02-05-2000

HUMAN RESOURCES: Bugged by Birds and Bees, Resources Serves Sockeye

Last fall, in a rare moment of political harmony, Democratic and
Republican leaders of the House Resources Committee set aside their bitter
differences and announced a bipartisan effort to pass a major conservation
bill, the Conservation and Reinvestment Act. CARA may yet survive and
become law. But the committee's new spirit of bipartisanship? Gone, and
probably for good.


At a Feb. 2 hearing on the Endangered Species Act, the committee's
political proclivities were restored to their default settings-polarized
and rigid.


To be sure, a few lawmakers pleaded for peace. "What we're going
to do in this hearing process is to have an exchange of information with a
sense of tolerance for somebody else's opinion . . . [and] some sense of
understanding," said Rep. Wayne T. Gilchrest, R-Md.


Then Chairman Don Young, R-Alaska, turned the gavel over to Rep. Richard
Pombo, R-Calif., an ardent property-rights advocate, to solicit views on
Young's Common Sense Protections for Endangered Species Act (H.R. 3160).
The bill is part of a package advanced by Young, Pombo, and others to
strike what they call a better balance between species protection and
property rights .


Electric utilities, construction firms, loggers, and farmers testified in
favor of the bill; they have long complained of being deprived of the full
use of their property because of the 1973 Endangered Species Act.


And Pombo said the law has failed in its goal of full recovery of species
and has done so at the high price of property rights. "Why should
a property owner . . . be deprived of the right to use his land . . . just
because there are endangered species or its habitat on his
property?" he asked.


But two environmentalists testified that the bill would undo key
provisions of current law. They complained that the hearing ignored a
rival bill (H.R. 960) by Resources ranking member George Miller, D-Calif.,
that they contend would strengthen the species act.


A second round of hearings will be held in March.



Robert Ourlian

National Journal