Democrats Protest Freeze On Listing Endangered Species

Angry over what they consider a sneak attack on the Endangered Species Act, nearly all the Democratic senators tried drastic tactics this week to reverse a Republican maneuver that would suspend new wildlife protection for the next six months.

Thirty-nine of the 46 Democratic senators signed a protest letter and a handful refused to participate in work on other environmental laws Thursday in retaliation for a moratorium passed by the Senate a week ago, tacked at the end of a $1.7 million emergency defense spending bill. The protesting Democrats accused the Republican-controlled 104th Congress of hasty and illconsidered revisions to the nation’s most powerful land use law.

“We’re treating the Endangered Species Act the way we are child nutrition programs and aid to women and children,” said Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev. “We’re just rushing through these things and not doing a very good job.

“There’s general agreement that we need to make some changes” in the controversial law, Reid said, “but to bring up endangered species in a bill on defense spending, with no notice and no debate, is just bad legislation.”

The Endangered Species Act officially expired two years ago, but Congress has kept it alive by continuing to allocate the money to pay for it. That era apparently came to an end last week, though, with an unscheduled Senate vote that cut off the law’s financial faucet until September.

Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, maneuvered the moratorium through the Senate as an amendment to the emergency defense bill, which covers the tab for U.S. peacekeeping operations in Haiti and Somalia and was considered a must-pass.

The amendment forbids the federal government from spending money to add any new plants or animals to the list of protected wildlife or to identify land that is crucial to the survival of endangered plants and animals. Right now, 119 plants and animals are considered close enough to extinction to deserve protection by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Though Democrats protested the surprise amendment, the Senate approved it, 60-38.

In congressional testimony, Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt said the moratorium “creates rather than solves problems.”

“Species don’t stop declining when we stop listing them,” Babbitt said. “We would simply be putting off a problem that will grow by our inaction.”

The measure now goes into negotiations with the House of Representatives, which has already approved its own moratorium on new wildlife protections in a separate bill.

The 22-year-old Endangered Species Act contains powerful habitatprotection provisions that sometimes save wildlife while killing landowners’ plans for their property.

Its supporters cite its role in bringing back America’s symbol, the bald eagle, from the brink of extinction. Its opponents cite the infamous case of the spotted owl, which pitted conservationists against Pacific Northwest loggers in occasionally bloody conflict.