Endangered Species Act ‘Too Tough,’ Lujan Says : Environment: Comments by the Interior secretary evoke accusations of insensitivity and ‘Wattism.’

Under mounting pressure to protect the embattled Mt. Graham red squirrel in Arizona, the squawfish in Colorado and the spotted owl of the Pacific Northwest, Interior Secretary Manuel Lujan Jr. has suggested that Congress take a look at the Endangered Species Act to see whether it is unnecessarily restrictive.

Lujan’s comments in a copyrighted interview in Friday’s Denver Post incited an uproar from environmentalists, who interpreted them as a call for weakening the federal protection of a host of endangered plants and animals.

After an interview at Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado, the newspaper quoted the secretary as saying that the law “is just too tough,” questioning whether endangered species must be protected in every locale where they exist, and asking: “Do we have to save every subspecies?”

The reaction was swift, with environmentalists accusing the secretary of insensitivity and creeping “Wattism,” a reference to Ronald Reagan’s Interior secretary, James G. Watt, who resigned after developing a reputation as notoriously anti-environment.

“We are incensed that the very Cabinet official whose job it is to be the country’s front-line protector of endangered wildlife would make such outrageous statements,” said National Wildlife Federation President Jay D. Hair.

“Secretary Lujan was quoted as saying that nobody has told him the difference between a red squirrel, a black one, or a brown one, and whether we have to save every subspecies,” Hair added. “I would gladly meet with the secretary to provide him with a much-needed education about the importance of biodiversity.”

The proximate cause of Lujan’s criticism of the act apparently was a fight between scientists supporting construction of a $200-million telescope atop Mt. Graham in Arizona and environmentalists trying to protect the habitat there of 100 or so red squirrels confronting extinction.

The squirrels, Lujan said, presented “the best example” of the dilemma presented by the act’s requirements and the interests of development. “Nobody’s told me the difference between a red squirrel, a black one, or a brown one,” he told the newspaper.

Opposing forces in the Arizona struggle have gone to court and two biologists for the Interior Department’s Fish and Wildlife Service have said in depositions that their superiors ordered them to prepare reports stating that the squirrels and the telescope could coexist on Mt. Graham.

Lujan’s complaint that the Endangered Species Act makes no provision for economic considerations came during the same week that the Interior Department was forced to suspend work on a Western water project because of scientists’ concern over a protected fish.

The department’s Bureau of Reclamation put an indefinite hold on a $589-million Colorado reservoir project after scientists for the Fish and Wildlife Service concluded it would threaten the survival of the Colorado squawfish, a large member of the minnow family.

Some $9 million already had been invested in the $589-million reservoir, which is designed to provide water for irrigation, for municipal supplies in southwestern Colorado and for Ute Indian tribes. Environmentalists hailed the action, but critics ridiculed the protection of a species regarded locally as a trash fish.

Lujan said the project will be restudied, and he argued that consideration should be given to the fact that the squawfish exists in other places far from the contested Animas-La Plata project.

Just hours before his Colorado interview, Lujan was asked by San Bernardino City Attorney James F. Penman to stop malathion spraying around the city until it could be determined whether threatened and endangered species would be harmed by the chemical war on Medflies.

Lujan declined, and an Interior Department spokesman called Freeman’s request an attempt to make political use of the act.

Steven Goldstein, Lujan’s press secretary, denied Friday that the secretary was calling for a weakening of the Endangered Species Act, saying he was expressing mounting frustrations caused by efforts to enforce it.

The secretary, he said, is concerned that the law is being misused to block economic development. Rather than calling for a weakening of it, Goldstein said, Lujan would like Congress to review how it applies to the protection of subspecies and officially endangered species that exist in more than one locale.

“He is suggesting,” Goldstein said, “that Congress might want to examine it to determine whether it is being implemented for the purpose for which it was intended.”

Lujan’s remarks seemed certain to add fuel to the already furious debate over protection of the spotted owl in Washington, Oregon and Northern California.

Environmentalists and timber interests have battled over the issue of restricting logging in century-old forests that provide the habitat of the 1,500 pair of breeding owls still believed to exist.

The spotted owl currently is not listed as endangered, but a study by the Fish and Wildlife Service has been under way for months. An announcement is expected next month on whether the owl will be put on the list, a move that timber interests contend would have massive economic repercussions.