House Republicans seek to revamp Endangered Species Act.
Rolling back the regulatory restraints and costs imposed on industry and agriculture by the Endangered Species Act (ESA) has been among conservative objectives since the 1990s.
With the ESA in 2023 marking the 50th year since it was adopted under President Richard Nixon and a GOP-led Congress, a House Republican working group is developing proposed revisions to the landmark environmental regulation that it plans to introduce late this year or in 2024.
The House Natural Resources Committee’s assorted sub-panels have been staging hearings since March on the problems fostered by the ESA, so it was no surprise when its Water, Wildlife and Fisheries Subcommittee scheduled a July 18 hearing entitled, “ESA at 50: The Destructive Cost of the ESA.”
Nor was it any surprise that everyone knew what everyone else would say at the hearing, which would stretch two hours and include testimony from six witnesses, essentially four ESA reform advocates and two Biden administration officials—National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Deputy Administrator Janet Coit and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Martha Williams.
But you really only need listen to subcommittee chair Rep. Cliff Bentz (R-Ore.) and ranking member, or the panel’s lead Democrat, Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.), to hear the essentials of the argument for and against overhauling a complex, massive law that even proponents say does more to help law firms than it does endangered species and the habitats they rely on.
A bald eagle is seen prior to the start of the game between the St. Louis Cardinals and Chicago Cubs on May 30, at Wrigley Field in Chicago, Ill. (Jim McIsaac/Getty Images)
Oft-Repeated Arguments
“The purpose of today’s hearing is to review and acknowledge the destructive costs of the Endangered Species Act,” said Mr. Bentz, with witnesses who can “testify to the costs the ESA imposes upon communities, states, ratepayers, businesses of all sizes, other species in every protected environment, our children, and the infirm, among many others.”
The ESA “was a well-intentioned law,” he added, but after a half-century in effect, the law has cost “untold billions of expenditures, paid many times by small communities and families and the nation” with a “questionable” return on investment.
“It’s definitely time to come up with a better plan,” but that’s not what proponents—mostly Democrats—will say, Mr. Bentz said.
“I’m absolutely certain we will hear from some folks across the aisle in an effort to hide or justify the horrific costs of this law that today’s hearing is simply another effort to get rid of the ESA,” he said.
“It is not, but it most certainly is an attempt to understand the ESA’s costs.”
It seems Mr. Huffman already knew what Mr. Bentz would say about what he would say, and knew what fellow Republicans on the panel would say about the ESA.
“We can expect to hear the usual anti-ESA tropes in this hearing, like how threatened and endangered species, not climate change, are responsible for wildfires and drought in the West,” he said. “We’ll also hear how the ESA is ‘Hotel California,’ where species check in but never leave, never get off the list.”
That’s because the ESA and federal agencies that manage the law are underfunded, Mr. Huffman said, and species are often listed when they already face “an uphill battle for recovery.”
“We’ll also hear tales today—tall tales—about how the ESA stops vital projects from moving forward,” he said. “We’ve got to look at the facts, folks, not the rhetoric. The reality is, according to a scientific review of over 88,000 ESA consultations over seven years, zero projects were stopped, and zero projects were extensively altered as a result of adverse modification findings” from the ESA.
Mr. Huffman mocked the idea that the House GOP working group that is attempting to “modernize” the ESA has only one intention: to gut it.
“Talking about euphemisms. Look at how they vote.,” he said, noting the attempt last week by House Republicans to adopt a defense bill amendment to exempt the DOD from the ESA and nearly all other environmental regulations. “That’s what they want to do. And today, ‘Team Extreme’ is at it again.”
Mr. Huffman said the ESA is vital as the country, the nation, faces “a biodiversity crisis.”
Gray wolves have recently been relisted as an endangered species in the Northern Rocky Mountain region. (National Convseration Training Center)
“Too many species are on the brink of extinction. We don’t have time for the Republican majority to hold hearings that scapegoat imperiled species and pretend like climate change doesn’t exist. These species are going extinct. Three of them go extinct every hour.”
Checking the clock, he added, “We have 10 minutes until another species is driven to extinction.”
Since its adoption, he said, the ESA has “kept 99 percent of listed species from going extinct. It is our strongest backstop against extinction for myriad species. And the simple truth is that extreme MAGA Republicans want to dismantle it. The only hearings they’ve held in this Congress have been about weakening and eliminating ESA protections, including de-listings before a science-based decision can even be made.”
Cost-Benefit Analysis Needed
Now that everyone heard what everyone knew everyone was going to say, Mr. Bentz said the hearing is not about the prospective ESA amendments but about bringing “the cost of this law to the attention of the nation.”
“Some here today will, no doubt, ask and possibly even suggest, given its incredible cost, why hasn’t Congress repealed this law? The answer is that we all want species to be safe. We want to avoid causing species to go extinct,” he said.
“Soon we will introduce amendments to the act that will improve this protection of species without destroying people and communities, without costing more money than we can possibly find to address these issues.”
Mr. Bentz said proponents have always made the argument either this, or either that, but it is “absolutely possible to question the cost of the ESA without questioning the need to protect species, even though some here will say otherwise. Cost does matter. Money isn’t free, and understanding what we get from what we spend is always relevant, and there are certainly costs other than just money.”
The costs include those incurred by agencies in implementing the ESA, he said, “by many species [that] have water taken from them and given to other species. The cost to the nation of extraordinary amounts of delay and astounding amounts of money spent on the ESA , the cost of community destruction, and the loss of activities such as logging and forest management, which are stopped by the ESA.
“The cost of the young and old as they breathe air heavy with smoke from wildfires as they ravage our fuel-burdened forests kept that way because of lawsuits and bureaucracy creating a virtual
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