House Republicans deride ESA -- and top Dem derides GOP

E&E News
By Emily Yehle
September 10, 2014

At a hearing yesterday on the Endangered Species Act, Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) apologized for "wasting everyone's time."

DeFazio, the top Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee, was lamenting the hearing's focus on six bills to reform ESA "that are going nowhere." The bills -- which seek to curb federal reach -- are part of a Republican effort to change the 40-year-old law through "piecemeal" legislation.

The first four bills of the broader reform effort passed the House as a package (H.R. 4315) in July, largely on a party-line vote (E&E Daily , July 30). But yesterday's hearing underscored the long odds of any of the bills gaining the support of Democrats or the Senate they control.

"I just spent five weeks in reality, and now we're back in the Beltway," DeFazio said, as he urged the panel to instead tackle how to handle the increasing costs of fighting wildfires. "It's time to deal with real things."

Natural Resources Chairman Doc Hastings (R-Wash.) characterized the second package of bills as a continuation of a GOP bid to increase transparency and fix an outdated law.

"The bills before us today are not the only solutions to ESA issues, but these bills do demonstrate a continuing and growing awareness that ESA as it currently exists does not serve the species or the people well," Hastings said.

The bills debated yesterday address a mixture of state-specific issues and broader reforms. They are:

H.R. 4284, from Rep. Randy Neugebauer (R-Texas), which would require the Fish and Wildlife Service to coordinate with states that want to create a "State Protection Plan" for a species. That coordination would have to occur before any ESA listing, in an effort to prevent the listing altogether.
H.R. 4866, from Rep. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.), which would reverse the threatened listing of the lesser prairie chicken, putting a five-year moratorium on any new listing to give state and private conservation efforts "time to work."
H.R. 4256, from Rep. Chris Stewart (R-Utah), which would require the federal government to count animals on private and tribal -- along with federal -- lands when determining whether the species warrants federal protection under ESA.
H.R. 1314, from Rep. Bill Flores (R-Texas), to require states and counties to approve any ESA settlements that affect them, as part of a GOP effort to curb ESA lawsuits that have resulted in FWS's agreeing to consider the listing of certain species.
H.R. 1927, from Rep. Jim Costa (D-Calif.), to temporarily exempt the Central Valley Project and the California State Water Project from some ESA requirements to provide more water to farms.
H.R. 4319, from Rep. Rick Crawford (R-Ark.), to require FWS to do a more comprehensive economic analysis when determining critical habitat, including effects on private business.

Gary Frazer, FWS's assistant director for ecological services, told lawmakers that the agency does not support any of the bills "as written."

But he indicated some flexibility when it came to H.R. 4256 and H.R. 4282, citing support for their objectives but concern about their current forms. The latter bill, for example, would prohibit the listing of a species when the Interior secretary approves a state protective action, even if the state does not implement the plan.

Frazer also addressed Republican criticism of settlements between FWS and environmental groups that set deadlines for when the agency must consider the listing of species. While Republicans have criticized such settlements -- prompting Flores' bill and others -- FWS officials point out that the agency would lose a trial. That's because officials miss statutory deadlines for listing considerations, thanks, he said, to scarce resources.

"Settlement agreements are often in the public's best interest because we have no effective legal defense to most deadline cases, and because settlement agreements facilitate issue resolution as a more expeditious and less costly alternative to litigation," Frazer said.

But most of yesterday's three-hour hearing was a rehash of various state controversies, from the listing of the lesser prairie chicken to water restrictions to protect the delta smelt. Republicans aimed to paint ESA as a symptom of big government in which Washington bureaucrats overrule rural Americans.

At one point, Mullin spoke over Ya-wei Li, director of endangered species conservation at Defenders of Wildlife, to call him a "guy from Washington, D.C., and New York ... trying to tell me what the best habitat is for a prairie chicken."

"No offense, sir," Mullin said, "but talk about things you have actually seen firsthand and not things you have seen in a lab."