The Government Relies on Flawed Data to Determine Endangered Species

Americans who live in or near a community built around a lake should be careful about stepping outside to mow the lawn if the temperature isn’t just right and the grass isn’t a certain height. They should keep pets indoors. They should forget about using weed killer. And they should be prepared to pony up a steep homeowners association fee. That’s because there may be snakes in the area protected by the Endangered Species Act of 1973, which imposes stiff penalties and fines for violating its rules and restrictions. Rob Gordon, a senior research fellow with The Heritage Foundation, discovered the situation while researching the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s 1999 decision to list the Lake Erie water snake as a “threatened” species. The Fish and Wildlife Service estimated the population of that particular water snake to be somewhere between 1,530 and 2,030 at the time. But just a few years later, the agency revised it to 5,690. The government either made a “substantial underestimation” with the initial listing or the water snake had “a truly miraculous population growth rate” in a short time, Gordon observes in a recently published research paper that finds the listing process under the Endangered Species Act to be riddled with “erroneous data.” Gordon concludes that “essentially half of the species” identified by Fish and Wildlife Service officials as “recovered” never should have been listed in the first place. The regulatory fallout for developers, homeowners, and business owners who run up against the endangered species law is the same regardless of whether federal officials used sound science or flawed methodology, Gordon told The Daily Signal in an interview. “Once a species is listed, it is regulated and the way it’s regulated doesn’t vary dependent upon the quality of the data the agency used,” Gordon said. “If one listing is legitimate and another listing is illegitimate based on erroneous data, the practical consequences are the same to the property owner or the business owner. He or she still faces the same restrictions whether or not these restrictions are legitimately based on science.”

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The Heritage report can be downloaded here and is embedded below