One of the problems in dealing with the Endangered Species Act is the continued false declarations of what the Endangered Species Act says. In the Summit Daily News, an article pertaining to the feds rejection of wolf reintroduction into the Southern Rockies, Rob Edward, of WildEarth Guardians was quoted as saying the ESA requires the feds to reintroduce wolves to the Southern Rockies.
According to Rob Edward, of WildEarth Guardians, the Endangered Species Act requires the government to restore threatened plants and animals to “all or a significant portion” of the species’ historic range. According to Edward, wolves only live in less than 5 percent of their historic range.
Unfortunately, this is the kind of misinterpretation of the ESA that gets printed. People read it and accept it as fact when it is a dishonest and incorrect interpretation. The use of “all or a significant portion” in the Endangered Species Act is in defining what an endangered species is. Nowhere in the ESA does it hint that the federal government is “required” to reintroduce anything. As a matter of fact, the ESA does not require an endangered species to be fully recovered in “all or a significant portion of its range”. The Act merely provides options to the “Authority” to carry out the provisions of the Act to “conserve” and “recover” a species as much as is practical.
There are four criteria in determining whether any species should be listed as threatened or endangered. If any one of the four pertain, then the feds can list such species.
(A) the present or threatened destruction, modification, or curtailment of its habitat or range;
(B) overutilization for commercial, recreational, scientific, or educational purposes;
(C) disease or predation;
(D) the inadequacy of existing regulatory mechanisms; or
(E) other natural or manmade factors affecting its continued
existence.
It is just as important to know that any of these factors not only must be met to list a species, the same factors are used to remove a species from protection.
The ESA defines an “Endangered Species” as:
(6) The term ‘‘endangered species’’ means any species which is in danger of extinction throughout all or a significant portion of its range other than a species of the Class Insecta determined by the Secretary to constitute a pest whose protection under the provisions of this Act would present an overwhelming and overriding risk to man.
The only other use of the term “all or a significant portion of its range” is in defining a “threatened” species.
(20) The term ‘‘threatened species’’ means any species which is likely to become an endangered species within the foreseeable future throughout all or a significant portion of its range.
This is not the first time I have seen the flagrant misuse of “all or a significant portion of its range” in order to confuse people about the Endangered Species Act. When the Act was passed by Congress in 1973, the intention was to protect species from going extinct with use of the four reasons I provided above. Continued abuse and blatant manipulation of the ESA has now put species we are trying to protect in danger.
Misinterpretation of the ESA benefits nobody or the species it is intended to protect.
Tom Remington
