Environmental What?

Herewith a candid confession from a federal bureaucrat: “There is no question about it, we didn’t comply with the law.” Who said that? John A. Moore, an assistant administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. What law? The federal Endangered Species Act. The candor is refreshing. The need for it is disturbing.

By definition, endangered species have a tough time surviving in a modern environment. But the odds get much worse when you add the Environmental Protection Agency to the critters’ enemies list. A report by the Center for Environmental Education says that the EPA consistently ignored its legal mandate to protect threatened species from pesticide poisoning during 1981-84.

The agency even failed to act in specific cases after the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service advised that pesticides should be banned or restricted in areas where they were known to pose an immediate threat to endangered animal or plant species. One case involved the deaths of five eagles. Another, a California condor.

The rules are difficult to enforce, and there has not been a high priority in the agency to act on issues not involving human health, Moore said.

In the EPA’s defense, the agency has a difficult job in implementing myriad laws that have been enacted by Congress in recent years in areas requiring extensive research and painstaking rule-making. But that is no excuse for inaction after the Fish and Wildlife Service pointed out specific violations, or for needing a study commissioned to an outside organization to discover that the EPA was not complying with the law. Take another look at the sign on the door, EPA. That’s Environmental Protection Agency.