The New Endangered Species in Washington

The New Endangered Species in Washington

AS debate heats up on a new Endangered Species Act, revisions to the Clean Water Act, and dozens of other pieces of legislation affecting the environment, it appears as if the primary endangered species is objective information. Congressional opponents of regulation, trade associations, corporations, and radio talk-show hosts have, for the past year, mounted a campaign of exaggerated claims and outright misinformation about the impact of laws and regulations designed to protect our environment and our health.

Consider the 1973 Endangered Species Act. We’ve been deluged with dozens of headline-grabbing and heart-rending claims about the economic hardship brought on by the Endangered Species Act. Anecdote after anecdote presents the Act as the Devil incarnate. We’re told how landowners were prevented from developing their land, how wildfires destroyed homes because homeowners were not allowed to clear brush, how poor farmers were put out of business and builders shut down.

Finally, we’re beginning to hear the rest of the story—and there almost always is another side, a reasoned explanation of what role the Endangered Species Act really played in these episodes and how the vilified Act may not be the cause of the particular hardships claimed. In a speech this past summer, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Mollie Beattie said that out of nearly 97,000 consultations with other Federal agencies under the Endangered Species Act between 1987 and 1992, “only 54 projects or activities were ultimately withdrawn or terminated.” From 1988 through 1993, she said, there were only four cases in which injunctions were obtained to stop or delay an activity on non-federal lands to protect endangered species.

The problem goes far beyond anecdotes. Although they are used to justify the changes, the real force behind the unraveling of environmental protections comes from the enormous influence of corporations and their lobbyists. The anti-environment bills coming out of Congress are really

symptoms of more fundamental problems that need fixing—how we elect our lawmakers and what they base their decision-making on. We need to focus our efforts on the

process, not just the end-product.

Yes, I want to salvage the Endangered Species Act. I want to retain a Clean Water Act with teeth in it. I want to retain public ownership of our treasured National Parks and Forests. I want to safeguard the health and safety of workers. (I also believe, by the way, that reforms are needed to make our regulations more efficient.) But increasingly, I think the only way we can maintain strong environmental protection is to reform our electoral system. As long as our legislators are being put into office by special interests, we cannot expect them to watch out for the common good.

So that has become my number one priority. We simply must get our legislators—supposedly our public servants—out of the back pockets of corporations and industry associations. It is scandalous that corporate lobbyists have been writing the legislation that is supposed to regulate their own industries. Second, we must return to a system in which science and reasoned study—not anecdotes dug up by special interest groups—become the basis of legislation and regulations.

– Alex Wilson