Yesterday, I wrote a letter to Senator Saxby Chambliss of Georgia. The letter was generated by the World Wildlife Fund as part of a campaign to defend the Endangered Species Act (ESA).
Senator Chambliss (meaning, of course, the office of Senator Chambliss)
responded with a letter outlining the senator's views regarding the
ESA. That letter is posted here, followed by my personal response, in
the interest of promoting the kind of active and open dialog that is
necessary to a healthy democracy. (I have informed Senator Chambliss of
this posting and will also post any reply he offers.)
April 5, 2006
Dear Ms. Sky:
Thank you for your letter regarding the reauthorization and reform
of the Endangered Species Act (ESA). I appreciate hearing from you.
The ESA was enacted in 1973 and provides for the conservation of
threatened and endangered species and the habitats where they are
found. According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), there
are currently 632 endangered species and 190 threatened species. These
species include birds, insects, fish,
reptiles, mammals, crustaceans, flowers, grasses, and trees.
Under the ESA, the law prohibits any action that adversely affects
their habitat or results in a "taking" of a listed species. A
"taking," as defined by the ESA, "is to harass, harm, pursue, hunt,
shoot, wound, kill, trap, capture, collect, or attempt to engage in any
such conduct." The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service defines "harm" as an
act which kills or injures wildlife and such act may include
significant habitat modification where it actually kills or injures
wildlife by significantly impairing essential behavioral patters,
including breeding, feeding, or sheltering. Proponents of reforming the
ESA assert that these terms are too broad and adversely affect day to
day operations of farmers and ranchers who use their land for their
livelihood.
As a father and a grandfather, I believe in taking steps now to
leave a better environment for the future and I will support
environmental policies that protect the environment, allow farmers to
make a living, and allow property owner's the use of their land. I
would like to see more scientific research and data gathered before a
species is placed on the endangered or threatened list. I believe the
role of states should be enhanced to help promote landowner involvement
in protection and recovery.
Thank you again for taking the time to contact me. If you would
like to receive timely email alerts regarding the latest congressional
actions and my weekly e-newsletter, please sign up via my web site at: www.chambliss.senate.gov. Please do not hesitate to be in touch if I may ever be of assistance to you.
Sincerely,
Saxby Chambliss
United States Senate
Dear Senator Chambliss,
I can not tell you how much I appreciate your detailed response to my
letter regarding the Endangered Species Act.
I have no doubt that proponents of reforming the ESA assert that the
Act adversely affects "day to day operations of farmers and ranchers
who use their land for their livelihood." The Act is, in fact, designed
to do so. If protecting our natural wildlife in all of its diversity
imposed no hardships whatsoever on our human society, there would be no
need for a law to require that protection.
It is in the highest public interest to protect our remaining
wilderness, wherever it may roam, fly, flit, or grow, and all of
humanity would surely spontaneously do so if it were not for the fact
that this interest all too often comes into conflict with our own
private interests in grazing, farming, development, and the like. The
point of the ESA is to assert the general will of the People that such
private interests should have to bow to the greater good of the whole
when the very survival of our common heritage is at stake.
I am somewhat concerned by your statement that you "would like to see
more scientific research and data gathered before a species is placed
on the endangered or threatened list." I sincerely hope you would not
support any such reform that would essentially cut the legs out from
under the ESA by allowing private land owners to continue to destroy
our natural wildlife while scientists and bureaucrats argue over
whether or not a species should be protected. I would be relieved of
this concern to hear you say that you would support a more stringent
process of research and data gathering only if that process were to
trigger a mandatory "time out," if you will, so that all potentially
threatening land use were required to cease until the investigation
were complete.
An even deeper concern lies in the fact that statistics and analysis
are not the tools of an omniscient, omnipotent, and benevolent higher power.
They are the tools of human science, and as such, they are subject to
interpretation, conjecture, and outright manipulation. Scientific
analysis, like any other human endeavor under our current economic
system, must be bought, and any human activity that can be bought can
also be "encouraged" in one direction or another by the one who holds
the purse strings.
This basic truth underlies the very separation of powers upon which
this great nation is founded, and this same truth is no less powerful
today than it was over two hundred years ago. I do not believe that the
power to make decisions regarding the listing of a species should be
essentially placed in the hands of the private individuals who stand to
benefit from the decision. So any more rigorous process of study must
remain in public hands and must be paid for by the public treasury. If
you believe greater research is necessary to the listing process, I
would be interested to hear your ideas on how we might pay for
this heightened vigilance.
I am also somewhat concerned by your statement that you "believe the
role of states should be enhanced to help promote landowner involvement
in protection and recovery." While the idea of private landowners
faithfully watering protected vegetation and erecting erosion barriers
to protect endangered habitats warms my heart, I suspect nonetheless
that this is not the sort of involvement that most landowners have in
mind. Forgive the humor in my response, I beg you, for in all
seriousness it is "landowner involvement" that represents the most
significant threat to the survival of our nation's endangered wildlife.
Despite the above concerns, I do have sympathy for your predicament. I recognize that as an elected official you must
represent the interests of the citizens of this state as private
individuals as well as the interests of those same citizens in their
collective public good, and I recognize as well that these interests
are not always simple to reconcile. I believe it is critical for the
ESA to continue to uphold the collective good of species survival
wherever it comes into conflict with private interests. However, I
would gladly support any creative solution to this economic dilemma
that would properly shift the burden of this choice from the shoulders
of individual landowners to the public weal, where it rightfully
belongs.
At the very least, the economic burden should be carried by each
affected industry (farming, ranching, land development, etc.) as a
whole, rather than by a few individual market participants who are
unfortunate enough to have purchased land later found to be home to a
protected species. Capitalism only functions with true efficiency for
the good of the whole when the true costs of doing business are
incorporated into each market. If developing land comes at the cost of
destroying our public heritage, that cost must be built into the market
system. Only then can private economic decisions be reconciled with the
public good.
This has always been the purpose of imposing controls upon an otherwise
free market. We fine those who would pollute our groundwater because
those who create that pollution must be forced to bear its true costs.
We recognize the laws of "nuisance" because we believe that noxious
land uses must incur the costs of the burdens they place upon their
neighbors. The ESA is no different.
As long as the needs of the many can be burdened by the needs of the
one, private interests must be forced to pay the public costs of their
economic decisions. Justice is maintained when the burden is spread
across an entire industry, so that all participants in the industry
bear that burden equally, and individuals can then choose whether or not to
participate in that industry based on full knowledge of the ensuing
costs. Our private interests must not be merely "balanced against" the
public good. They must be structured to incorporate it.
Sincerely,
EM Sky
