Endangered Species Need You

EARTHKEEPING NEWS
A NEWSLETTER OF THE NORTH AMERICAN COALITION FOR CHRISTIANITY AND ECOLOGY

Volume Seven, Number Four
May/June 1998

Call to Action:

National Forests, Public Lands and Endangered Species Need You!

The re-authorization of the Endangered Species Act (ESA) is overdue. In 1997 Senator Dirk Kempthorne (R - Idaho) introduced bill S. 1180, now co-sponsored by 13 other senators, an ESA re-authorization bill that greatly weakens protection for endangered species, in favor of protecting "property rights" of people. Among other destructive provisions, non-federal property owners may be given immunity from the ESA by the Secretary of the Interior, without public notification, and no criteria. The bill eliminates the checks and balances inherent in the ESA. It grants industries that apply for the use of federal lands (timber, mining, grazing companies) preferential treatment, and allows the Services to refuse to designate critical habitat altogether on the ground that it is "not determinable."

On the other hand, in the House, Rep. George Miller (D-CA) introduced the Endangered Species Recovery Act (ESRA), HR 2351, co-sponsored by 102 other representatives. ESRA strengthens ESA by requiring the best available science to plan for recovery of species, not just survival. It increases citizen participation in community planning, and helps small landowners by providing technical assistance and streamlining the permitting process. It strengthens the checks and balances on taxpayer-funded agencies, and requires agencies to consider the impacts of their actions on imperiled species in other nations.¹

To compound the threat to endangered species and public lands, Senator Pete Domenici (R - NM) recently proposed a rider to the Senate Budget Resolution requiring the sale of $350 million worth of BLM (Bureau of Land Management) land over the next five years to pay for the costs of habitat conservation plans and other financial incentives for private landowners, as outlined in the Kempthorne bill. (The BLM now sells about $2.5 million in public lands each year.) This would remove millions more acres from federal protection and sell off a permanent asset to subsidize temporary protection of endangered species on private land.

Our public lands in Alaska are under new threats from Congress to weaken protections and to sell them off to private development interests.

Senate bill S.1092 and its companion bill in the House, HR 2259 would create a right-of-way for a road across the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge and Izembek Wilderness. These bills waive existing environmental laws, and ignore consideration of viable transportation alternatives currently under consideration by the state of Alaska.

Senate bill S. 660 introduced by Senator Frank Murkowski (R - AK) would grant the University of Alaska 250,000 acres of federal land outright in exchange for just 12,000 acres of University-owned land within three national parks and 2 wildlife refuges. The University, which is facing budget cuts by a hostile Alaska Legislature, would quickly dispose of the federal land to support its day-to-day operations.

S. 660 has no basis in law or policy and would set a dangerous precedent, placing many other public lands at risk. Please contact your Senators and Congresspersons regarding the above bills - the latest in an ongoing series of attempts to weaken protection of our public heritage, and sell it off to private development interests.²

2. Information from David Mortensen, Sierra Club Task Force to Keep the Public Lands Public; email: dmortnj@aol.com.