Gutting species act invites trouble

Inter Lake editorial

Could the Endangered Species Act be less cumbersome, with more efficient reviews and enforcement? Absolutely.

But the Bush administration has gone too far with recently proposed regulation changes that essentially would allow federal agencies to decide for themselves if a project would be harmful to a listed species.

In many cases, that would put foxes in charge of henhouses. There's a natural tendency to follow the path of least resistance, and while that may be desirable in cases where a highway or forest management project would have no impact on a listed species, it would not be so desirable in some cases.

"Consultation" reviews involving the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service often are drawn out and overbuilt for the sole purpose of surviving litigation. There is typically a backlog of reviews to be conducted. Between 1988 and 2002, the wildlife agency conducted 300,000 consultations.

Streamlining these reviews in some fashion could be beneficial, but abandoning them altogether - as the administration plan calls for - eventually would prove reckless somewhere down the line.

"We believe federal action agencies will err on the side of caution in making these determinations," the Interior Department's proposal said, with an explanation that consultations are no longer necessary because federal agencies have developed expertise to review their projects.

We wonder if that's really the case.

The Flathead National Forest, for instance, has downsized and consolidated operations over the last couple decades, and from what we've seen, the forest has come to rely on the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's input in reviewing forest management projects.

That doesn't mean the reviews can't be more expeditious or that certain kinds of reviews - such as lengthy processes to identify "critical habitat" for a species - are necessary.

Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne explained that the rule changes also are needed to ensure that the Endangered Species Act won't be used as a "back door" tool to regulate carbon emissions that supposedly cause climate change. The polar bear was the first species to be listed under the Endangered Species Act because of threats posed by climate change.

We sympathize with the concerns of Kempthorne and government attorneys who must be fretting overtime about the Pandora's box of climate-change litigation that could emerge.

But doing away with oversight reviews by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service may be an invitation for even more court hassles.