Wreaking Havoc, Calling It Help

Today is one of the saddest days in California’s environmental history. The state Legislature is expected to vote to weaken the state’s Endangered Species Act and fatally undermine protections for the most vulnerable of our vanishing species.

Here is an illustration of the problem: There are 256 Chinook salmon swimming in a tank in a San Francisco aquarium, under a placard that reads “the last of this race will disappear in captivity unless we save their habitat.” Once there were 700,000 spring-run Chinook in the Sacramento Delta; this fall fewer than 2,000 may return to spawn. The Chinook are on the brink of extinction.

The state needs greater awareness and immediate action, across the board, to prevent such outcomes. A 1993 University of California study concluded that “nearly 1 in 3 vertebrate species and 1 in 10 native plants are in serious danger of extinction.” The study warned that a “wave of extinction” is coming.

Yet SB 879 by Sen. Patrick Johnston (D-Stockton) goes in precisely the opposite direction by lessening the mitigation responsibilities of, say, a timber company that trashes a stream bed needed by salmon. The mitigation need be only “roughly proportional” to the impact on the spawning fish, disregarding the cumulative impact. While current law requires private parties and local governments to contribute to, or at least not undermine, species recovery efforts, the Senate bill allows such projects to proceed unless the Department of Fish and Game can conclude that there is “no jeopardy” to the endangered species’ ability to “survive and reproduce.”

The problem is that while the dwindling spring-run Chinook may reproduce this fall, any adverse event will imperil their very existence. Federal law says there shall be no jeopardy to the likelihood of species recovery in the wild. In deviating from this federal standard, Johnston’s bill allows fish from hatcheries as mitigation for the loss of wild-running salmon. And while it is axiomatic that fish need water and birds need trees, the bill does not expressly require that industry mitigate for impacts to species’ habitat, as well as for direct impacts to species.

Proponents of this bill claim that “full mitigation” is required of oil, timber, water, mining and development companies, at least in “rough proportion” to the damage they do. But that’s not the case. The bill limits mitigation only to plans that will be “successful” and that maintain the companies’ “objectives” to the maximum extent possible. These provisions conflict with the bill’s purported “full mitigation” requirement.

The bill also grandfathers permits to “take” (that is, harm or kill) endangered species for more than 100 private firms, ranging from Arco to Kmart, whose right to development has been under a legal cloud.

The state has no funding aimed specifically at recovery for imperiled species. Johnston, recognizes this problem and promises to explore an earmarked source of funding in the future. But after developers and the administration get their concessions, what will be the leverage to create an insurance fund for endangered species?

A companion bill by Sen. Jim Costa (D-Fresno) goes even further in licensing unlimited “ordinary negligence” in the “take” of endangered species, as long as a farmer declares it was an “accident” or “incidental” to otherwise legal activity.

Meant to promote the worthy goal of preserving species habitat on farmland and ranchland, the Costa bill embodies a curious philosophy toward crime: Allow ordinary negligence toward the most vulnerable species as long as the perpetrator claims he didn’t mean it.

The environmental community has been bitterly divided over this legislation for four years. The division, which has limited the ability of environmentalists to counterattack industry’s proposals, is between those who are operating full-time within the small world of the capital, versus outside groups like the Natural Resources Defense Council, Pacific Coast Fisherman and grass-roots organizations that recognize the damage that will be done in the name of compromise.

The tragedy is that the politics of short-term pragmatism prevails at the expense of the species that inspire and sustain the human community. Normally, political mistakes can be corrected when the winds change. But extinction is forever, and salmon cannot wait.