Endangered Species Act Under Fire
Joy West kneels amid alder trees and snowberry bushes near the banks of Seattle's Duwamish River, where native people have caught and eaten salmon since before the ancient Egyptians were building pyramids.
Painstakingly, West tugs out knots of an invasive weed called "stinky Bob" that has shown up and crowded out native Washington plants in recent decades. It smells like a musty combination of garlic and licorice.
Over the roar of trucks hauling gravel and gasoline and who-knows-what, West explains why she does volunteer work to keep the riverbank natural and help the threatened Puget Sound chinook salmon.
West says she fears that the law protecting the fish -- the Endangered Species Act -- is itself endangered as Congress reconvenes this week.
"If anything, the Endangered Species Act needs to be enhanced, not toned down or eliminated," says West, who volunteers for People for Puget Sound, an environmental group. "They're doing this because they don't understand how important the Endangered Species Act is."
As Congress returns from its August recess, environmentalists and property-rights activists are focused on Rep. Richard Pombo, a California rancher who is chairman of the House Resources Committee. Later this month, Pombo is expected to introduce legislation to overhaul the 32-year-old Endangered Species Act, with House passage expected by year's end.
A draft of the bill that leaked earlier this summer "was comprehensive in trying to undo what's been done over the last 30 years" to protect endangered species, said Patti Goldman, Seattle-based lawyer for the Earthjustice law firm.
Before Pombo was tapped by Republican leaders to head the Resources Committee, he was one of the most virulent attackers of the landmark law. For example, Pombo in 1995 accused the "arrogant" U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service of trying "to make California farmers vassals of the federal government" by enforcing the statute.
But now Pombo speaks of "updating" and "modernizing" the law.
"The act isn't working to recover species now," he said during a recent visit to Snohomish County. "At the same time, it's caused a lot of conflict with private property owners. We have to have an act that works and eliminates a lot of those conflicts we have."
Pombo and other detractors say the law is broken because only a handful of species have ever recovered to the point they no longer require protection. Conservationists, however, point out that it's done a very good job of keeping species from going extinct.
In negotiations with Democratic leaders, Pombo has been able to reach agreement on a number of important points, said Brian Kennedy, a spokesman for the Resources Committee. "Take a good, close, hard look at this (bill) when it comes out," Kennedy said. "Put the partisan political hyperbole aside and really look."
Pombo, he said, "does have all the best interests at heart in trying to make this program work for species and for property owners and communities alike."
Continue reading this story from the Seattle P-I:
Endangered Species Act Under Fire
