Babbitt Urges More Flexibility in Protecting Endangered Species

The Clinton Administration, seeking to defuse controversy over the renewal of the Endangered Species Act, Tuesday announced a series of initiatives designed to make the protection of rare plants and animals less disruptive for private property owners and communities.

Using what he called the “flexibility and administrative discretion built in” to the 1973 act, Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt ordered officials of the Fish and Wildlife Service to consider the economic and social impact of the law when they attempt to aid the recovery of threatened plant and animal populations.

Under the new guidelines, the Fish and Wildlife Service and the Commerce Department’s National Marine Fisheries Service--which share responsibility for enforcing the Endangered Species Act--must outline more clearly what landowners can and cannot do if their land is found to host an endangered or threatened species.

In designating plant or animal populations as endangered or threatened and in drafting “recovery plans,” the two agencies also will be required to invite the participation of private citizens and state and local agencies.

Sending a clear message to congressional critics, who argued that the law now overrides individuals’ private property rights and are expected to try to rewrite the act when it is reauthorized next year, Babbitt suggested that changes in implementation--not legislative surgery--could correct the perceived problems with the law.

Babbitt’s initiative comes as congressional forces are mobilizing for what is expected to be a showdown over the Endangered Species Act. In recent years, a growing movement of private property rights activists has called for changes in the 1973 act, which is due for reauthorization by Congress next year.

The activists argue the Endangered Species Act allows the government, in effect, to seize or freeze the use of private property without compensating owners.

In the House, 143 lawmakers from both parties have co-sponsored a proposed “Private Property Owners’ Bill of Rights” and a similar effort in the Senate has won the support of more than a dozen lawmakers of both parties.