Fish and Wildlife Service
The Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works held a hearing today on several bills that would obstruct the Endangered Species Act (ESA). Under the guise of “improvements” and "updates" these bills threaten the foundation of this bedrock environmental law.
Sadly, these legislative attacks on one of our most successful environmental laws are nothing new. The House passed several comparable bills last summer. With longtime opponent of the Endangered Species Act Senator Inhofe as chairman of the committee overseeing endangered species issues, this hearing is likely just the beginning of a similar onslaught in the Senate.
Though masked by a popular rallying cry of increasing transparency around endangered species decisions, the aim of proponents of dismantling the Act is to delay and ultimately stop Endangered Species Act safeguards from going into effect.
Several of the proposals heard today would serve only to obstruct the processes of protecting some of our country's most endangered animals through rulings and listings by requiring additional work by implementing agencies and creating unnecessary redundancy. These types of provisions will not better protect threatened species—the purpose of the law, but in fact leave them needlessly at risk.
Another common thread linking some of today’s bills is the nefarious undermining of public involvement. The legislation heard today runs the gamut from eliminating recovery of legal fees to eliminating judicial review. These attempts to chip away citizens’ ability to enforce the Act undermine its integrity and weaken the protections that have for decades brought American wildlife back from the brink of extinction.
The last wave of attacks comes in the species-specific variety. As part of the 2011 appropriations bill Congress stripped endangered species protections from wolves in Idaho, Montana, and parts of Washington, Oregon, and Utah. The move marked a dangerous departure from the science-based decisions that have made the Act so successful and set a terrible precedent which has left other animals vulnerable to political attacks. Unfortunately, since the 2011 wolf delisting we’ve seen an uptick in bills and riders that undermine or block endangered species protections for particular species.
As Senator Boxer so astutely pointed out, these bills “really are a backdoor repeal of the ESA.” Taken together, they would create bureaucratic red tape for species on the verge of extinction, inappropriately inject politics into decisions that should be based on science and undermine some of the most basic protections for citizens who seek to enforce the Endangered Species Act.
Sierra Club, along with more than 20 other conservations organizations, submitted a letter to the committee expressing our opposition to these harmful proposals. We will continue to fight these efforts to chip away at one of our nation’s vital environmental protection laws.
-- by Marni Salmon, endangered species policy expert, Washington, D.C.