Endangered Species Act Threatened

Ed Hunt, editor of Tidepool.org, works from his home in Grays River, Washington. Tidepool.org focuses on the ecology, community development, and economy of the rain forest coast. Hunt defines that bioregion as the wet side of the mountains from Southeast Alaska to Northern California.

It is getting hard to keep track of the lawsuits filed over the Northwest Forest plan. Both the logging industry and environmental groups have now brought suits against the U.S. Government over the Northwest Forest Plan.

The forest industry fired first—claiming that the “Survey to Manage” requirement—which looks for and protects non-listed species—goes beyond the bounds of the National Forest Management Act. The American Forest Resource Council is also challenging the Endangered Species Act listing of the spotted owl and marbled murrelet.

On the opposite front, a coalition of environmental groups sued under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) saying that the Feds failed to consider focusing on second-growth thinning rather than old-growth logging when it cut 72 species from the Survey to Manage list in late 2000. The Forest Service said the species were removed from the list after resource managers determined that they weren’t old-growth dependent, or were abundant enough to not require special protection.

Biologists are required under the 1994 Northwest Forest Plan to look for three dozen species on National Forest lands prior to approving a sale. If the key species are located, the logging must be managed to reduce impacts to the species.

Most of the species are not threatened or endangered, and therefore not protected by the Endangered Species Act. Yet the species are considered vital to the functioning of the forest ecosystem.

The forest industry’s suit argues that there is no law requiring non-listed species to be protected.

“There’s nothing in law or regulation that gives the agencies the right to protect all these species,” Chris West, vice president of the American Forest Resource Council, told the Vancouver Columbian.

The council has also served notice that it will sue over protection of two bird species that do have ESA protection—the spotted owl and the marbled murrelet.

Millions of acres of old growth forest were put off- limits to logging to protect the preferred habitat of these two species. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is required to review the listing of ESA protected species every five years, but has not reviewed the status of either species for over a decade.

The Forest Resource Council has threatened to sue to force a review of both species and their critical habitat. The council is gambling that the current reserves set aside under the Northwest Forest Plan are enough—that they don’t need additional protection on federal and private forest land.

The council points to other impacts on the two bird species—ocean conditions for the murrelet and the invasive barred owl on its spotted cousin. Spotted owls haven’t lost as much habitat as expected when the Northwest Forest Plan was written—largely because the Survey and Manage requirement has stalled logging expected under the plan.

In fact, the promise of the plan was that it would be a compromise—feeding a reduced, but reliable amount of timber to loggers and mills. Yet, those board feed targets never came close to being met. It’s the original promises of the Northwest Forest Plan that the Resource Council is trying to get back to, according to Tom Partin, the group’s president.

“We think it’s time to force this all out onto the table,” Partin told the Portland Oregonian. “We’re moving through a step-by-step process to try to get the Northwest Forest Plan back on track.”

Speaking of the Endangered Species Act—the act itself appears to be headed for a full frontal assault in the coming months. The first battle lines have already been drawn in the challenge to two dozen salmon listings and the above mentioned spotted owl and marbled murrelet.

Yet, the battle may be taken to the heart of the 1973 landmark law in the months ahead.

According to the Christian Science Monitor, Congressional calls to reform the law are growing louder—fueled by last summer’s high profile battle over water in the Klamath basin. “Several dozen” bills currently circulating on Capitol Hill deal with the Endangered Species Act—many calling for balancing species protection with property rights and economic impacts, or specifying what kind of scientific information can be used in management decisions.

“The ESA has become a wrecking ball in this country, devastating personal finances and regional economies,” U.S. Rep. James Hansen (R) of Utah told the Monitor. Hansen chairs the House resources committee. “It’s time we reform this law, grounding it in sound science, not political ideology.”

Calls to reform the Endangered Species Act have been around for more than a decade—Sen. Slade Gorton took a major run at it during the Newt Gringrich Congress—but the law still enjoys public support.

That said, it may be vulnerable under the weight of several recent flashpoints—the ringer fur samples slipped into the Washington Lynx surveys, the very public Klamath Basin water cut off last summer and the subsequent report from the National Academy of Sciences finding that it was not necessary and based on insufficient science.

The Christian Science Monitor seemed to hint that another tactic will be questioning the volume of listings that has mushroomed from “charismatic megafauna” like the bald eagle to more than 1,200 plant and animal species—a majority of which probably elicit little if any broad public concern.

“Aside from questions about balancing economic and biological values,” the Monitor’s Brad Knickerbocker wrote. “the law increasingly highlights the debate over what constitutes an endangered species and whether or not some species are worth saving.”

Reprinted with permission from http://www.tidepool.org.