The Endangered Species Act is Endangered

The environment surrounding The Endangered Species Act is becoming less hospitable:

Threatened and endangered, Editorial, The Oregonian: After 30 tumultuous years, the Endangered Species Act sorely needs a thoughtful, rational rewrite ...Instead, the U.S. House is bulling ahead on an ill-considered reform plan, rushing to a vote Thursday on a bill crafted largely by Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Calif., the leading critic in Congress of the Endangered Species Act. The act is "broken," Pombo says, noting that only 10 of roughly 1,300 species have recovered enough to be removed from federal protections. But ... at least all but a handful of them still exist. Only nine species have gone extinct since the act was adopted in 1973. Either way, Pombo's bill is ... ultimately ... about reducing the power of federal wildlife agencies and lifting the burden of species protections from private landowners and those who log, mine and drill in public lands. Pombo and other co-sponsors of the House bill, including Rep. Greg Walden, R-Ore., look at the existing law and see red tape, disputed science, unfair burdens on landowners and slow, imperious federal wildlife agencies. ... the House bill seeks to fix them by cutting into the heart of the act. Instead of targeted incentives to fairly compensate landowners who protect wildlife, the House bill would allow landowners to demand massive payments for lost profits from forgone uses of their land. Such a law would encourage developers to go looking for environmentally sensitive areas to propose projects and seek compensation. The bill also would ban wildlife agencies from designating "critical habitat," lands considered crucial to the recovery of the species. At least one major study has shown that endangered species with protected habitat are more than twice as likely to be recovering as species without it. Walden's views ... understandably hardened during the Klamath crisis in 2000, when irrigation water was abruptly cut off to protect endangered suckers. Anger from the Klamath incident is still driving debate over the act, even though it is hard to look at the Klamath Basin today and see a triumph of species protection over property rights. The ... Pombo bill ... is certain to pass in the Republican-controlled House. It will then fall to the Senate to negotiate a more careful reform of the Endangered Species Act, one that holds true to the act's original intent, preventing human development from jeopardizing species.

This editorial from Japan provides contrasting view to that of the House majority:

Flight of the storks, asahi.com:  The release into the wild on Saturday of five Oriental white storks captured our imagination. The birds, designated by the government as special natural treasures, soared into the sky in a most impressive fashion. The last wild one of the birds died in Japan 34 years ago. But thanks to an artificial breeding program in Toyooka, Hyogo Prefecture, these graceful birds are returning to our environment. It is like a dream come true. ... The Oriental white stork is a large migratory bird that is distinguished by its white body, black wings and a thick beak. In the Edo Era (1603-1867), these storks inhabited many parts of Japan. In their heyday before World War II, about 100 storks lived in and around Toyooka. But the birds began disappearing in the era of rapid economic growth. This was because the natural environment underwent a drastic change in the postwar period. Pine groves, where the birds nest, were destroyed. Loach and frogs, on which the storks fed, vanished when farmers began draining excess water in their paddy fields early in summer or just before harvest time in the fall. Agricultural chemicals used by farmers also affected the birds' breeding ability. Returning artificially bred storks into the wild required not only advanced breeding technology but also a reinvigorated natural environment. Farmers had to abandon intensive farming methods that relied on agricultural chemicals and fertilizers to produce high annual crop yields. They even had to ensure there was water in their fallow paddy fields in winter to sustain all living creatures. Rivers also had to be cleaned and natural woodlands near populated areas had to be managed properly. Power transmission lines had to be buried underground. All these efforts require the willing participation of local inhabitants.

Some people worried that the storks would harm the rice crop. But this mind-set gradually reversed itself as people began to place greater stock in food safety and agricultural products that are free of chemicals. The rice paddies where storks feed offered proof that farmers valued the natural environment. ... The only downside might be that harvests are slightly smaller. There was even a move to cultivate rice as from farmland that welcomed back the storks. We applaud this move and think it should be emulated around the country-assuming that storks will settle all over the land. ... We believe that municipalities across the country should take a leaf out of Toyooka's book and adopt similar preservation methods to create a natural environment that is also comfortable to humans. If the five storks that flew off into the wild can adapt themselves to their new environment and pair off, we may see juvenile storks leave their nest early next summer. It is said that it takes several generations for such breeding programs to become totally successful. We truly hope that such persistent efforts will bear fruit. Storks travel far. They may appear in the area where you live. If they do, please don't disturb them. We hope you will enjoy just having them in the neighborhood.

