To put it bluntly, many of the policies promoted to address the most serious and high profile environmental problems—climate change, declining biodiversity, oceanic dead zones, and tropical deforestation—simply aren’t working. Worse, some of those policies have become politically divisive and, in more than a few cases, actually make the problems worse.

It’s time to reconsider what we’re doing.

For the sake of this discussion, we can view environmentalism as a kind of social operating system, akin to a computer’s operating system. Like computer operating systems, environmentalism has proceeded through a series of versions, which can be referred to as Env1.0, 2.0, etc. This essay describes and evaluates Env1.0, which was in operation from about 1900 to about 1970, and Env2.0, which has been in operation since 1970. It then lays out a vision for Env3.0.

Env1.0, that of Theodore Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot (sometimes called conservationism), was grounded in the idea of a human-centered conservation of the environment. Env1.0 was primarily about making sure that humans didn’t over-consume natural resources that humanity might want to use later. The rallying cry of Env1.0 might have been, ‘Save the whales! We will want to eat them later.’ I joke, but this was actually a decent starting point for an environmental operating system because it was scaled to our then-understanding of the environment, both locally and globally. It also reflected what we had the ability to influence in any meaningful way at the time. Unfortunately, it didn’t work well enough and didn’t fulfill our evolving ideas about the environment. The passenger pigeon still went extinct.

Env2.0, founded by people such as Julia Hill, Rachel Carson, Paul Ehrlich, and David Suzuki, and now associated with rituals such as Earth Day, non-governmental organizations such as Greenpeace, Earth First!, and Sierra Club, marked a significant departure from Env1.0.

In Env2.0, nature was seen to have intrinsic value outside of its utility to humanity and lie largely beyond the human power of rational management. Thus, the goal of Env2.0 wasn’t about maintaining and preserving the flow of environmental goods and services feeding human society but sought to wall off the environment from human society as much as possible. The rallying cry of Env2.0 might be caricatured as, ‘The environment is more important than us, we can only bung it up, so leave it alone!’

But Env2.0 is also failing on its own stated terms. Nature is neither being conserved via Env.1.0 nor has it been elevated above human needs and desires or left alone in its perfection via Env2.0.

While most of the drivers of Env2.0 were quite reasonable, it is failing—not because it was wrong to sound the alarm about environmental degradation and humanity’s role in that degradation. That was largely correct. Nor have environmentalists been wrong in pushing for environmental degradation remediation and greater ecological and human health protections. That was right as well. Even the fact that Env2.0 wasn’t particularly frugal in its methods (to put it lightly) isn’t grounds for calling it a failure. No, Env2.0 is failing for fundamental physical reasons. And by physical, I mean the fundamental cause-begets-effect, gravity-is-a-bitch kind of physical. Env2.0 is running afoul of the laws of both the physical world and intrinsic human nature. Here are three examples.

First, Env2.0 approaches generally ignore a defining characteristic of life: that living organisms respond to external stimuli. Put simply, human beings respond to incentives. Economics is the study of how humans respond to incentives. And all life is economic in one way or another. Paying attention to incentives when you’re looking at the movement of, say, glucose through an ecosystem but ignoring incentives when considering the flow of money in human ecosystems is a prescription for failure. Simply put, setting people against their own best interests and forcing them to pursue someone else’s interests makes them likely to refuse to go along with the plan.

Second, when Env2.0 concerns turn toward practical solutions, policy proponents seem to lose sight of how living systems actually respond to threats. Nature is dynamic and resilient, balancing the rigid and the flexible, continually evolving, but still highly efficient (ecologically, engineering, and biologically economic). But when it comes to regulation, environmental activists focus overwhelmingly on rigid prescriptions and inflexible regulation, attempting to pin humanity’s relationship to nature down to their specific vision of how an environmental utopia might appear, right down to setting the optimal numbers of polar bears that would constitute a “healthy ecosystem.” This approach has often been self-defeating because it fails to grasp how nature actually works and it conflicts with dynamic number one: people respond to incentives, and people want things like prosperity, liberty, health, opportunity, children, housing, jobs, and other things that are not satisfied by the Env2.0 approach.

Despite the claims of proponents that we can have both Env2.0 and all other human desires met, the reality comes back to science fiction author Robert Heinlein’s universal law:  “There Ain’t No Such Thing as a Free Lunch.”

At times, Env2.0 has indeed appeared to embrace policies that are resilient, dynamic, and take account of human desires with some market-based measures, such as emission trading, tradeable quotas for fisheries, and pricing mechanisms such as carbon taxes, energy taxes, and other economically mediated solution pathways.

The usual exemplar of this approach (and nearly the only one that has been given a serious effort in the United States) sought to control air emissions that caused acid rain. Some Env2.0 advocates argued that pollution causing acid rain was addressed efficiently with a market mechanism and that ambient lead pollution, and a few other air pollutants, were also managed with market mechanisms. They usually assert that carbon taxes are a market mechanism as well. However, these arguments are peripherally true but centrally false. What most people think of as market-based environmental control systems may well be resilient, flexible, efficient, and decentralized, giving people a certain degree of latitude to express their preferences through choices in a “market.”

But environmental trading systems to date haven’t tapped into the critical part of what lets markets genuinely manifest the truc cost of something by allowing individuals to assess the costs and benefits of trade without artificial constraints. Rather, in current environmental-trading practice, some third-party makes the value assessments, imposes its preferred outcome in accordance with its view, and allows for a subset of the range of choices individuals might make freely.

In other words, sulfur trading, lead trading, and carbon trading are pseudo-market systems, not genuine ones, and they do not embody the resilience that is missing from Env2.0. That is not to say that they did not achieve benefits: they most certainly did. However, they do not disprove the fact that Env2.0 was primarily a system of command-and-control, not one that embraced true market-driven or even market-based environmental policies.

