Dear HCN,
Paul Larmer’s opinion,
“The enduring Endangered Species Act,” left me bewildered (HCN,
9/24/01: The enduring Endangered Species Act). From the trenches of
the rural West, the ESA doesn’t seem to be accomplishing nearly the
wonders that you claim. In fact, it appears to be doing the
opposite. You wrote, “We need both litigation and collaboration to
protect and restore our dwindling natural world. The ESA allows
both to happen in a variety of combinations depending on the
situation.” But it often appears that litigation under the ESA is
aggressively shutting down community-based collaborative groups and
processes.
Probably the most blatant example of
this misuse is in the Klamath Basin. Check out Mike Connelly’s
article, “Home Is Where They’ll Lay Me Down,” in the summer issue
of Orion. This Bonanza, Ore., rancher has been
in the trenches. He’s been involved with several collaborative
groups that have been working for almost a decade on endangered
species recovery and watershed health issues. These people –
ranchers, farmers and rural environmentalists alike – are feeling
betrayed by the heavy-handed application of the ESA by
out-of-the-area interests with no regard for, or trust in, the
groups who are doggedly crafting long-term solutions to the area’s
water allocation problems. According to Connelly, “There is an
evolving consensus that changes need to be made to our most
fundamental environmental laws, changes that will allow local
communities the time and space to do what coercive legislation has
never been able to: outgrow once and for all this silly notion that
there is some categorical difference between human communities and
the rest of Creation.”
And in Rebecca Clarren’s
article, “No refuge in the Klamath Basin” (HCN, 8/13/01: No refuge
in the Klamath Basin), several Klamath Basin residents support this
observation. For instance: “I don’t believe we can have consensus
and conservation when we have a community in chaos,” says (Klamath
Basin) refuge manager Phil Norton. “I’ll freely admit I think the
ESA should be tweaked; everybody’s losing under this.”
A few years ago I wouldn’t have understood this
major flaw in the ESA, but after watching the Klamath Basin crisis
unfold and experiencing similar, although far less severe,
environmental and cultural fallout from the listing of the Sierra
Nevada bighorn sheep, I’ve become a rural environmentalist who’s
siding with the opposition. The ranchers, loggers and farmers are
right. There’s no point in enforcing the ESA in such a way that it
turns the local communities against the species you’re trying to
protect, but that’s what’s happening time and again.
Although the environmental “big guns,” like the
Center for Biological Diversity and Oregon Natural Resources
Council, may be happy with the current arrangement and perceive
that it’s encouraging collaboration, it appears that irresponsible
and indiscriminate application of the ESA is doing more harm than
good to citizen groups trying to work cooperatively. The view from
the trenches is bleak. The ESA may yet undergo a major overhaul,
and it sounds like it won’t be just the wise-use crowd who’ll be
carrying in the toolbox.
Lauren
Davis
Lee Vining, California
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline ESA shuts down collaboration.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
