Stoneberg: The Endangered Species Act has been misused and should be re-written

Congress passes many laws that are based on good intentions but in practice they get so twisted and misinterpreted by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and unelected bureaucrats that the enforcement of the law often has no connection to the original purpose.  The poster child of this practice is the Endangered Species Act of 1973 (ESA) which had admirable intentions to solve a growing problem of fish, wildlife and plant species extinctions in the United States.  It was also designed to meet the signed International treaties, conventions and agreements concerning endangered species.  It seems the drafters of the Act put the Secretary of the Interior in charge of overseeing the implementation of the Act probably because of the international connection.  In many places, the Act gave the states prominent roles to deal with resident wildlife species with the federal government supplying financing.  However, in practice the NGOs, bureaucrats, and the legal system have imbedded the federal government (i.e. USFWS) as the controlling agency of the ESA program.  The end result was the ESA shifted management of resident wildlife and fish species from the states to the federal government and this shift has enabled the NGOs to enhance their protectionist agendas (and their pocketbooks) often to the detriment of the species the ESA was trying to protect (i.e. the desert tortoise, the spotted owl, etc.).   After over 50 years of questionable listings and rulings which resulted in many costly hardships to property owners and businesses in the futile attempts to protect species from going extinct, it is past time to reexamine and adopt a more commonsense ESA.

State wildlife agencies have a proven track record of recovering and managing resident animal populations.  What settlers and market hunters did to the western wildlife populations in the 1800s has been extensively reported.  The recovery of the decimated herds has also been documented and celebrated, but the two main reasons for the amazing recovery have been forgotten.  First, the problem was handled by each state independently and in cooperation.  They enacted laws to limit the harvest and hired game wardens to enforce the laws.  They also trapped animals where they still survived and released them in areas where they had been extirpated (without any permits etc.!).  The second action that contributed to the return of resident western wildlife was the war declared on predators.  The top tier predators (grizzly bears, wolves and cougars) were decimated as ranchers and settlers moved west.  The state government acquiesced in this removal.  The smaller mammal and bird predators were removed by homesteaders shooting and trapping them, often to collect bounties, which particularly benefited ground nesting birds. 

The state wildlife agencies looked at what was holding the populations down and removed these weights (human harvesting and predation).  The result was that the game populations exploded and we celebrated about 50 years of enjoyable and successful hunting.  The simple lesson of these past successes is to determine what is causing the population to decline and, if possible, remove that obstacle.  Now, a lot of money is being spent to reverse the problem of declining wildlife populations without addressing the cause. 

The sage grouse is a good example.  The diaries and writings of the early travelers to the western ranges rarely mentioned encountering sage grouse.  This suggests sage grouse were not abundant before settlers poured into the area.  One researcher thought sage grouse numbers climbed and fell in step with cattle numbers in the Great Basin, while I attribute their increase to homesteaders removing predators.  As predator populations have built up, sage grouse numbers have declined.  Most ranchers tell the experts predation is the problem.  No one has seriously looked at this aspect, but they continue to spend money to fix the problem.  Can you point to one place where the millions of dollars spent have resulted in robust increases in sage grouse numbers? 

 Books could be written about the abuses and excesses of using the ESA by NGOs to line their pockets with taxpayers’ dollars.  They count on left-leaning judges to award them government payments using the Equal Access to Justice Act each time they sue.  This Act must be repealed.  A good example is the listing of the grizzly bear.  The definition of a threatened or endangered species is one that is in danger of going extinct in the foreseeable future.  The grizzly bear does not meet this definition, since the state removed their main mortality factor when they closed the hunting season.  However, in spite of the bears continuously increasing in numbers and range, the NGOs have made a fortune over the last 50 years by suing to keep them listed.  Also, the ESA was used to wrongly populate the western ranges with non-native, large, northern wolves which, once they get established, are not going to go extinct.  As the top tier predators increase and expand their range, their prey species (i.e. moose) may decline to the point that they have to be listed!  The individuals and groups pushing to release top tier predators all over the western states have no idea, nor do they care, about the damage they are doing to the wildlife populations, the livestock industry, the rural families and communities, or to the ecosystems and the biodiversity they are destroying. 

People living in the various states differ greatly in their attitudes and acceptance of different wildlife species.  For example, the residents of Wyoming have a totally different acceptance of large predators than the majority of voters in Oregon.  Therefore, the ESA mandates can’t be one-size-fits-all but have to be tailored for each individual state.  The best way to accomplish this is to give management of resident wildlife back to the states.  The U.S. Secretary of the Interior could be given oversight of the compliance by the United States to International conventions, treaties, and agreements.  This would be in line with President Trump’s attempts to return to the Founding Father’s original intention to give more authority to the states.

Ron Stoneberg

Box 37, Hinsdale, MT 59241

(406) 367-9314