A third reason why Env2.0 is failing is that it didn’t live up to its original mantra: think globally, act locally. Rather than allowing for a diversity of environmental protection approaches to flourish at municipal, state, or regional levels, the environmental movement quickly moved to centralize such regulations, first at the state level (in places like California), and then increasingly at the national level, and ultimately at the global level (through the United Nations).

Each step toward centralization was a step along a primrose path. Yes, it was a predictable and readily-available approach—after all, governments have regulated for as long as we’ve had governments—but the further removed from the needs of people at their own local levels, the less uniform were the costs and benefits allocated to different people and different communities. All of this led to decreasing support in environmental policies from different segments of the public for various regulatory regimes, and the subversion—overtly or covertly—of those regimes.

One example of this would include the alienation of states that were heavily invested in coal production or power generation versus those states better endowed with lower-carbon sources of energy and economic growth. And another example is the one-size-fits-few problem with designating broad brush carbon targets that, by causing energy prices to rise, disproportionately impacts lower-income earners more than it does higher-income earners.

That’s not to say there have not been important and notable environmental successes.

Nobody wants to return to the pollution levels of the 1960s and 1970s. I know I don’t—I carried an asthma inhaler ever since collapsing from an asthma attack during high school physical education while running laps in California’s notoriously smoggy San Fernando Valley. And, only a cretin would not celebrate the resurgence of whale populations, the protection of migratory bird populations, and our most iconic raptor species. Successes of Env2.0 make up a fairly long list.

But as I mentioned at the outset, the rigid compulsory/engineering approach of Env2.0 is increasingly running into dead ends. For example, we are continuously failing to achieve emission targets, reduction deadlines, treaty obligations, measurable improvements to climate stability, biodiversity targets, and so on. National and International environmental protection targets have been missed far more than they’ve ever been hit. Virtually all national targets for greenhouse gas emissions have been missed, and almost no serious people think current greenhouse gas control targets (net-zero by 2050) are in any way attainable, much less compatible with the living standard achieved in developed countries, and desired around the world.

In the meantime, technological breakthroughs promised by Env2.0 (which were to have spontaneously arisen because, ironically, markets) have stubbornly failed to appear. Despite subsidies, electric vehicles still make up a tiny fraction of the automobile market. Wind and solar power are intermittent, as California was recently reminded, and, because of the need for scarce materials and redundant backup systems, renewables are still more expensive than fossil fuels. The long-promised super-batteries that would let people power their homes off the grid, and even power entire cities, states, and countries using wind and solar are nowhere to be seen. And now the public hears rhetoric that asserts a “climate emergency” that dispenses with the very idea that humans can sustain the quality of life they’ve worked so hard to achieve, instead cautioning us to prepare for a dystopian future while still futilely plugging away at the same failed policies that got us here.

So what’s the answer?

If at first you don’t succeed, revise and resurge. Now that Env2.0 is crashing painfully against the unyielding shores of reality, it’s time to turn toward approaches that work with fundamental human nature, economic incentives, fundamental ecological system characteristics, and fundamental physical reality by moving away from the static, non-economic, physically impossible approaches of Env2.0.

It’s time for Env3.0.

Doing this efficiently requires differentiating between two broad classes of environmental problems. One class consists of those environmental problems we know can be successfully managed with the resilient and dynamic systems to accurately manifest, and efficiently distribute property rights, which include the right to property in and of your own body, as well as to things outside of it. The overwhelming majority of environmental problems fit into this category, with the limits mostly being a matter of whether or not a given jurisdiction has a market-compatible policy environment. Local air pollution, local water pollution, local chemical exposure, local resource over-utilization, local wildlife endangerment, can (and sometimes have) been managed through markets and the rule of law. And by “local,” I mean “within one geopolitical region,” which can be cities, states, or even countries, but are virtually never transnational, trans-economic, or trans-environmental-boundary problems.

In 1991, Terry Anderson and Donald Leal published Free Market Environmentalism, an excellent book that summarized and expanded our understanding of why environmental problems exist and how incentives, markets, and property rights could help solve those problems. Their answer was not, as the prevailing orthodoxy of the time held, that humans were just selfish and thoughtless despoilers of the world that had to be regulated into submission to what the environmentalist elites demanded of them. Unfortunately, some Env2.0 aficionados who distrust people’s inclination to prioritize Env2.0’s particular view of what it means to have a healthy environment (often meaning one untainted by human hands) have resisted this property-based approach to environmental management and protection.

But sometimes we can’t use property rights and a legal framework for pollutants we really care about, pollutants that cross borders, that cannot be traced to a responsible party, that persist beyond the time when the original actors can be held responsible for remediating their harms. Greenhouse gas pollution is one of these problems. So is conventional air pollution that moves between jurisdictions, even at the continental level. Plastic pollution is another, and biodiversity (especially of migratory wildlife) is still another. Ocean mammal protection would be such a problem (save for some revolutionary technology that would allow for private management of animals like whales), as would the risk of polar bear extinction. And those critics of environmentalism based purely on property rights are correct: some environmental problems simply won’t yield to that framework.

That’s where a different approach from Env2.0 needs to be brought to bear. What is needed is a management approach that shifts away from viewing the goal of environmental protection as the meeting of fixed, often arbitrary and unattainable targets and timelines for the reduction of single sources of environmental concern (such as, say, greenhouse gases) toward a focus on building the overall resilience of our integrated, globally shared, social-ecological system that is actually compatible with those stubborn laws of physical reality and human behavior mentioned above. This is a framework that treats nature and the human economy as an integrated social-ecological system, of the sort described by economist Elinor Ostrom in Governing the Commons.

Before going further though, we need to define what we mean by “resilience,” which has, unfortunately, become something of a code word lately for “more government” in all sorts of realms—from infectious disease recovery to managing climate change to any number of other perceived social ills.

