Endangered Species List Ready to Grow

In the wake of a 13-month congressional freeze on new endangered species listings, the Clinton administration today will unveil a plan to resolve a backlog of hundreds of plants and animals--more than half of them in California--awaiting decisions on protected status under federal law.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Mollie Beattie, in an interview Thursday, said 160 species facing “high magnitude threats” of extinction are the first priorities for final action. Atop the list is the California red-legged frog, believed to be Mark Twain’s “celebrated jumping frog” of Calaveras County, which is expected to be declared an endangered species later this month.

In all, 243 plants and animals already proposed by the wildlife service for listing--plus 239 more in lesser stages of review--had been stalled by Congress part way through the process of deciding if they faced sufficient danger of extinction to merit protection under the Endangered Species Act.

The moratorium began in April 1995, when Congress, targeting the act for reform, prohibited Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt from spending funds to pronounce species endangered or threatened. It ended two weeks ago after Congress, in last month’s budget deal, gave President Clinton the power to waive it.

Beattie said it could take an unspecified “matter of months” for her agency to catch up with the long queue of animals and plants, especially since this year’s endangered species budget has been cut 12%.

Before issuing decisions for each animal and plant, Beattie decided that federal biologists must ask independent scientists to send any new or updated data they have on the risks of extinction. In some cases, weeks-long public comment periods may also be reopened, she said. Under the law, listing decisions are to be based purely on “the best available science.”

“We have to pick them all up and look again at the science and make sure it’s all correct,” Beattie said. “It’s as if the Ford Motor Co. assembly lines got shut down, and the cars were finished but none of them got safety tested, so obviously you cannot sell the cars.”

The last priority will be determining whether any of the nation’s 952 protected species should be removed from the list or downgraded in severity from endangered to threatened. That probably means that the bald eagle and the peregrine falcon--recently proposed for downgrading and considered two of the great success stories of the Endangered Species Act--will remain listed for many months, perhaps even years.

The Yellowstone population of the grizzly bear has also been nominated for removal, and in California, farmers, cattle ranchers and developers recently petitioned the federal agency to take two types of fairy shrimp off the list.

Beattie’s decision upsets some members of Congress, including Rep. Richard Pombo (R-Tracy), who contend that the Clinton administration spends too much time listing species and not enough time ensuring that they are removed from the list to avoid continuing any economic hardships.

“My only regret is that we didn’t get the reauthorization of the Endangered Species Act done before the moratorium was lifted,” said Pombo, head of a House Resources subcommittee trying to rewrite the law. “All of the conflicts that existed over the past 20 years are going to still be there as they list all these species. . . . Now it’s back to the way things used to be.”

Beattie defended the decision to give delisting requests a low priority, saying that with so much of the country’s biological diversity in danger, “the demand of conservation must come first.”

Among the flood of creatures unleashed by the lifting of the ban are various types of butterflies, lizards, mussels, fish, porpoises, flowers, grasses, shrubs, cactuses, trees, beetles, grasshoppers and snakes.

“It has been quite a challenge,” Beattie said, “taking a program like this out of the freezer and trying to thaw it. It’s almost mind-numbing.”

During the wait, the species have remained unprotected by law, raising fears that some of their populations have dwindled.

The once-common California red-legged frog has vanished not just from Calaveras County, but from most of its old territory, and was supposed to have been declared endangered a year ago. It inhabits remnants of streams along the Central California coast and a few spots in Southern California, mostly in Ventura County.

The Fish and Wildlife Service will meet a May 20 deadline imposed by a federal court to make a decision on the frog, Beattie said.

Federal protection of the frog could delay or alter completion of a $450-million reservoir in Contra Costa County and construction of a California 1 bypass planned for the flood-ravaged Devils Slide section near the ocean south of San Francisco. Beattie, however, promised Thursday to work with the Wilson administration and local officials to ensure that conservation of the frog and all other California species “is achieved with a minimum of pain.”

Another debate has raged over the Barton Springs salamander, a Texas amphibian whose potential listing could lead to restrictions on house and highway building around Austin.

A smaller but contentious backlog also faces the National Marine Fisheries Service, which soon must decide whether to list six coastal fishes and mammals, said Nancy Foster, a deputy director of the agency. Included are West Coast coho salmon--at the center of timber and water disputes in Northern California, Oregon and Washington--and Atlantic salmon.

Although it is far from clear that all of the species will be declared endangered or threatened, 249 already had been proposed for listing by the two federal agencies, which means major improvements in their condition would have to be found for the biologists to change their minds.

Final decisions on species nominated or proposed for listing are supposed to be made within a year under federal law, but the wildlife service has been notorious for missing deadlines, and a court order is often needed to force action.

Critics of the agency--on both sides of the political spectrum--speculate that controversial listings such as the salamander in Texas could be held up until after the November election because the action could trigger a voter backlash against Clinton.

“Hopefully, petitions before them will be treated and reviewed on the basis of biology, not on the basis of politics. But I’m not sure that is going to happen,” said Neil Levine, a staff attorney with the Santa Barbara-based Environmental Defense Center, which sued the wildlife service to list the red-legged frog. “If anything, the executive branch is more in tune with Congress now, and it’s an election year.”

Many Republican Congress members say the 23-year-old Endangered Species Act has been overused to list species and has hamstrung uses of property, especially privately owned land. The reform debate, though, has stalled in Congress because of major differences between Republicans and Democrats.

“There’s been a lot of skepticism over some of the science that has been used on listings, and the way Fish and Wildlife has gone about that over the past 15 years,” Pombo said.

Many of the Southern California species in line are plants, such as the Laguna Beach liveforever and Braunton’s milk-vetch, which are less controversial since plants do not get the same protection on private land as animals.

Just because a species has already been proposed by the agency for listing does not ensure that it has a high priority in the new system the wildlife agency set up. Instead, those under the most risk of extinction--regardless of where they had been in the listing process or whether lawsuits have been filed--will be handled first, Beattie said.

Those facing emergency threats--the equivalent of intensive care patients--or those in critical condition among the 243 will top the lineup. Beattie’s next priority is handling any species that seem to be at high risk among the 57 nominated over the past 13 months by the public and 182 that had been deemed candidates.

That could shake up the expected order, and upset some environmentalists and businesses with interests at stake who have been anticipating decisions.