Disputes Should Be Solved Fairly, Locally

The Endangered Species Act needs to be amended. But the new Republican Congress will gut the act at its own peril, for Americans support reasonable environmental protection.

Here in the Northwest, battles over endangered species have given the act a bad name. Yet the spotted owl and wild salmon runs would not have come so dramatically to crisis if timber and hydropower managers had paid more heed to biologists’ concerns, and if resource-exploiting industry had not won decades of political dominance over forest and river operations. Politics is not the solution.

The best fix for the Endangered Species Act is to avoid the need for it. Federal and state governments must continue the recent move to ecosystem management. This prevents crises for all species, rather than panicking over one species at a time. Northwest foresters are learning that with new methods, industry can coexist with the ecosystems it depends upon. But development of win-win methods hinges on adequate funding for biological research.

When species do enter the danger zone, current law provokes noisy standoffs between litigation-minded interest groups. It’s political theater, fodder for group fund-raising letters: Industry versus the enviros, with a federal judge standing in between and the critters ground underfoot beneath a herd of lawyers.

The first priority in reforming the act is to make the lawyers the endangered species. Litigation doesn’t innovate, it paralyzes. Judges aren’t biologists. Instead of lawsuits, endangered species disputes ought to end in negotiations.

The second priority is to ensure that species disputes begin with negotiations, at the local level. A recent plan to protect Priest Lake grizzly bears was negotiated among area conservationists and forest users, including industry. All came away praising the ability of locals, who know an area best, to invent compromise. Solutions imposed by the feds ought to be a last resort.

Fair negotiation requires another reform: Development of species recovery plans must include full consideration of human economic and social impacts. The alternative is polarization, and black eyes all around.

Certainly it is essential to preserve species. All forms of life depend on an ecological balance that humans can jeopardize. But the remedy is not a return to wilderness, or a full restoration of every species. Some species may be beyond reasonable recovery efforts and the law must recognize that.

However, the law primarily must prevent extinctions, by encouraging biologists and local interests to negotiate better environmental stewardship. Let the lawyers go extinct, instead.

, DataTimes The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = John Webster/For the editorial board