The Law That Seemingly Pits Owls Against People and Jobs

When the hunter shoots Bambi’s mother in the 1942 Disney cartoon feature, there are usually few dry eyes in the audience. But in real life, guerrilla war of a sort is being waged against many animals in forests, deserts and plains across the country, and the animals seem to have more steely-eyed enemies than friends.

As Times staff writer Maura Dolan reported recently, endangered grizzly bears in Montana and Wyoming mysteriously vanish, endangered sea turtles wash up in the Gulf of Mexico, their throats slashed, and an endangered northern spotted owl was recently found nailed to a tree in Washington.

The trigger for this violence? The Endangered Species Act, a 1973 law that prohibits harming or harassing any wildlife found by the federal government to be nearing extinction. Arguably the toughest ecological law in the country, the act has also become a lightning rod in increasingly bitter discussions about economic development and environmental protection. Debate is intensifying as the economic recession continues. But rhetoric about “owls versus people” trivializes this important legislation. As Congress considers reauthorization of the Endangered Species Act, starting early next year, it must view it as an integral part of a broader strategy to protect the nation’s vital ecological diversity.

The endangered species law, enforced by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, is supposed to protect imperiled animals and plants. Private landowners cannot harm any of the 650 listed species discovered on their land and, in most cases, must create a habitat recovery plan to facilitate the regeneration of that species. Landowners who wish to develop their property must navigate a cumbersome and sometimes costly permit process. Federal agencies must also take proactive steps to conserve listed endangered species.

Development projects that would threaten or destroy critical habitat can be blocked. Private property owners often fear their land values will drop when the discovery of listed species bars development.

The act has angered private citizens and federal agencies alike. Violation of the act, such as by deliberately killing listed species or destroying their habitat, can, and has, resulted in criminal prosecution. Nonetheless, some landowners have resorted to the “scorched earth” approach: stealthily eliminating endangered plants, animals or insects from their land before authorities learn of their presence.

Frustration over the act has been particularly acute in California, which because of its diverse geography and rapid development leads the nation in endangered species.

But even its champions do not view the Endangered Species Act as an unmitigated success, and many even consider the Fish and Wildlife Service as part of the problem. While the agency reported that 41% of the nearly 600 species listed in 1990 were either stable or increasing, 38% were declining, 2% were believed to be extinct and the government did not know enough about the other 19% to report on their conditions. Only five species on the endangered list have met the goals for complete recovery.

Moreover, federal funds have been disproportionately spent on just a handful of species while others, closer to extinction, receive little attention. Also, the Fish and Wildlife Service, with just 210 enforcement agents nationwide, is understaffed and underfunded. These constraints have slowed the listing of new species; as many as 3,000 unlisted species may now be vulnerable.

That’s bad enough, but to make matters worse, there are serious problems with the legislation itself. Because it focuses on individual species, rather than habitat, the Endangered Species Act can result in inefficient and nightmarishly duplicative enforcement efforts, particularly when more than one species is discovered on the same land. Also, the act is one of few federal laws to protect the natural ecology with any real teeth. As a result, it has become, by default, the first line of defense for ecological protection rather than a last resort, as it was intended.

Most important, the Endangered Species Act was not designed to promote ecological planning. Yet that sort of planning is exactly what’s needed now. The nation’s biological diversity is linked to our long-term economic future. Congress and the incoming Clinton Administration should encourage efforts to undertake, in effect, a national ecological inventory. That inventory should be used to develop a long-range strategy for preserving natural diversity, including new legislation that focuses on habitat, rather than species, and prevents species from reaching threatened status. Such a strategy could defuse anger over the Endangered Species Act by facilitating development where it does not endanger wildlife while blocking it where it does, and still offering incentives for private owners to set aside fragile habitat for preservation.

We can wind up killing the honorable intent of this law with, on one hand, mindless and inefficient applications by government, and, on the other hand, willful violations of the law. The challenge for the nation is to move beyond policies that pit owls against people to policies that take, as their premise, the fact that where owls and people cannot coexist, neither can long exist alone.