Photo by Julie Larsen Maher from WCS
Another day. Another blatant attack on the Endangered Species Act.
On Friday, a coalition of Republican representatives introduced a package of nine bills, eight of which would collectively demolish key aspects of the Endangered Species Act.
These bills are reflective of the strongly anti-wildlife trend of the current Congress from which at least 75 legislative attacks on this crucial conservation law have been launched.
“The sponsors of these nine anti-wildlife bills claim that they are ‘modernizing’ the Endangered Species Act. This term is merely a smokescreen for gutting a law that is disliked by industries seeking boundless access to land at the expense of wildlife survival,” said Cathy Liss, president of Animal Welfare Institute (AWI) said in a statement. “They don’t want to ‘modernize’ the ESA in a way that will result in better outcomes for imperiled species. They want to weaken the law until it can no longer shield critical habitat from unfettered development.”
The Animal Welfare Institute is among many like-minded organizations strongly opposing the suggested changes.
Here is a summary of the bills:
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LIST Act (Rep. Biggs, R-AZ): Streamlines the existing process to de-list species in order to expedite removal of protections for imperiled species. The bill would also restrict citizens from submitting listing petitions if they had previously submitted inaccurate species data in a lawsuit.
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EMPOWERS Act (Rep. Pearce, R-NM): Shifts much of the authority for protecting imperiled species under the ESA from the federal government to the states, even though state and local communities are already consulted extensively by federal agencies tasked with enforcing the ESA.
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LOCAL Act (Rep. Tipton, R-CO): Prioritizes volunteer conservation efforts at the expense of ESA regulatory actions implemented by the federal government.
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PETITION Act (Rep. Westerman, R-AR): Allows the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to throw out listing petitions awaiting action when they determine there is a “backlog” of petitions.
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LAMP Act (Rep. Young, R-AK): Shifts some power for protecting imperiled species under the ESA from the federal government to states, tribes and local governments, each of which is already consulted on ESA implementation and has significantly fewer resources to protect species.
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PREDICTS Act (Rep. Norman, R-SC): Prohibits expert wildlife agencies from revoking a permit held by a private entity that allows for harm to protected species.
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WHOLE Act (Rep. Johnson, R-LA): Allows federal agencies to approve a project that may jeopardize threatened or endangered species or their critical habitat if other current or proposed protections exist to improve that species’ habitat elsewhere.
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STORAGE Act (Rep. Gosar, R-AZ): Prevents water infrastructure areas, such as reservoirs, from being included in a critical habitat designation for a listed species.
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Endangered Species Transparency and Reasonableness Act (Rep. McClintock, R-CA): Redefines “best available science” by mandating the inclusion of state, tribal and local data, regardless of its quality, in ESA listing decisions. The bill also restricts citizens’ access to courts by placing unreasonably low caps on attorney’s fees that can be recovered by a successful plaintiff in an ESA lawsuit. This would make it difficult to recruit skilled counsel.
