Issues

While ESA reform is considered, cost for maintaining the program cannot be forgotten. The Department of the Interior recently proposed targeted changes to the rules implementing the Endangered Species Act of 1973 (ESA). While examining and modernizing parts of the ESA that have gone untouched for four decades is a welcomed change, a new report highlights one aspect of the law that requires increased attention — its ballooning costs.

According to a new study released on Tuesday, protecting endangered species likely costs the economy hundreds of billions of dollars more than the federal government’s official estimates. The libertarian think tank responsible for the study, Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), explained that the government does not factor in broader economic cost, such as lost investment opportunities for energy development.

“Whatever the [Endangered Species Act’s] cost is, it is much larger than generally acknowledged, and likely measured in the hundreds of billions of dollars,” the report concludes. “Unfortunately, the ESA’s poor record of recovering species does not indicate that we are getting what we pay for.” The federal government’s estimates “woefully lowball” the actual costs to taxpayers, landowners, and state and local governments for protecting endangered and threatened wildlife, according to the report’s summary.

The report is being released as the Trump administration is taking comment on three proposed regulations to update and reform the management of endangered species, which are expected to be more beneficial for local state economies and energy development. IPAA plans to submit detailed comments to the docket.

Sage grouse hunting domain shut done following habitat-destroying wildfires. Wildfires in Nevada have destroyed a significant amount of sage grouse habitat, prompting the Nevada Board of Wildlife (NBW) to approve an emergency closure of two hunting units in Humboldt and Elko counties. Last month, the Martin Fire destroyed 39 known breeding sites supporting 750 male grouse, according to NBW. The agency says the fire that started in Paradise Valley north of Winnemucca burned 689 square miles of mostly rangeland — the largest fire in Nevada history.

The hunting ban covers an area twice the size of Delaware – accounting for more than 3,500 square miles to recoup the losses of the Martin fire after it destroyed a key winter habitat. “This fire negatively affected one of the few remaining stronghold habitats for greater sage-grouse and a myriad of other sagebrush obligate species in Nevada,” said Shawn Espinosa, a state game expert.

In the News

Trump administration order may put sage grouse on endangered list. Las Vegas Review-Journal. A Trump administration directive eliminating industry and developer payments for habitat protection in exchange for use of public lands has officials in Western states scrambling for answers and worried about economic consequences if the threatened greater sage grouse is listed as endangered. The Bureau of Land Management issued the directive in July to discontinue “compensatory mitigation,” a tool that provided funds to protect wildlife habitat. Governors in Western states agreed in 2015 to a plan that used compensatory mitigation to offset environmental damage, which kept the Obama administration from listing the sage grouse as endangered. The agreement allowed public land use by ranchers and oil, gas and mining interests, which provide local jobs. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke has been critical of compensatory mitigation, and the BLM directive claimed the practice could not be legally enforced. The new directive does allow for voluntary participation. But without dedicated funds to protect habitat, and with the loss of state control over public land use, the federal directive poses new problems and concerns about the long-term economic impact on communities.

Citing climate change, court slaps FWS for not listing fish. E&E News, (Sub req’d). Federal judges on Friday struck down a 2014 Fish and Wildlife Service decision against listing an imperiled cold-water fish, holding the agency failed to consider how warmer temperatures and decreased stream flows due to climate change would affect the species. At issue is the arctic grayling, a relative of salmon, that was historically found in Montana, Wyoming and Michigan. Its populations have plummeted, leaving only one population in the Upper Missouri River Basin in Montana. Conservationists have pressed regulators for more than three decades to extend Endangered Species Act protections to the fish. After a legal settlement, FWS in 2014 promulgated a policy that didn’t list the fish as threatened or endangered. The Center for Biological Diversity, the Western Watersheds Project and others quickly sued. A lower court deferred to FWS, but the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals struck down part of that ruling Friday, stating that FWS acted in an arbitrary and capricious manner by failing to explain why the uncertainty of climate change favors a not listed status. The 9th circuit remanded the case to the lower court for further deliberation.

Can markets save the lesser prairie chicken? The Garden City Telegram. The booming calls of the lesser prairie chicken once rung out across western Kansas. Accounts from the 1800s mention bands of hunters bagging dozens of birds each. Railways advertised special trains that brought sportsmen to shoot the birds in the Texas panhandle, complete with ice cars to preserve the meat on the ride home. Then, over a century of plowing prairies into farmland decimated the birds. More recently, droughts brought their numbers to an all-time recorded low in 2013. Today, the birds aren’t listed as endangered, but they’re considered a conservation-dependent species — meaning without consistent protection they’ll go extinct. For decades, endangered listings — and the regulations that come with them — have pulled animals back from the brink of extinction. In western Kansas, those restrictions hinder development, which is primarily oil and gas extraction, and family farms — the lifeblood of many Kansans. To try and keep the birds off the endangered list, Kansas and nearby states are trying a new proactive plan. They’re telling developers, if you voluntarily help protect the birds, you’ll be exempt from future regulations.

New Mexico’s birds and trees are dying. Daily Lobo. Bird populations in New Mexico are failing to take off — in fact, they’re nosediving. A study conducted by scientists at the Los Alamos National Labs (LANL) found that piñon pine trees are dying in growing numbers, which is having adverse effects on wildlife in the area — especially birds. Researchers believe climate change is one of the reasons. The study, conducted by Jeanne Fair and Charles Hathcock, concluded that “piñon mortality may be a significant threat to bird communities in the southwestern U.S.” It also stated that piñon-juniper woodlands, in which piñon trees thrive, may disappear completely by the year 2100, according to a LANL press release. Piñon pines are the state tree of New Mexico and are found throughout the Southwest. “It’s really quite disturbing,” said Jonathan Hayes, vice president and executive director of Audubon New Mexico, a nature sanctuary in Santa Fe. “The Pajarito Plateau is named that for its bird abundance, so it’s really ironic that we’re seeing huge bird decline in that area.”

Utah Sen. Mike Lee’s bill mandates northern corridor route across Red Cliffs. The Spectrum. U.S. Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, took his turn Wednesday pushing legislation that would require federal land managers to make room for a controversial “northern corridor” highway across protected tortoise habitat in the Red Cliffs National Conservation Area north of St. George. The bill — S. 3297, the Washington County, Utah, Public Land Act — would expand protected habitat into a separate area west of the city as a way to mitigate any impacts to tortoises living in the conservation area. Lee’s bill is a Senate companion to a similar measure introduced in the House by Rep. Chris Stewart, R-Utah. Lee said the proposal would balance the needs of Mojave tortoise, which is listed as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act, with fast-growing Washington County’s increasing demands for a new transportation and utility corridor. He said the measure would also push the Bureau of Land Management to live up to a requirement first included in a 2009 public lands bill that directed the agency to “identify” a route for the highway.