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Action Alert

Endangered Species Act  Reform

H.R. 3824

Threatened and Endangered Species Recovery Act of 2005 (TESRA)

H.R. 3824, To amend and reauthorize the Endangered Species Act of 1973 to provide greater results conserving and recovering listed species, and for other purposes. 

Current Status:

H.R. 3824 (TESRA) approved by House.  The measure now goes to the Senate for consideration. In order for a bill to reach the floor in the Senate, it must first get through the Fish, Wildlife and Water Subcommittee. The chairman of the Senate subcommittee who oversees the issue - Rhode Island Republican Lincoln Chafee - is a moderate with a markedly green record and a tough re-election race coming up.

• Overhaul of Endangered Species Act taking shape

• Interior secretary backs Endangered Species Act revamp

• Senators push species act reform

• Senate bill would create landowner incentives to preserve species

Action Alerts:

• Tell Senator Chafee to get ESA Reform moving in the Senate

Step #3 Approved by House -
H.R. 3824 Approved by House - September 29, 2005

• House Passes Historic Endangered Species Act Improvement Bill

• House Modernizes the Endangered Species Act

• Endangered Species Act updated

• Environment - Species rule changes advance

• Revisions to Endangered Species Act pass in House

• House passes bill to overhaul endangered species protection

• Endangered Species Act Rewrite Passed By House

• House passes Endangered Species Act rewrite

Step #2 Approved by House subcommittee -
H.R. 3824 Approved by House Resources Subcommittee - September 22, 2005

• House panel OKs bill to overhaul endangered-species protections

• House committee approves major rewrite of Endangered Species Act

• ESA bill heads for vote in House

Step #1 Bill Introduced: 
H.R. 3824 - Press Conference - September 19, 2005

Congressman Pombo (speaking), Congressman Cardoza, Congressman Walden, Congressman Radonavich and CA State Assemblyman LaMalfa at the Press Conference in Sacramento, CA.

        

For Immediate Release
September 19, 2005
Contact: Brian Kennedy at (202) 226-9019

Bipartisan Coalition Introduce Bill to Improve the Endangered Species Act of 1973

Washington, DC - At a California news conference today Resources Committee Chairman Richard W. Pombo (R-CA), Reps. Dennis Cardoza (D-CA), Greg Walden (R-OR) and George Radanovich (R-CA) announced the introduction of the bipartisan Threatened and Endangered Species Recovery Act of 2005 (TESRA).

TESRA fixes the long-outstanding problems of the Endangered Species Act (ESA) by (1) focusing on species recovery (2) providing incentives (3) increasing openness and accountability (4) strengthening scientific standards (5) creating bigger roles for state and local governments (6) protecting private property owners and (7) eliminating dysfunctional critical habitat designations.

For more information: http://resourcescommittee.house.gov/
The bill text (TESRA):	Click here
Background and need:	Click here
Section by section:	Click here

"After three decades of implementation, the ESA has only recovered 10 of the roughly 1,300 species on its list," said Chairman Pombo. "What it has done instead is create conflict, bureaucracy and rampant litigation. It's time to do better. Without meaningful improvements, the ESA will remain a failed managed care program that checks species in but never checks them out. This bill will remove the impediments to cooperation that have prevented us from achieving real results for species recovery in the last 30 years."

"I am pleased to join my colleagues, Chairman Richard Pombo and Congressman Greg Walden to announce the introduction of the 'Threatened and Endangered Species Recovery Act'," said Rep. Cardoza. "Over the past 30 years since its introduction, the Endangered Species Act has gone far off course from its original intent. Today, lawsuits and court mandates dictate species recovery, not science. This new bill puts more resources towards recovering species while at the same time creating transparency for those landowners whose land may be needed for species conservation."

Cardoza continued, "I believe this bill is an innovative approach to solving the problems with the Act that I have been working on for the last two and a half years and I look forward to moving this bill quickly though Congress"

Rep. Greg Walden (R-OR):

"This 32-year old law needs the fix we're offering in a bi-partisan way today. It's time to make the federal agencies charged with administering this law open up their process to the public. It's time to set standards to make sure the data they use represent the best scientific data available. It's time to reach out to private property owners and states to protect their rights and encourage their participation in recovery efforts. And it's time to make sure no region of the country ever suffers again as the Klamath Basin did when faulty decisions by the government led to disaster."

Rep. Joe Baca (D-CA):

"This legislation is important for Inland Empire communities. By removing burdensome regulations and disincentives for landowners and providing compensation for land that cannot be used for development, this legislation will allow our communities to benefit and to create jobs."

Rep. George Radanovich (R-CA):

"I commend Chairman Pombo for all of his hard work in developing this crucial bipartisan legislation to improve the Endangered Species Act (ESA). I am proud to be a cosponsor of the bill, which will bring commonsense to the implementation of the ESA in my congressional district, our state, and the nation."

"We have learned a lot since passage of the ESA in 1973. As a result of the lessons we've learned, Chairman Pombo's bill includes language to better protect and recover species in need. It also encourages landowners to safeguard species on their property. Instead of being punished, as they often are under the current ESA, property owners will be respected and provided incentives to protect species under this bill."

