My column this month
covers reform of the ESA; the EPA and privacy; and Michelle O, the military and
school lunch.
Is the Endangered Species Act (ESA) ripe for some reasonable
reform?
The ESA was passed four decades ago and hasn’t been renewed
by Congress since 1988. Under its
authority over 1,500 species and subspecies have been listed. Unfortunately there has only been a two
percent recovery rate, which doesn’t say much for the effectiveness of the Act.
Furthermore, any objective observer will admit the ESA has
become a litigation-driven monstrosity. The Department of Justice reports that more
than 500 ESA-related lawsuits were filed or opened against federal agencies
since 2009, and more than $21 million has been awarded in taxpayer funded
attorneys’ fees to environmental lawyers through the Judgment Fund and the
Equal Access to Justice Act. For federal
fiscal years 2009-2012, concerning cases in Region 2 of the Fish & Wildlife
Service (which includes New Mexico), environmental groups received $2.5 million
in attorneys’ fees. The championship for
raiding the federal treasury during this time period, however, goes to Region 8
(Nevada & California) where environmental groups
received $7.2 million.
Which environmental groups are filing all these lawsuits? You can probably guess, but here is a list of
the top five and the number of cases filed during the time period under
consideration:
1) Center for Biological Diversity – 117
2) WildEarth Guardians – 55
3) Sierra Club – 30
4) Defenders of Wildlife – 29
5) Western Watersheds Project – 21
Adding urgency to all this is the so-called 2011 “mega-settlement”
negotiated behind closed doors by the Department of Interior and the Center for
Biological Diversity/WildEarth Guardians, which may result in an additional 799
species being listed as threatened or endangered. In the year following the settlement the U.S.
Fish & Wildlife Service listed 107 more species. Most recently has been the listing of the meadow
jumping mouse which is wreaking havoc on livestock grazing across Forest
Service lands in New Mexico, Arizona
and Colorado.
Then there is the transparency issue. The ESA requires listings to be based on the
“best available scientific and commercial data” but in many instances the
public is denied access to this data.
Doc Hastings, Chairman of the House Committee on Natural Resources, has
stated, “It is troubling that hundreds of sweeping listing decisions by the
Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service cite
unpublished studies, professional opinions, and other sources that are
inaccessible to the public yet this data would be used to regulate the very
people who don’t have access to this information. This secrecy goes
against the grain of good science and transparency.”
Not only is
the ESA ripe for reform, its actually rotting on the vine, and in response the
U.S. House of Representatives has just passed H.R. 4315, the Endangered
Species Transparency and Reasonableness Act.
This is no huge reform of the ESA, but is an attempt
to make the Act’s implementation more reasonable for humans and more effective
for wildlife and plants. According to a
release by the House Natural Resources Committee, H.R. 4315 would specifically:
° Require data used by federal agencies for ESA listing
decisions to be made publicly available and accessible through the Internet,
while respecting state data privacy laws and private property.
° Require the federal government to disclose to affected
states data used prior to an ESA listing decision and it would require
the “best available scientific and commercial data” used by the federal
government to incorporate data provided by states, tribes, and local county
governments.
° Require the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to track,
report to Congress, and make available online the federal taxpayer funds used
to respond to ESA lawsuits, the number of employees dedicated to ESA
litigation, and attorneys’ fees awarded in the course of ESA litigation and
settlement agreements.
° Prioritize species protection and protect taxpayer dollars
by placing reasonable caps on attorneys’ fees to make the ESA consistent with
existing federal law. For example, the federal government limits the prevailing
attorneys’ fees to $125 per hour in most circumstances, including federal suits
involving veterans, Social Security, and disability. But under the ESA,
attorneys are being awarded huge sums, in many cases, at a rate as much as $600
per hour.
When an environmental lawyer is awarded four times as much
for defending jumping mice and long-eared bats as other attorneys are awarded
for defending our veterans and the handicapped, I’d say its way past time for
“reform”. The House of Representatives
agreed and passed these simple reforms on July 29th.
Some apparently didn’t agree, as New Mexico rep’s Ben Ray
Lujan and Michelle Lujan Grisham voted against the bill.
EPA
The EPA stands for an Ever Present Attack on liberty.
Recall how hard it is to get the data on endangered species.
Well that’s certainly not the case if you are an environmental group and
request data on farmers and ranchers.
Many folks were surprised last year when the Environmental Protection
Agency, in response to a Freedom of Information Act request, publicly released to
three environmental groups a huge database of personal information about
thousands of livestock producers and their families in 29 states. What kind of information was released? The database included the names of the
producers and other family members, home addresses, GPS coordinates, telephone
numbers and emails. How would you like HSUS, PETA, ADF or some other
agriterrorist group to have that kind of info on your property and family?
Thankfully, the American Farm Bureau Federation and others
have filed suit to stop the EPA from future releases of this type. We’ll keep a
close watch on that.
Michelle, the
military, and war
Politico reports
that Mission: Readiness, a group of nearly 500 former military leaders, is
planning to “storm the Hill”and “bring out the big guns for the
kids” when Congress comes back
to town in an attempt to save Michelle Obama’s increasingly
unpopular changes to the National School Lunch Program. The military brass says
the obesity epidemic is seen as a “threat to national security.”
Now we have a War on
Obesity? Attention Mr. Generals: Do not deploy. This will go
the same way as the War on Poverty and the War on Drugs. Besides,
one educational group points out that based on a 180 day school year, a school
lunch only amounts to 15 percent of a child’s meals. Better to aim your “big guns” at adequately
funding P.E. programs and forget about this silly, sissified, anti-meat
program. Besides, do we really want a
bunch of tofu toughies running the military?
Till next time, be a nuisance to the devil and don’t forget
to check that cinch.
Frank DuBois was the
NM Secretary of Agriculture from 1988 to 2003, is the author of a blog: The
Westerner (www.thewesterner.blogspot.com) and is the founder of The DuBois Rodeo Scholarship
(http://www.nmsu.edu/~duboisrodeo/).
This column first appeared in the September editions of New Mexico Stockman and Livestock Market Digest.
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