The kind of resilience we’re talking about here is not about preventing any or all changes to a social-ecological system or imposing a pre-defined vision of exactly what that system is supposed to look like, it is about managing such systems in such a way that they can bounce back from disturbance, to return to a desirable base state.

In the case of the United States, one might define that desirable base state as consisting of a society based on the principles of the Constitution, and the other documents of America’s founding as well as the strong environmental protection ethic that has come to permeate American sensibilities

But what are the elements that make a social-ecological system (SES) resilient? More importantly, what elements of SES organization or management can make an SES less resilient, or more fragile.

Identifying the components of SES resilience was the goal of researchers David A. Kerner and J. Scott Thomas (Kerner and Thomas) in “Resilience Attributes of Social-Ecological Systems: Framing Metrics for Management.”  Kerner and Thomas break SES-resilience determinants into three broad categories: those which promote or compromise system stability, those which promote or compromise the system’s adaptive capacity, and those that promote or compromise the system’s readiness, which can be seen as the system’s speed and scope of responsiveness. Let’s consider a few examples.

Among the things that might compromise SES stability, Kerner and Thomas identify the presence of “single points of failure” which might cause the entire system to fail:

• System balance, or “The degree to which a system is not skewed toward one strength at the expense of others;”
• And system dispersion: “The degree to which the system is distributed over space and time”.

Among the things that might compromise SES adaptive capacity, Kerner and Thomas identify:

• System response diversity, or the ability to employ alternative components to withstand stresses;
• Collaborative capacity, or the “potential of system managers to work cooperatively to ensure system function in a timely and flexible manner;”
• Connectivity, or how readily a system can exchange resources and information internally and externally to ensure continued function in the face of existential threats;
• And learning capacity.

Finally, Kerner and Thomas identify some of the system attributes that might compromise SES readiness, including:

• The absence of simplicity or understandability;
• The presence of False Subsidies that may do more harm than good;
• And the presence or absence of autonomy, the degree to which “an organization, operation, or function can self-select alternate actions, configurations, and strategies to achieve the specific mission or function—essentially, control over its destiny.”

Astute readers will readily recognize that market systems or, as a second-best alternative, market-based environmental protection measures, will likely perform better on the various parameters of building SES-resilience than would either the conservation approaches of Env1.0 or the command-and-control approaches of Env2.0.

Summary

We should be concerned about the failure of Env2.0, that, through its lens of humanity as being somehow outside of the environment, dismisses the physical and evolutionary laws that govern human behavior, and produces an utterly dysfunctional environmental protection regime of political antagonism which fails at its self-proclaimed priority: protecting the environment.

What is needed now, 120 years since the advent of Env1.0, and 50 years after the advent of Env2.0, is a new system. We need an Env.3.0 that recognizes most environmental problems, especially localized problems, can be fixed most efficiently, and with respect for human needs, with genuine, bottom-up market-based management systems.

Env3.0 would also move beyond the limitations of Env2.0 by managing systems not as either “human” systems or “environmental systems,” but as integrated social-ecological systems that require more integrated thinking and accommodation of different people’s needs and desires, with a focus on resilience, rather than static, arbitrarily defined targets, timelines, quantitative goals, and inflexibility.

The post It Is Time for Environmentalism 3.0 appeared first on Reason Foundation.

The maps shown above give you the before and after picture. Almost all of Florida is substantially affected, and most of the Gulf Coast will see many more species listed under the ESA.

But the impact on all of us will be even greater than the maps show, because all of the species in Florida newly identified in the lawsuit live in freshwater aquatic habitat and thus measures to protect them will be most likely on a watershed basis.

The watershed for each patch of habitat can be a vast area. This means that huge tracts of farm and ranch land are likely to feel the pinch of drastic land-use restrictions.

The Center for Biological Diversity, one of the groups in the 2011 lawsuit, has pushed for far-reaching new regulations to protect the species. In a filing to the federal government, it said that in Florida, because the habitat needs of species extend beyond the water channel, entire watersheds must be considered to identify threats to aquatic species, not just localized sites where species occur.

It is safe to say that virtually every farm of any kind in the region will be in the watershed of at least one new endangered species. Everyday farming activities that create sediments or runoff, or use fertilizers or pesticides, impact a watershed to some extent and thus all may come under restrictions to protect habitat.

Most people want to see endangered species protected, but also want to minimize the impact on agriculture, jobs, recreation and the economy.

Unfortunately, the ESA has a lousy track record. Few species have recovered from being listed as endangered, and the federal government has not learned from the failure of punitive, top-down approaches and the success of more cooperative and incentive-based approaches.

Florida is now making the same mistake, revising its Imperiled Species Management Plan to double down on top-down, highly restrictive measures.

If we punish landowners for having habitat for endangered species on their land, we create huge incentives to hide the presence of species or to destroy that habitat. Instead, we need to make habitat a good thing to have on your land, or at least a manageable challenge.

Texas has pioneered such an approach. It focused on voluntary, cooperative and local approaches to conservation plans. And these plans help protect species and their habitat; manage the costs of protection; and provide predictability for landowners and others in the regulated community. This common-sense endeavor creates a positive set of conditions around protection, rather than using fear of punishment.

The Texas approach combines:

• A government task force of state and local agencies that includes both environmental and economic goals to balance protection of species with economic costs.
• Integration of high-quality scientific research on species, habitat and the costs and effectiveness of protection options.
• Conservation plans based on voluntary, market-based approaches similar to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Conservation Reserve Program in which state and local agencies share property owners’ cost of protecting habitat for endangered species and provide technical assistance.
• Confidentiality for landowners to protect them from punitive federal regulations if they comply with an approved conservation plan.

This approach was so successful in Texas at protecting the Dunes Sagebrush Lizard that its population grew dramatically in just two years, prompting the U.S. Fish and Wildlife service to conclude in 2012 that the lizard was not endangered.