Original Cosponsor of H.R. 3824

Republicans	Democrats
Mr. Pombo	Mr. Cardoza
Mr. Walden	Mr. Berry
Mr. Radanovich	Mr. Ross
Mrs. Cubin	Mr. Baca
Mr. Gibbons	Mr. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi
Miss McMorris	Mr. Costa
Mr. Henry Brown of South Carolina
Mr. Graves

In the Senate: To get to the floor for a vote in the Senate, it must first get out of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works - Fish, Wildlife and Water Subcommittee. This subcommittee is chaired by Senator Lincoln Chafee (R-RI).  Senator Chafee is more often an advocate for stronger ESA, and has not pushed for reform.  Please take a moment to let him know you support HR 3824:

How to contact Senator Chafee:

Washington DC Address:	The Honorable Lincoln D. Chafee United States Senate 141A Russell Senate Office Building Washington, D.C. 20510-3903
Washington DC Phone:	202-224-2921
Washington DC Fax:	202-228-2853
Email Address:	http://chafee.senate.gov/webform.htm
WWW Homepage:	http://chafee.senate.gov/

Endangered Species Act Reform - Articles

• ORBA Press Release - ESA Reform - HR 3824

• RECREATIONISTS SUPPORT BIPARTISAN ESA REFORM

• Endangered Species Act needs an update

• How to Fix the Endangered Species Act

• ORBA President testifies to congress on Endangered Species Act - Off Road Business Association

• Make the ESA workable for people, animals - Jay Lehr, Ph.D.

• Editorial: "ESA has a zero percent rate of success" - Rep. Richard Pombo

• Rep. Cardoza's Critical Habitat Enhancement Measure Receives Strong Support

• The Endangered Species Act: Thirty years of Endangering People and Animals is Enough - Peyton Knight

• Who Pays for the Dehli Sand Fly?

The Endangered Species Act has:

• failed to conserve endangered and threatened animals and plants;
  
• discouraged, hindered, and prohibited effective conservation and habitat stewardship;
  
• created perverse incentives, thus promoting the destruction of privately owned endangered species habitat; and
  
• wasted scarce conservation resources.

The Endangered Species Act has failed in large part because it has engendered a regulatory regime that has:

• violated the rights of individuals, particularly property rights;
  
• destroyed jobs, devalued property, and depressed human enterprise on private and public lands;
  
• hidden the full cost of conserving endangered species by foisting those costs on private individuals; and
  
• imposed significant burdens on State, county, and local governments

We therefore support replacing current law with an Endangered Species Act based upon these principles:

• Animals and plants should be responsibly conserved for the benefit and enjoyment of mankind.
  
• The primary responsibility for conservation of animals and plants shall be reserved to the States.
  
• Federal conservation efforts shall rely entirely on voluntary, incentive-based programs to enlist the cooperation of America's landowners and invigorate their conservation ethic.
  
• Federal conservation efforts shall encourage conservation through commerce, including the private propagation of animals and plants.
  
• Specific safeguards shall ensure that this Act cannot be used to prevent the wise use of the vast federal estate.
  
• Federal conservation decisions shall incur the lowest cost possible to citizens and taxpayers.
  
• Federal conservation efforts shall be based on sound science and give priority to more taxonomically unique and genetically complex and more economically and ecologically valuable animals and plants.
  
• Federal conservation prohibitions should be limited to forbidding actions intended to kill or physically injure a listed vertebrate species with exception of uses that create incentives and funding for an animal's conservation.

Endangered Species Facts:

• That no endangered species can be legitimately claimed as having recovered because of the Act?

Although a few species are claimed as recoveries, in each case it is more accurate to attribute removal from the endangered species list to 'data error'-meaning it should not have been listed in the first place or its improvement is attributable to a factor other than the Endangered Species Act. For example, some species were improving before being listed while some owe their recovery in large part to the non-ESA-related ban of DDT.

• That 68.4% of animals that are candidates for addition to the Endangered Species Act are insects, snails, spiders and other invertebrates? (Based upon the USFWS Animal Notice of Review-candidate list-8/11/94.)
  
  
• That the ESA discourages private property owners from providing habitat for endangered species:

According to Michael Bean of the Environmental Defense Fund: "there is increasing evidence that at least some landowners are actively managing their land so as to avoid potential endangered species problems." "Now it's important to recognize that all of these actions that landowners are either taking or threatening to take are not the result of malice toward the red-cockaded woodpecker, not the result of malice toward the environment Rather, they're fairly rational decisions motivated by a desire to avoid potentially significant economic constraints. In short, they're really nothing more than a predictable response to the familiar perverse incentives that sometimes accompany regulatory programs."

According to Larry McKinney of Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission: "While I have no hard evidence to prove it, I am convinced that more habitat for the black-capped vireo, and especially the golden-cheeked warbler, has been lost in those areas of Texas since the listing of these birds than would have been lost without the ESA at all."

• That numerous species have been added to the Endangered Species List by accident including the: Mexican duck, Pine Barrens tree frog, McKittrick pennyroyal, Palau dove, Palau owl, Palau flycatcher, Rydberg milk-vetch, Tumamoc globeberry and Maguire daisy? (Based upon the USFWS Threatened and Endangered Species List (8/94), GAO Report on Endangered Species (1988) and Federal Register delisting notices.)
  
• That plans to recover endangered species include statements like:

Iowa Pleistocene Snail: "With a return to glacial conditions it will be resuscitated over a major part of the upper Midwest, provided its relictual areas are preserved and maintained"

 

Florida Scrub Jay: "Because of the extreme usefulness of the Act in this case, it is not desirable to remove the scrub jay from protection under the "Endangered Species Act" "There is no anticipated date of recovery because it may never be feasible to delist this species."

 

Blunt-nosed Leopard Lizard: "A current target acreage figure of 80,000 acres has been established for the San Joaquin Valley floor, with additional emphasis on optional habitats containing high density blunt-nosed leopard lizard populations in identified 'priority' habitat areas conflicting land users will be reduced or eliminated in an effort to restore habitat to optimal condition."

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