bill currently has two 
     major problems--the appropriation level is much too low to 
     make the law effective in achieving its intent, and it ``has 
     a very complex set of procedural requirements for recovery 
     plans--in some respects it's overly complex.''
       The positives, according to Babbitt, are ``giving 
     legislative sanction and predictability'' to policy 
     innovations.
       Babbitt didn't mention a competing bill with the same name 
     introduced in the U.S. House by Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., 
     (H.R. 2351).
       The bill has 101 bipartisan co-sponsors. Miller receives 
     most of his campaign donations from unions and lawyers, 
     nothing from the timber industry and only $6,000 from the oil 
     and gas industries in the 1995 to 1996 election cycle.
       The House bill also codifies the on-the-ground policies 
     that have helped protect endangered species on private 
     lands--however, the bill's landowner incentives contain 
     provisions to ensure wildlife protection.
       Asked about H.R. 2351, Babbitt responded, ``I haven't 
     looked at it carefully. I really haven't . . . I guess I'm 
     trying to do one thing at a time.''
       Environmentalists, conservationists and sportsmen like the 
     House bill. Almost without exception, they consider the 
     Senate bill a sell-out to industry.
       Bill Snape, legal director of the Defenders of Wildlife, 
     considers the differences between the House and Senate bills 
     to be a part of a philosophical debate: ``The Kempthorne bill 
     is sort of the ``same old business as usual; let's just sort 
     of keep species hanging on by a thread and that's OK. While 
     the Miller bill actually tries to put in place some sort of 
     recovery process to get species doing well and doing what we 
     need to do to protect species.''
       Snape hit the Senate bill's jugular vein: ``The biggest 
     problem is the fact that they're going to authorize these 
     100-years no surprises permits and agreements. They are 
     essentially locking in land management practices for huge 
     chunks of time in a way that defies every scientific point of 
     view there is. It just doesn't make any sense. They're doing 
     it because that's what industry says they need to commit to 
     any type of conservation.''
       Babbitt's work with Kempthorne may have been an attempt to 
     keep the Senate bill from being too tilted toward industry 
     and to gather industry support for Interior initiatives, but 
     there aren't enough protections for endangered species in 
     this bill.
       It should die in committee.
                                  ____


            Congress Plays Politics With Endangered Species

                        (By Charles Levendosky)

       Earlier this month, the Senate's proposed version of the 
     Endangered Species Recovery Act (S. 1180) received a stinging 
     critique from the non-partisan Congressional Research Service 
     of the Library of Congress. The House version (H.R. 2351) 
     fared much better in the report.
       CRS researchers are not paid by special interest groups to 
     arrive at some predetermined outcome. They work for Congress 
     and are paid to be as objective as humanly possible in order 
     to help that body decide about legislation.
       The CRS analysis should lay to rest any thought that the 
     Senate bill balances environmental and industry concerns. The 
     bill doesn't.
       In an interview Friday, Heather Weiner of Earthjustice 
     Legal Defense Fund said the CRS report pointed out some 
     aspects of the Senate bill she had missed. ``The worst points 
     of S. 1180 are the way it removes both judicial and public 
     review of government activities. What it says is `trust the 
     government.' And that's great when you have a friendly 
     administration--we're talking about species protection--but 
     that's not great for future administrations.''
       As if it weren't bad enough, Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., has 
     demanded that two pro-industry amendments be attached to the 
     bill.
       Lott wants to remove the bill's requirement to implement 
     recovery plans for threatened or endangered species. Lott's 
     other amendment would allow a private landowner--once there 
     has been an agreement with the federal government to minimize 
     the impact on an endangered species found on the landowner's 
     property--to ignore harm to any species that might be listed 
     in the future as threatened or endangered.
       From 1991 to 1996, Lott received $293,355 in campaign funds 
     from the oil and gas industry, forestry and forest products 
     industries, and mining companies. That's a hefty piece of 
     change. Call these amendments payback.
       Lott's proposed amendments helped stall the bill. They 
     would kill any pretense that the legislation helps the 
     recovery of endangered species.
       Inadequate funding for the Senate version of the ESA re-
     authorization also brought it to a halt. But last week, folks 
     in the Senate Budget Committee put their shoulders to it. 
     Something is moving.
       Weiner said, ``This bill is really starting to catch some 
     momentum now as they're finding ways to deal with the budget 
     issues in the bill. . . . There was an attempt to try to take 
     the funding from the sale of BLM (Bureau of Land 
     Management) lands. .  .  . They want to sell off our 
     public lands, where we're asking federal agencies to do 
     some good things for endangered species.''
       Now there's a forward-looking approach. Sell off public 
     lands--to agri-interests, to timber conglomerates--in order 
     to finance the protection of species that are endangered by 
     development.
       Sell the public lands from under our wildlife and soon 
     nearly every species will be endangered.

[[Page E578]]

       Another irony was pointed out by Weiner. ``The money that 
     they would raise would not go toward the implementation of 
     the ESA, it would go toward the landowner incentives,'' she 
     said. ``It would go right back to the corporate landowner. .  
     .  . It's not actually going to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife 
     Service to help them enforce the act or implement the act or 
     come up with recovery plans. It's going straight to the 
     private landowners.''
       If agreements between landowners and the federal government 
     go away? The CRS report states succinctly that S. 1180 would 
     ``probably not make citizen (law) suits available to enforce 
     conservation agreements.'' The House bill expressly allows 
     such citizen lawsuits.
       Bill Snape, legal director of Defenders of Wildlife, 
     doesn't expect any real movement on the Senate bill until 
     after Easter recess. ``The huge, thousand pound gorilla on 
     the back of this bill is that not one environmental group in 
     the country supports it. Not one. .  .  . Until that occurs, 
     it's unlikely that Republicans will want to reinforce their 
     anti-environmental message, particularly the Senate Majority 
     Leader (Trent Lott) as they head into the November 
     elections.''
       The machinations of Congress--it may be that Lott is really 
     attempting to kill the Senate bill with his amendments while 
     looking cozy to his corporate donors.
       The House version of the Endangered Species Recovery Act, 
     introduced by Rep. George Miller, now has 102 co-sponsors. 
     According to Snape, it won't move until the Senate bill 
     passes or dies.
       There are three major differences between the House and 
     Senate ESA bills:
       The Miller bill gives landowners assurances that 
     conservation agreements will stand, but requires landowners 
     to post performance bonds to make certain they live up to the 
     requirements of minimizing the impact on threatened or 
     endangered species. The Senate bill has no such bonding 
     provisions.
       The Miller bill would improve habitat protection on federal 
     lands, while the Senate bill creates more loopholes to ignore 
     impacts that put endangered and threatened species at risk.
       The Miller bill focuses directly on the recovery of species 
     by setting up definite standards and procedures. The Senate 
     bill, according to Snape, ``plays up service to recovery, but 
     what they're really talking about is survival.''
       However, not everyone is happy with the Miller bill.
       In February, a letter from the presidents of 11 
     professional scientific societies specializing in plant and 
     animal biology was sent to Congress and the Clinton 
     administration. The letter condemns both House and Senate 
     bills for allowing habitat destruction under conservation 
     agreements.
       The Miller bill may not have the unified support of the 
     environmental and conservation communities, but it clearly 
     does more for the recovery of endangered species.
       Don't expect either bill to pass during this session of 
     Congress. Neither one will. These two bills, however, have 
     defined the terms of discourse regarding endangered species.
       And this critical environmental issue will undoubtedly be a 
     part of the public debate during election campaigns. It will 
     have an influence on the outcome of some congressional races 
     in the West.

     

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