DENVER, CO — In an eleventh-hour attempt to rollback protections for endangered species just before leaving office, Bush administration officials in the Interior Department announced late Monday plans to drastically rewrite the regulations for a major section of the Endangered Species Act.
The proposed changes, unvieled during a barely-announced press conference that was initiated in response to information leaked to the Associated Press, would significantly reduce the amount of consultation the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service performs with federal agencies to determine which actions will have significant impacts on endangered species.
In many cases, the rule changes would entirely eliminate the consultation process, one of the main tools in the Endangered Species Act for keeping endangered wildlife and plants from further harm.
“This is an attempt to gut one of our nation’s legacy environmental laws, nothing less,” said Josh Pollock, Conservation Director at Center for Native Ecosystems. “It is a gutless attempt at that, as it was written behind closed doors, with no input from the very experts, the Fish and Wildlife Service’s own scientists, who are best qualified to determine what does and does not equal a serious impact to an endangered species.”
Under current law, federal agencies and others are required to consult with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service about actions that might affect an endangered species. This consultation process, mandated by what is known as “Section 7″ of the Act, can happen either “formally” or “informally,” depending on the likely magnitude of impact. Often, consultation results in modifications to federal projects that protect endangered species and their habitat from irreparable harm. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service conducts tens of thousands of such consultations each year, and more than 300,000 consultations were completed between 1998 and 2002. A federal government handbook from 1998 described the consultations as “some of the most valuable and powerful tools to conserve listed species.”
“Consultation is often where the rubber meets the road in protecting endangered species,” said Pollock. “This rule change tries to yank the teeth right out of the law.”
Under the proposed changes, almost all informal consultation would be eliminated, formal consultations would be reduced to only those situations where the federal agency proposing the action decides the impacts could be significant, and expert judgment about impacts to threatened and endangered species is effectively taken away from biologists in the Fish and Wildlife Service and put instead in the hands of engineers and administrators.
“The Bush administration has always dismissed or ignored the role of science in making decisions about the environment, and this is no exception,” said Pollock. “It is outrageously insulting to take an agency full of biologists and ecology experts and shut them out of the very evaluation process they are best trained to lead.”
Among the changes proposed are:
- Eliminating informal consultations.The administration wants to give agencies proposing federal projects the power to decide unilaterally whether those projects will have adverse effects on an endangered species. This effectively eliminates the first tool the Service uses in deciding which projects to review. Agencies could still voluntarily request informal consultation.
- Reducing formal consultations. Under the proposed rule changes, if a federal agency unilaterally decides its proposed project will have no adverse impacts on an endangered species, the Fish and Wildlife Service could not conduct an in-depth review (usually in the form of a “Biological Opinion”) to determine whether the project will jeopardize the species and to recommend modifications to reduce harm. Additionally, if a federal agency determines its own action will only result in “marginal” impact to an endangered species, then consultation is again eliminated. Often incremental loss of habitat from an accumulation of “marginal” impacts is the leading cause of extinction for threatened and endangered species.
- Imposing an unrealistic deadline on the consultation process. The rule changes include a 60 day deadline for the Fish and Wildlife Service to respond to consultation requests. If this deadline is not met, a project can move forward regardless of its impacts on an endangered species. This could effectively work as a “backdoor” for even the most harmful projects to advance without any review or oversight under the Endangered Species Act.
“Imposing a 60 day deadline is an especially cynical move,” said Pollock. “First, the administration starves the agency for funding, so they are perpetually behind on their consultation requirements. Then it tries to punish them for not being able to do their job fast enough. Worse, it’s the endangered wildlife which ends up actually getting punished.”
The Interior Department plans to take public comments on the proposed changes for 30 days from their publication in the Federal Register, an extremely short comment period by typical Interior Department standards. This timeline would allow the administration to put its new rules into effect just before the November elections.
The Bush administration has enacted several policy changes in recent years aimed at reducing the effectiveness, applicability, and reach of the Endangered Species Act. These changes include a reinterpretation of the language of the law to reduce the amount of a species’ range the Fish and Wildlife Service needs to protect. This changed interpretation was used to justify a decision to split the habitat of the Preble’s meadow jumping mouse along an arbitrary political boundary, the Colorado-Wyoming border, and eliminate protections for the Wyoming portion of the threatened species’ range.
Within the Interior Department more broadly, the administration has also pursued a number of other last-minute policy changes designed to gut key environmental protections. These changes include attempts to dismantle the regulations for implementing the National Environmental Policy Act, often called the nation’s “look before you leap” law, and proposed changes to the Bureau of Land Management’s rules that would eliminate protections for sensitive and at-risk wildlife, including those species awaiting Endangered Species Act protection.
“Our lawmakers in Congress who represent the public interest need to step in to keep this administration from ramming through its agenda to cut the heart out of our country’s 35 year legacy of environmental and wildlife stewardship,” said Pollock.
A leaked draft of the proposed changes can be found on Center for Native Ecosystems’ website.
