Many
organizations are celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Endangered
Species Act. One group of equity investors that will not be honoring the
occasion is Google, NRG Solar and BrightSource. This trio has spent
millions to keep a large solar thermal power plant from going dark
before ever lighting a single home -- and all because of a tortoise
listed as threatened under the species act. The plant is situated in
the Mojave Desert -- an ideal spot for generating solar power but also
prime habitat for the desert tortoise. To keep the installation from
being derailed, investors have allocated $56 million -- and have already
spent more than $130,000 per animal -- to care for and relocate the
species. The private sector is not the only one footing the bill
to keep this reptile burrowing beneath the Southwest. Among creatures
protected by the act, the tortoise is one of the top recipients of tax
dollars, which have been funneled through four states, seven military
installations and four national parks with little success in advancing
conservation goals. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service reports that the
tortoise received nearly $190 million in tax-dollar support from 1996 to
2009, yet species population increased negligibly. The power
plant itself received $1.6 billion in taxpayer-backed loan guarantees to
help create green jobs and energy. In short, tax dollars appear to have
been ineffective in protecting this species, and its latest The
Endangered Species Act is expensive and ineffective in its reactive
approach to conservation, which tends to penalize property owners once a
species is already in a tailspin. A system of positive incentives for
environmental stewardship, before formal listing under the act, could
enhance species conservation by motivating more effective and less
expensive habitat management.risk comes from a government-supported project. At the end of the day, we may have no tortoise, no green power, and no money...more
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