This was despite the lizard’s preferred habitat being in the Texas oil fields. Landowners and oil companies were able to find cost-effective ways to preserve habitat while still drilling for oil and gas. Both the lizard and man benefitted.

Florida would do well to look at the Texas model and adapt it for managing the new wave of endangered species, as well as those already listed by the ESA. It creates incentives to participate and protect fragile species, rather than hide the existence of species, destroy habitat or embark on long legal battles to try to prevent economic ruin.

Adrian Moore is vice president of Reason Foundation. This column first appeared in the Business Observer.

The post Florida Is Making Mistakes With Endangered Species Act appeared first on Reason Foundation.

The best parts of the decision:

1) The greater sage grouse was not proposed for listing under the Endangered Species Act, which is good news for the bird and landowners.

The Endangered Species Act has a well-deserved reputation for putting severe restrictions on otherwise normal and legal forms of land and resource use, such as farming and energy development. When landowners are put under the restrictions, this often works against species conservation by creating strong incentives for landowners and others to destroy and degrade wildlife habitat in hopes of getting or keeping the endangered species off of the land.

2) The Interior Department recognized that successful cooperative conservation efforts for the sage grouse have paid off.

Over the past decade states have led highly successful conservation efforts that are based on partnerships with environment groups, energy companies, landowners and others. These partnerships have been based on incentives and an “all lands” approach that includes federal, state and private lands that have helped the sage grouse population increase over the past 10 years by .78 percent annually and grow to a total population of almost 425,000.

3) These successful conservation efforts by a wide range of federal, state, municipal and private actors will get some additional breathing room.

Several Western governors had expressed fear that the successful partnerships that took years to develop would be wiped out if the sage grouse was listed as endangered. Often the mere threat of the Endangered Species Act is enough to cause people to refrain from conserving species, as well as to take more direct action, such as habitat destruction and degradation. The decision should bring some certainty to the West.

With the good, however, comes the bad, and yesterday’s announcement had some bad points too:

1) Instead of listing the greater sage grouse under the Endangered Species Act, the federal government is implementing 15 amended plans that govern use of over 60 million acres of federal land and have some strict Endangered Species Act-like restrictions.

Over the long-term, these penalty-based plans may end up harming the sage grouse for essentially the same reasons the Endangered Species Act too often harms species – the creation of strong incentives for landowners and others to refrain from conserving species and even to destroy and degrade species habitat.

One of the strongest statements against the decision came from Utah Gov. Gary Herbert, who said in a statement, “I am deeply concerned with the decisions of the Departments of Interior and Agriculture, which constitute a significant overreach by the federal government on this issue. The state of Utah has implemented a successful sage-grouse conservation plan that has been rejected by the federal government, jeopardizing conservation of the species and reasonable economic growth in Utah. Today’s actions constitute the equivalent of a listing decision outside the normal process and fail to support an appropriate balance between conservation and other public uses of the land.”

2) By significantly restricting use of federal lands, the 15 amended plans may have the unintended consequences. Private lands, even though they constitute just 31 percent of the sage grouse’s habitat, are disproportionately important because they contain over 80 percent of the moist habitat-springs, streams, ponds, and seasonal wetlands-that sage grouse, especially hens and chicks, depend on during the summer.

Thousands of private ranchers who live in the sage grouse’s vast range constitute the largest group of potential conservation allies for the sage grouse. The new plans limiting where livestock can graze, creating large buffer zones for sage grouse habitat, and adding monitoring by the Bureau of Land Management may make life difficult for these ranchers who have previously been working cooperatively with states. Successful conservation efforts need ranchers as allies, not enemies.

3) The sage grouse saga may not be over.

Environmental groups have strongly hinted they will sue the federal government to try to compel the listing of the greater sage grouse under the Endangered Species Act, as well as try to make the 15 amended federal land use plans more onerous.

Brian Seasholes is director of the endangered species program at Reason Foundation and author of the report “Sage Grouse Conservation: The Proven Successful Approach.”

The post The Best and Worst Parts of the Decision Not to List the Sage Grouse as Endangered appeared first on Reason Foundation.

The best parts of the decision:

1) The greater sage grouse was not proposed for listing under the Endangered Species Act, which is good news for the bird and landowners.

The Endangered Species Act has a well-deserved reputation for putting severe restrictions on otherwise normal and legal forms of land and resource use, such as farming and energy development. When landowners are put under the restrictions, this often works against species conservation by creating strong incentives for landowners and others not to destroy and degrade wildlife habitat in hopes of getting or keeping the endangered species off of the land.

2) The Interior Department recognized that successful cooperative conservation efforts for the sage grouse have paid off.

Over the past decade states have led highly successful conservation efforts that are based on partnerships with environment groups, energy companies, landowners and others. These partnerships have been based on incentives and an “all lands” approach that includes federal, state and private lands that have helped the sage grouse population increase over the past 10 years by .78 percent annually and grow to a total population of almost 425,000.

3) These successful conservation efforts by a wide range of federal, state, municipal and private actors will get some additional breathing room.

Several Western governors had expressed fear that the successful partnerships that took years to develop would be wiped out if the sage grouse was listed as endangered. Often the mere threat of the Endangered Species Act is enough to cause people to refrain from conserving species, as well as to take more direct action, such as habitat destruction and degradation. The decision should bring some certainty to the West.

With the good, however, comes the bad, and yesterday’s announcement had some bad points too:

1) Instead of listing the greater sage grouse under the Endangered Species Act, the federal government is implementing 15 amended plans that govern use of over 60 million acres of federal land and have some strict Endangered Species Act-like restrictions.

Over the long-term, these penalty-based plans may end up harming the sage grouse for essentially the same reasons the Endangered Species Act too often harms species – the creation of strong incentives for landowners and others to refrain from conserving species and even to destroy and degrade species habitat.

