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Elephant Stampede on Species Act
The new Republican majority has been going after the controversial Endangered Species Act with a dizzying array of procedural weapons. First, Alaska Congressman Don Young, who replaced California's environmental strongman George Miller as head of the House Committee on Resources, appointed three task forces to tackle his top priorities: the act, private property rights and wetlands. The task forces, which will be holding hearings around the country, are supposed to come up with proposals by June.
Young's Senate counterpart is moderate Republican John Chafee, who heads the Environment and Public Works Committee. Unlike Young, who has been criticized for short-circuiting the subcommittee process by appointing all-Republican task forces, Chafee is giving his committee a year to come up with a proposal on the Endangered Species Act through the usual legislative process.
Many Republicans don't want to wait for Chafee's proposal to meet Young's in conference committee. Two Texas Republicans, Congressman Lamar Alexander and Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson, have introduced matching bills that would prohibit any new listing of endangered species and stop consultation between agencies on projects affecting such species - effectively preventing government from setting conditions for developers. In late January, Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole fired another salvo by appointing Hutchinson to head a committee on regulatory reform. Hutchinson says her first priority would be the Endangered Species Act.
Environmentalists plan to direct their counterattacks to the hearings being held across the country by Young's task force and to the reauthorization fight itself, rather than to bills like Hutchinson's, which they see as too radical to pose a serious threat.
In the short-term, however, the act is particularly vulnerable on the issue of funding. Reauthorization has been delayed for two years, and endangered species protection has been funded through an exception to the rules. An appeal to the rules committee, particularly by Don Young, could pose a powerful threat.
Young's staff has been subtly threatening such a move. But a former environmental lobbyist who has worked with Young in the past says that an overt attack on ESA funding is unlikely, despite Young's reputation as a foe of the environment (the League of Conservation Voters gave him a zero rating).
The lobbyist, who asked not to be named, thinks a more likely approach will be for them to say no money can be spent to list species. "They'd rather prevent the program from being implemented and pay the bureaucrats to just sit there so they don't have constituents that are mad at them, but the radicals are satisfied," says the lobbyist.
By crippling the act, which has long dominated Bay Area land and water policies, Congress runs the risk of sidetracking efforts at genuine reform. The Environmental Defense Fund's Michael Bean, for instance, has expressed interest in adding incentives to landowners to preserve species rather than relying on the act's command-and-control provisions. But in the current political climate, the best ESA supporters can hope for may very well be a stalemate.
Contact: House & Senate (202)224-3121
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