OPINION/COMMENTARY

Endangered Species Act is 30; hold toasts

For 13 years, a lot of people in California's Central Valley were put through a lot of costly hassles because federal officials decided to protect an "endangered" flower that, it now turns out, isn't anywhere near extinction — and never was. This saga of bureaucratic bungling carries a blunt moral: federal endangered species law desperately needs reforming.

Lovers of flora naturally admire the simple nobility of the Hoover's woolly-star, an annual herb with gray fuzzy stems and tiny, white-to-pale-blue flowers. But sound science never dictated that this plant, which grows like a weed up and down the Central Valley, should have been classified as "threatened." That was the designation given by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) in 1990. Recently, the bureaucrats backtracked, removing the special protections and admitting they were never needed.

So how did the non-threatened woolly star make the "threatened" list back in 1990? The answer goes to the heart of the defects in the 30-year-old federal Endangered Species Act. Billed as a shield for vulnerable animals and plants, the ESA is too easily used as a sword by anti-growth forces.

Cynicism and junk science

Clumsily written, it invites the cynical use of "junk science" to justify labeling hale-and-hearty plants and creatures as "endangered" in order to sideline housing construction and other land-use projects.

For instance, the ESA doesn't require up-to-date research before an official prognosis of a species' status. Old studies — or studies from a different geographical area — are deemed good enough for this kind of government work. Also, officials don't have to take account of economic impact, so species safeguards aren't tailored to minimize the hit on jobs.

Flawed survey

In the case of the Hoover's woolly-star, regulators decided that it was threatened based on surveys that looked at only limited regions and that had been conducted during a Central Valley drought. You might wonder how trained federal botanists could have missed the elementary biological principle that vegetation will drastically fluctuate depending on annual rainfall, but that's what happened.

In rushing to declare the herb imperiled, federal biologists also failed to consider that it's not on the menu of sheep, cows, or other herbivores; that it can be found in varied landscapes and locations from the Mojave Desert to coastal mountains; and that, all in all, it is remarkably resilient, capable of withstanding heavy foot and hoof traffic. Populations have been identified in Kings, Los Angeles, and San Benito Counties. In the Central Valley, it spreads like a weed after rains.

All this the FWS now, belatedly, acknowledges — after a decade of monitoring and micromanaging lands and landowners. This new realism is cold comfort for those who chafed under the regulations for so long. More than 286,000 acres of private and public lands were impacted. Grazing, oil, and gas development, and other economically beneficial uses of public lands were curtailed, and expensive, taxpayer-funded monitoring programs were imposed. Private landowners had to tiptoe around the protected herb or risk high fines or even jail time.

Many will second the FWS official who recently called the ESA a "broken law." The 30th birthday of this woolley-headed statute would be a time for celebrating — if Congress recalls it for a major overhaul.