Comments

[anne]

Dear dear Mark, we are surely taking a wrong turn, have already taken a several wrong turns, along the science path. Imagine, we might have been called to the Senate to show just how perverse science has become in these days of concern with such as northern owls and Gulf Coast residents. There goes Michael Crichton afore us :)

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/13/books/13kaku.html?ex=1260680400&en=ed14541c4a8df27f&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland

December 13, 2004

Beware! Tree-Huggers Plot Evil to Save World
By MICHIKO KAKUTANI

The odious villains in Michael Crichton's new thriller, the folks (as President Bush might put it) who kill, maim and terrorize, aren't members of Al Qaeda or any other jihadi movement. They aren't Bondian bad guys like Goldfinger, Dr. No or Scaramanga. They aren't drug lords or gang members or associates of Tony Soprano.

No, the evil ones in "State of Fear" are tree-hugging environmentalists, believers in global warming, proponents of the Kyoto Protocol. Their surveillance operatives drive politically correct, hybrid Priuses; their hit men use an exotic, poisonous Australian octopus as their weapon of choice. Their unwitting (and sometimes, witting) allies are - natch! - the liberal media, trial lawyers, Hollywood celebrities, mainstream environmental groups (like the Sierra Club and the Audubon Society) and other blue-state apparatchiks.

This might all be very amusing as a "Saturday Night Live" sketch, but Mr. Crichton doesn't seem to have amusement on his mind. This thriller comes equipped with footnotes, charts, an authorial manifesto and two appendixes ("Why Politicized Science Is Dangerous" and "Sources of Data for Graphs")....

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/23/science/earth/23BIRD.html?ex=1379649600&en=d5b6487d9ad951da&ei=5007&partner=USERLAND

September 23, 2003

For Billions of Birds, an Endangered Haven
By James Gorman

It's autumn, and the vast boreal forest of Canada is spilling birds. Ducks and geese are pouring out of it, and songbirds in the billions.

Some will winter in Westchester, some in Costa Rica. Some will stop at bird feeders, some will fly directly over hidden hunters. In all, three billion to five billion birds leave the Canadian boreal forest each fall, headed for warmer weather.

As the birds fly south, many of the people most involved with the Canadian boreal, which makes up 10 percent of all the earth's forests and 25 percent of the intact, original forests, are heading for Quebec City.

The 12th World Forestry Congress is convening there this week, and preservation of the boreal forest is a major subject of discussion. Conservationists hope to reach agreement with industry now on how to set aside some parts of the forest and agree on management policies for other areas.

Three environmental groups, Greenpeace, the Natural Resources Defense Council and Forest Ethics, joined together last week to release a brief report on threats to the forest and to demand a moratorium on logging and development in the most endangered parts of the boreal forest until a conservation plan is developed. It is not that the forest is in immediate danger of disappearing. Just the opposite.

But change is occurring fast because of industrial development like logging, mining and drilling for gas and oil. Farming also contributes to forest loss, particularly in western Canada. A study published in Conservation Biology in December 2002, by Keith A. Hobson of the Canadian Wildlife Service calculated that on the southern edge of the boreal in Saskatchewan, the amount of forested land was declining at 0.87 per cent per year, similar to some estimates for loss of tropical rain forest.

Boreal simply means northern, as the in aurora borealis, the northern lights. The great northern forest, as it is sometimes called, circles the globe, below the polar regions and above the temperate hardwood forests. It is not as familiar as the tropical rain forests, particularly the Amazon and the Congo forest of Central Africa, which includes seven different countries. But the boreal belongs in the same category. These three areas are the last places on earth where vast stretches of intact original forest remain.

Marilyn Heiman, director of the Boreal Songbird Initiative, said the decline of songbirds had been a worry for years, as was loss of wintering grounds.But the nesting grounds are at least as important, she said, and there is a need to "refocus some of the conservation effort" on the boreal forest.