One of the strongest statements against the decision came from Utah Gov. Gary Herbert, who said in a statement, “I am deeply concerned with the decisions of the Departments of Interior and Agriculture, which constitute a significant overreach by the federal government on this issue. The state of Utah has implemented a successful sage-grouse conservation plan that has been rejected by the federal government, jeopardizing conservation of the species and reasonable economic growth in Utah. Today’s actions constitute the equivalent of a listing decision outside the normal process and fail to support an appropriate balance between conservation and other public uses of the land.”

2) By significantly restricting use of federal lands, the 15 amended plans may have the unintended consequences. Private lands, even though they constitute just 31 percent of the sage grouse’s habitat, are disproportionately important because they contain over 80 percent of the moist habitat-springs, streams, ponds, and seasonal wetlands-that sage grouse, especially hens and chicks, depend on during the summer.

Thousands of private ranchers who live in the sage grouse’s vast range constitute the largest group of potential conservation allies for the sage grouse. The new plans limiting where livestock can graze, creating large buffer zones for sage grouse habitat, and adding monitoring by the Bureau of Land Management may make life difficult for these ranchers who have previously been working cooperatively with states. Successful conservation efforts need ranchers as allies, not enemies.

3) The sage grouse saga may not be over.

Environmental groups have strongly hinted they will sue the federal government to try to compel the listing of the greater sage grouse under the Endangered Species Act, as well as try to make the 15 amended federal land use plans more onerous.

Brian Seasholes is director of the endangered species program at Reason Foundation and author of the report “Sage Grouse Conservation: The Proven Successful Approach.”

The post The Best and Worst Parts of the Decision Not to List the Sage Grouse as Endangered appeared first on Reason Foundation.

The Interior Department has a September 30, 2015 deadline to decide whether to propose listing the greater sage grouse under the Endangered Species Act. However, the Department has strongly suggested-and it has also been reported-that listing could be precluded by 15 amended federal plans governing the use of 61.5 million acres of federal land located in sage grouse habitat.2 This aspect of the sage grouse story, in which 98 land use plans have been combined into 15 “mega” sage grouse-specific plans, is very significant but has generally received less attention than a potential listing under the Endangered Species Act.

Communities, landowners, ranchers, states and businesses are very worried that they will be restricted by penalties and severe controls on land and resource use. Two separate studies commissioned by the Western Energy Alliance estimate the effects of sage grouse regulations, due to a potential listing under the Endangered Species Act and the 15 amended federal plans, on annual economic losses (revenues, taxes, earnings and economic output) and annual jobs losses:

• Endangered Species Act listing (oil and gas industry): $5.5 billion and 18,000 jobs
• 15 amended federal plans (all sectors of the economy): $7.7 billion and 31,000 jobs

With the stakes so high, a closer look at the sage grouse, its population status and conservation measures taken to help the species is warranted.

The greater sage grouse currently has a minimum population of almost 425,000 and a positive population growth rate of 0.78% annually from 2005-2015, according to a recent report by the Western Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies.5 Longer term, it appears that the range-wide sage grouse population trend is similar to that in Wyoming. From when data collection began in the 1950s and 60s, the sage grouse population in Wyoming initially declined but have experienced “a general leveling off since the mid-1990s,” according to Tom Christiansen, sage grouse coordinator for Wyoming’s Game and Fish Department.

Despite this trend, along with the increase over the past decade, there is controversy over whether sage grouse populations are increasing or decreasing, much of which is due to the time frame, or frames, used to evaluate the population. There are widespread claims of long-term sage grouse decline, which tend to rely on a single declining trend, beginning at the 1960s or 1980s, to the present. A more accurate method to evaluate the population is to look at the three chronological trends within the past 50 years: decline, stabilization, and increase over the past ten years.

The larger point is the greater sage grouse is doing well and does not meet any reasonable standard for listing under the Endangered Species Act, or for amending land use plans for 61.5 million acres of federal land to give sage grouse considerations primacy in the management of these lands.

The greater sage grouse’s population has stabilized and then gradually increased over the past two decades due primarily to more favorable weather conditions. Sage grouse populations naturally fluctuate on roughly 10-year cycles, most notably in response to rainfall: when there is more rain, populations tend to increase; when there is less rain, populations tend to decrease. Successful conservation efforts have likely been a secondary contribution to the increase in sage grouse population. Given that weather conditions were not changed by federal agency actions, the relevant issue is what conservation efforts helped the sage grouse population stabilize and increase over the past two decades.

Attachments

• Sage Grouse Conservation: The Proven Successful Approach

The post Sage Grouse Conservation: The Proven Successful Approach appeared first on Reason Foundation.

Due to this approach, the Act discourages landowners from harboring and conserving endangered species, encourages landowners to rid their property of endangered species and the habitat necessary to support them, and discourages landowners from allowing scientists and researchers on their land to study endangered species.

ESA’s Penalties and Property Rights

It’s not hard to understand why the Endangered Species Act is so feared by landowners, which results in the Act being so counterproductive. By violating landowners’ property rights, the Act makes otherwise normal and legal forms of land and resource use illegal, such as farming, homebuilding and timber harvesting. Furthermore, through the Act’s prohibition on “harm” to listed species, the federal government can prohibit land use that merely occurs in a type of habitat suitable to a listed species even if the species is not necessarily present.

The ESA’s penalties are severe: $100,000 and/or 1 year in jail for individuals committing misdemeanor harm to a fish, bird, or even its habitat, which increases to $250,000 for a felony. For corporations the jail time is the same but the fines double to $200,000 for a misdemeanor and $500,000 for a felony. When these fines are combined with two other factors-(1) that there are no objective standards for what constitutes harm to species habitat so the process by which the federal government determines this is necessarily arbitrary and unpredictable for landowners, and (2) federal regulatory agencies have the ability to use the ESA to lock up vast amounts of land and resources-the Act’s fearsome reputation becomes apparent.

