| Home
LAST WEEK'S STORIESHISTORY |
Methow Valley News April 18, 2001 Endangered Species Publisher's Comment ~ by Lee Hicks Practical solutions Like so much legislation—federal, state or local—the intent of the Endangered Species Act is much more noble than the inequities and imprecision of its implementation. One of the act’s greatest successes is the recovery of the American bald eagle. In the early to mid 1960s there were barely 400 nesting pairs of the country’s national symbol in all the lower 48 states. And the population curve was heading south. Today there are more than 5,000 nesting pairs in the lower United States. Unfortunately when it comes to saving salmon, the ESA does not provide so straightforward a path as with the eagle. Eagles have not been bred in hatcheries, or subject to continuing sport and commercial harvests. Their habitat and habits are less complicated. With salmon, scientists are continuing to study and debate complex problems and causes, while casting for solutions. A good example is the use of "do no harm" short-term strategies such as the widespread designation of critical habitat for salmon species throughout the Columbia basin and other areas of the West Coast. This approach may fail to help fish by its lack of precise solutions and do little to gain public support for recovery efforts. The Bush administration has now opened the door to reconsidering the way species are listed. Environmentalists are crying foul, and the national debate over the ESA may be rekindled once again. In a recent radio interview, William Ruckelshaus, chairman of the governor’s Salmon Recovery Funding Board and twice director of the federal Environmental Protection Agency, pointed to some of the difficulties in translating the ESA to complex problems. As Ruckelshaus put it: "In the case of trying to tell people how to manage their land, which is a lot of what is involved in habitat recovery, we have found it doesn’t work, that the more you try to tell them what to do the more they resist...you’ve got to get people feeling that they have an interest themselves." Elsewhere during the interview, Ruckelshaus opined that the burden on landowners must be distributed more equably. Ruckelshaus was also a signatory to the "consensus" report of a May, 1966 conference sponsored by the Institute for Environmental and Natural Resources of the University of Wyoming which brought together environmental and business leaders to consider the ESA as it was up for re-authorization by Congress. Joining Ruckelshaus in signing the report were Erivan and Helga Haub, whose family trust owns more than 3,000 acres in the Methow Valley and Sun Mountain Lodge, the Valley’s largest employer. The conference summary report concluded: Involvement of all stockholders, provision for goal-based flexibility and certainty for landowners, and alignment of environmental goals with economic incentives could form the basis of innovative approaches to achieving the ESA’s management objectives. Reduction of multiple agency oversight, recognition of the different scales of property ownership, and voluntary management to prevent the need to list species would also help diminish conflicts with landowners. All decisions should be grounded in sound science that is communicated as clearly as possible. We must all look at new, creative, bold ways to build bridges with the nation’s property owners and provide incentives to them for protection of our natural resources. Well said. But the implementation of the ESA still begs for such new and innovative approaches. Opinion | Sports |
Local Interest |