"It's a forgotten system," said David Pashley, vice president for conservation of the American Bird Conservancy. "It's one that people take for granted. But over the course of the next 50 years it could slip away."

There are no parrots in the boreal to capture public attention, no brightly colored tropical frogs, no monkeys.

What the boreal has are two million square miles of woodland and wetland filled with black spruce, poplars, paper birch, aspen, tamarack and other trees, and birds, birds and more birds.

The land has different ecosystems, wet and dry, hardwood and evergreen. Particularly in the west, it is riddled with the water that nurses ducks and shorebirds, "bogs, fens, wetlands, ponds, marshes," Gary Stewart of Ducks Unlimited in Canada said with a tone of awe and appreciation.

Among the migrating birds of the boreal are millions of ducks, 100 million shorebirds, half a billion warblers and a billion sparrows....

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/29/science/29ice.html?ex=1285646400&en=7b3487fa5bc2d915&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

September 29, 2005

In a Melting Trend, Less Arctic Ice to Go Around
By ANDREW C. REVKIN

The floating cap of sea ice on the Arctic Ocean shrank this summer to what is probably its smallest size in at least a century of record keeping, continuing a trend toward less summer ice, a team of climate experts reported yesterday.

That shift is hard to explain without attributing it in part to human-caused global warming, the team's members and other experts on the region said.

The change also appears to be headed toward becoming self-sustaining: the increased open water absorbs solar energy that would otherwise be reflected back into space by bright white ice, said Ted A. Scambos, a scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo., which compiled the data along with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

"Feedbacks in the system are starting to take hold," Dr. Scambos said.

The data was released on the center's Web site, www.nsidc.org.

The findings are consistent with recent computer simulations showing that a buildup of smokestack and tailpipe emissions of greenhouse gases could lead to a profoundly transformed Arctic later this century, when much of the once ice-locked ocean would routinely become open water in summers....

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/08/international/europe/08glacier.html?ex=1281153600&en=bb471fc234631f64&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

August 8, 2005

Melting Mountain Majesties: Warming in Austrian Alps
By RICHARD BERNSTEIN

KAISER-FRANZ-JOSEFS-HÖHE, Austria - The jagged peak of the 11,361-foot mountain known as the Johannisberg looms against the sky at the end of a stunningly beautiful valley here in the Austrian Alps, and the Pasterze, Austria's biggest glacier, extends slowly downward and away from it for five miles.

The glacier is broad and grand, like the river of ice it is, and yet something about it is visibly not right, and you can tell right away what it is from the steep cable car that was built a bit more than 40 years ago to take tourists from the heights above down to the glacier itself.

"When it was built, it went right down to the glacier," recalled Erhard Trojer, owner of the Hotel Lärchenhof in the nearby ski resort village of Heiligenblut.

But now, if you stand at the bottom of the cable car line and look down at the tourists disporting themselves on the glacier, it is as though you are looking at them from an airplane.

"It's going down from four to eight meters a year," or about 13 to 26 feet, said Mr. Trojer, who grew up in this valley. "In the early 1960's, they used to have a ski race every spring from the top of the Grossglockner to the bottom of the glacier." The Grossglockner, which looms above the Pasterze, is, at 12,460 feet, Austria's highest mountain.

"They can't do it anymore," Mr. Trojer said a bit sadly. "It's warmed up, and there isn't enough snow."

Austria's glaciers - there are 925 of them - are shrinking fast, and as they shrink, this part of the world is slowly losing one of its many attractions, those rivers of ice that, figuratively and almost literally, reflect the grandeur of the mountains around them.

This is not happening only in Austria, of course. It's a worldwide phenomenon. One Chinese expert on glaciers, Yao Tandong, director of the Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, has said that the glaciers in the Himalayas shrink annually by an amount equivalent to all the water in the Yellow River, Agence France-Presse has reported....

[johnchx]

"The act is 'broken,' Pombo says, noting that only 10 of roughly 1,300 species have recovered enough to be removed from federal protections."

Doesn't that sound like an argument for *stronger* (and probably earlier) protection for endangered species?

[anne]

John CHX

Thank you :)

[lihitana]

love it