Private Landowners Are the Key

The Endangered Species Act’s penalty-based approach is especially counterproductive to the goal of conserving species because private landowners are the linchpin for the conservation of this country’s biodiversity, including endangered species. There are several reasons for this:

1. Private landowners own most of the habitat for endangered and imperiled species. Almost 80% of endangered species depended on private land for all or some of their habitat, compared to 50% for federal land. In addition, 91% of all endangered species had at least some habitat on nonfederal land.

2. Private lands are also crucially important for endangered species in states with large amounts of federal land because private landowners own most of the well-watered land, which also tends to be the land with the most biodiversity.

A good example of this is the greater sage grouse, which is being considered for listing under the Endangered Species Act across 10 states and over 160 million acres. The sage grouse is usually associated with public lands because 61% of its habitat is on federal land, compared to 31% on private land (with the remaining 8% split among state and Native American lands). Yet a new study of sage grouse habitat in California, Oregon and northwest Nevada found that 81% of the critically important moist habitat-irrigated meadows, streamsides, and seasonal wetlands-sage grouse depend on for food in summer is privately owned, despite that it constitutes only 2% of the bird’s total habitat.

3. In the past 10 years it has become increasingly clear that many endangered species are what is known as “conservation reliant.” This means that these species will depend indefinitely on a variety of conservation activities to ensure their continued survival because the threats to these species are impossible to eliminate. These actions can include predator and parasite control, prescribed fires, and mowing and grazing. A classic example is the red-cockaded woodpecker of the southern U.S., which evolved requiring frequent, low-intensity fires to maintain the open, park-like forests it inhabits. Historically, fires would occur due to lightning or Native Americans setting them to improve habitat for hunting. Over the last hundred years or so, fire suppression by humans has reduced the frequency of fires. So the red-cockaded woodpecker is reliant on people maintaining its habitat through controlled fires, mechanical brush removal or application of herbicides.

A number of prominent scientists estimate that 84% of species under the Endangered Species Act are conservation reliant. The implication of this is quite profound because it means that the Act’s ultimate goal-recovering species so that they no longer require the Act’s protection and can be delisted-is unattainable for the vast majority of species.

The fact that so many species will likely require perpetual conservation has an important implication. It provides justification for eliminating the Endangered Species Act’s penalties because the goodwill and willing cooperation of private landowners will be the key factor in determining the fate of species that require ongoing help from the landowners that harbor them.

4. Endangered species are spread across hundreds of millions of acres, often on private lands in rural areas that are sparsely populated and far from the eyes of regulatory authorities. So it is simply impossible for enforcers and supporters of the Endangered Species Act to patrol constantly this country’s hundreds of millions of acres of endangered species habitat. Short of turning the U.S. into a police state, private landowners will always be able lawfully to make habitat unsuitable for species that are already listed or proposed for listing, lawfully refrain from notifying authorities about the presence of rare species on their land, and most landowners will be able to break the law without detection by destroying species and habitat. Given these realities, the government must find a way to trust and gain the willing cooperation of landowners, many of whom good conservationists, proud to conserve species and would respond positively to incentives instead of penalties.

Four Ways ESA Harms Species

There are four ways in which the Endangered Species Act can harm species.

• Scorched Earth: Due to the Act’s punitive nature, some landowners are financially encouraged to pursue a “scorched earth” strategy, destroying habitat in order to make it unsuitable for endangered species. This is the most damaging because habitat destruction is the leading cause of imperilment for species in the U.S. Not only are imperiled species harmed by ESA-induced habitat destruction but so are many more common species that depend on the same habitat.
• Deny Access: Landowners deny researchers and public agencies access to their land because they fear that the discovery of species or suitable habitat will result in land and resource use restrictions.
• Keep Quiet: For essentially the same reasons as those landowners who deny access, other landowners keep quiet in the hope that the presence of endangered or potentially endangered species, as well as suitable habitat, is not noticed by regulatory authorities or non-profit groups that are proponents of the Endangered Species Act and often assist regulatory authorities.
• Shoot, shovel, shut-up: Because it consists of a catchy phrase that has been repeated in the media, direct persecution of species and then destroying the evidence is likely the most well-known way the Endangered Species Act causes harm to species, yet it also likely occurs least frequently among the four ways the ESA causes harm to species because it is often difficult to kill wildlife, especially rare and elusive species, many people likely have a moral aversion to wanton killing of wildlife, and many people also are likely averse to breaking the law.

Continue Reading the Full Testimony (.pdf)

The post The Importance of Property Rights for Endangered Species Conservation appeared first on Reason Foundation.

As for understanding the center’s philosophy, there is fortunately an invaluable resource. In 1999 a revealing profile of the group appeared in The New Yorker. And, just as fortunately, the full text of the article is available online courtesy of the center, even though providing the article appears to violate copyright law. But this should not be surprising because the center apparently has no regard for property rights; whether for intellectual property, such as the article, or the very real property that the group likes lock up and deny use of through the Endangered Species Act.

The Center for Biological Diversity makes no secret of its views, as reported by The New Yorker. Kieran Suckling, the group’s co-founder and Executive Director, contends the group is ultimately striving for a “decentering and disempowering of the human” in its efforts. Suckling and Peter Galvin, another of the center’s co-founders, began their activist careers in the late 1980s by participating in protest actions, such as sitting in trees to prevent logging, with groups like Earth First. During this time, Sucking came to a realization about the Endangered Species Act; “We’re crazy to sit in trees when there’s this incredible law where we can make people do whatever we want.”

Soon after founding the Center for Biological Diversity in 1989, Suckling, Galvin and Dr. Robin Silver, a Phoenix physician and group’s third co-founder, began using the Endangered Species Act to restrict timber cutting and cattle grazing on federal lands in Arizona and New Mexico. They have been devastatingly successful. “We’ve basically crushed the timber industry” in the Southwest, Suckling bragged to The New Yorker. In order for the center to achieve its goals, “we will have to inflict severe economic pain,” according to Robin Silver. “We’d like to close thousands of miles of roads, and see a huge amount of retooling of local economies,” asserts Peter Galvin.

According to The New Yorker article:

The obvious irony about the center is that the means to its desired end of a de-technologized society require the most complicated, technical, top-down procedures imaginable; scientific studies of species and habitat, legal petitions, court orders. Suckling cheerfully admits that he’s “using one side of industrial society against itself,” but only temporarily; in the long run, he says, there would be a new order in which plants and animals are part of the polity. For example, legal proceedings could be conducted outdoors-in which case “the trees will make themselves felt.”

Trees with legal standing? Plants and animals as part of the polity? That is radical, to say nothing of completely bonkers and logically impossible. This ideal world that Suckling desires, in which the human is decentered and disempowered, is not possible independent of human thought and action. So Suckling’s belief structure is fundamentally anthropocentric, despite his claims to the contrary.

There is, however, a widespread but mistaken belief that views like Kieran Suckling’s represent a type of New Age pantheism or eco-religion. In fact, the views of Suckling and most in the environmental lobby, whether radical or more mainstream, are fundamentally rooted in the Judeo-Christian tradition. Robert Nelson, professor of public policy at the University of Maryland, has written extensively on this issue, and according to him:

To a greater degree than most environmentalists realize, the real roots of their thinking lie in Christian (and Jewish) sources. One might describe environmentalism as an implicit Christianity-a religion in disguise. In the United States, reflecting the large historic influence of Puritanism on the intellectual and political life of the nation, American environmentalism is an implicit Calvinism. This has been a major contributing factor to its wide success and impact there.

Indeed, Kieran Suckling’s views very much reflect this. After graduating from college in Massachusetts, as detailed in The New Yorker article, Suckling had an epiphany while camping in Badlands National Park in South Dakota en route to Montana (where he hoped to pursue his desire for more wild landscapes and environmental activism):

For the first time in my life, I realized that land is not scenery. Wilderness is not an experience. It’s not something you can control. It’s like grace, like love–it happens to you.

Notwithstanding his professed beliefs, Suckling appears to be less interested in the environment itself than in using the environment as a tool. According to Bill McDonald, an Arizona rancher quoted in The New Yorker:

Kieran Suckling wants to change society, and he believes the environment is the way to do it. When you talk to him about species, his eyes glaze over. When you talk about changing society, he get excited.

In a 1998 interview with J. Zane Walley in Range Magazine, there was this revealing exchange:

Walley: “Can’t you do this [oppose human uses of natural resources] in a humane and gentle way?”

Suckling: “It is sad, but I don’t hear you put that in a direct relationship to the effect on the land. I hear you talk about the pain of the people but I don’t see you match that up with the pain of the species.”

Walley (dumbfounded): “What?”

Suckling: “A loach minnow is more important, than say, Betty and Jim’s ranch-a thousand times more important. I’m not against ranching, it is a job. My concern is the impact on the land.”

The New Yorker article also contains a telling insight from author Nicholas Lemann, as well as a quote from Kieran Suckling:

What deconstructionists usually deconstruct is texts and meanings. But for a deconstructionist turned radical environmentalist, like Kieran Suckling, the only way to get to the desired state of “absolute relativism” among species is to deconstruct stuff that exists in the world: legal arrangements, social and economic forms, and even physical structures.

In his desire for “absolute relativism,” Suckling draws on the work of French philosopher Jacques Derrida. According to Suckling, Derrida “insist[s] that there is no safe haven of clear meaning free from the semantic play of language.” If this seems problematic, even experts have a hard time with it. In a 2000 interview with Reason magazine John Searle, professor of philosophy, had the following to say about Derrida and relativism:

Reason: You’ve debated Richard Rorty and Jacques Derrida. Are they making bad arguments, or are they just being misread?

Searle: With Derrida, you can hardly misread him, because he’s so obscure. Every time you say, “He says so and so,” he always says, “You misunderstood me.” But if you try to figure out the correct interpretation, then that’s not so easy. I once said this to Michel Foucault, who was more hostile to Derrida even than I am, and Foucault said that Derrida practiced the method of obscurantisme terroriste (terrorism of obscurantism). We were speaking French. And I said, “What the hell do you mean by that?” And he said, “He writes so obscurely you can’t tell what he’s saying, that’s the obscurantism part, and then when you criticize him, he can always say, ‘You didn’t understand me; you’re an idiot.’ That’s the terrorism part.” And I like that. So I wrote an article about Derrida. I asked Michel if it was OK if I quoted that passage, and he said yes.

The belief structure of Kieran Suckling, the Center for Biological Diversity, other allies and much of the more mainstream environmental lobby also draws heavily on the idea of wilderness; that there is a pristine state of nature, free from the supposedly malign influence of humans. Wilderness, with its Edenic overtones, including that it is ruined by the hand of man, also reflects the Judeo-Christian roots of the environmental lobby. The New Yorker article includes the following excerpt from a letter Suckling sent to his then-advisor for the philosophy dissertation that would never be finished:

Wilderness is itself an event of deconstruction. Wilderness bewilders. The bewildering is a dis-orienting, a loss of the directionality inherent in will subjectivity. Without centering principle, wilderness is the construction (if such a word makes sense anymore) of every being by every other being, the co-construction of plant, animal, virus, cloud, breeze, stream, rock and mountain. Meanings weave, unweave, proliferate and dissipate. This is the realm of the monstrous, promiscuous Pan, half-human, half-animal, everywhere alive. Socrates panics.

Yet the idea of wilderness, like “absolute relativism,” crumbles under scrutiny. In his seminal article, “The Trouble with Wilderness; or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature,” William Cronon, distinguished professor of environmental history, states:

The time has come to rethink wilderness.

This will seem a heretical claim to many environmentalists, since the idea of wilderness has for decades been a fundamental tenet-indeed, a passion-of the environmental movement, especially in the United States. For many Americans wilderness stands as the last remaining place where civilization, that all too human disease, has not fully infected the earth. It is an island in the polluted sea of urban-industrial modernity, the one place we can turn for escape from our own too-muchness. Seen in this way, wilderness presents itself as the best antidote to our human selves, a refuge we must somehow recover if we hope to save the planet. As Henry David Thoreau once famously declared, “In Wildness is the preservation of the World.”

But is it? The more one knows of its peculiar history, the more one realizes that wilderness is not quite what it seems. Far from being the one place on earth that stands apart from humanity, it is quite profoundly a human creation-indeed, the creation of very particular human cultures at very particular moments in human history. It is not a pristine sanctuary where the last remnant of an untouched, endangered, but still transcendent nature can for at least a little while longer be encountered without the contaminating taint of civilization. Instead, it’s a product of that civilization, and could hardly be contaminated by the very stuff of which it is made. Wilderness hides its unnaturalness behind a mask that is all the more beguiling because it seems so natural. As we gaze into the mirror it holds up for us, we too easily imagine that what we behold is Nature when in fact we see the reflection of our own unexamined longings and desires. For this reason, we mistake ourselves when we suppose that wilderness can be the solution to our culture’s problematic relationships with the nonhuman world, for wilderness is itself no small part of the problem…

Learning to honor the wild-learning to remember and acknowledge the autonomy of the other-means striving for critical self-consciousness in all of our actions. It means the deep reflection and respect must accompany each act of use, and means too that we must always consider the possibility of non-use. It means looking at the part of nature we intend to turn toward our own ends and asking whether we can use it again and again and again-sustainably-without its being diminished in the process. It means never imagining that we can flee into a mythical wilderness to escape history and the obligation to take responsibility for our own actions that history inescapably entails. Most of all, it means practicing remembrance and gratitude, for thanksgiving is the simplest and most basic of ways for us to recollect the nature, the culture, and the history that have come together to make the world as we know it. If wildness can stop being (just) out there and start being (also) in here, if it can start being as humane as it is natural, then perhaps we can get on with the unending task of struggling to live rightly in the world-not just in the garden, not just in the wilderness, but in the home that encompasses them both.

While there is obviously much more that can be written on the topic of the philosophical beliefs of the environmental lobby, especially its more radical wing, the foregoing provides a general sense of the issue. The combination of “absolute relativism,” including its “decentering and disempowering of the human,” coupled with the idea of wilderness, results in the rambling, incoherent philosophy of the Center for Biological Diversity and fellow travelers.

The post The Incoherent Philosophy of the Radical Environmental Lobby appeared first on Reason Foundation.

The ANWR announcement is a clear indication that the administration cannot be trusted to honor its, or previous administrations’, pledges to work with the regulated community on the Endangered Species Act, which includes efforts to prevent species from being listed and lessen the regulatory impacts of species already listed. This unfortunate reality has particular importance for those that are desperately trying to prevent the listing of the greater sage grouse across the bird’s 11-state, 165 million-acre range.

In 1980, President Jimmy Carter signed the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA), one provision of which created the 19.3 million-acre Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Many Alaskans, including the state’s Congressional delegation, were very unhappy about yet more land being put off limits to commercial activities in ANWR and elsewhere.

As part of the grand bargain of ANILCA, 8.9 million acres of ANWR were designated as wilderness, which precludes any development, while 1.5 million acres, or 8% of the refuge, was set aside for potential oil exploration. Of this set-aside, known as the 1002 Area, only a tiny portion would be subject to drilling and exploration activities. It is estimated there are about 18 billion barrels of recoverable oil beneath the 1002 Area, as well as adjacent private lands from which oil can be recovered only if the 1002 Area is opened.

Now the Obama administration wants to designate the remaining 10.4 million acres of ANWR, including the 1002 Area, as wilderness. In so doing, the administration is reneging on the agreement made in 1980 that the 1.5 million acres of the 1002 Area would be retained for oil exploration.

This reneging is very relevant to what is currently going on with the Endangered Species Act. Businesses, landowners and states are cutting all sorts of deals with the Interior Department with the understanding that putting land off limits and sacrificing economic development opportunities now will hopefully result in species not being listed and more favorable regulatory treatment for already-listed species. Unfortunately, the Interior Department cannot be trusted.

For proof of this, look no farther than the Department’s decision in November to list the Gunnison sage grouse. The Department strongly indicated in the 1990s that efforts by Colorado and state’s Gunnison County would prevent listing, especially the enrollment of 64,000 acres of ranch land in conservation easements. In total, Colorado, Utah and Gunnison County spent almost $60 million, put most of the grouse’s habitat in formal conservation agreements, and engaged in cutting-edge research-all of which resulted in a healthy, stable grouse population. And yet this was not good enough for the Interior Department. So it reneged and listed the Gunnison sage grouse.

According to Greg Walcher, Executive Director of the Colorado Department of Natural Resources from 1999-2004, “Listing of the Gunnison sage grouse represents one of the worst broken promises in the history of conservation. Massive investment and local participation was made with the clear understanding that the Gunnison sage grouse would not be added to the federal endangered species list.”

There are several takeaway lessons from the ANWR announcement for those involved with the Endangered Species Act:

First, the federal government cannot be trusted to keep promises, stick to its commitments not to list species, or lessen the regulatory burden for species already listed. This is especially the case if the species is high profile, such as the sage grouse, subject to lobbying by pressure groups, and if the commitment must stick for a long period of time.

Second, initiatives that lessen the regulatory impacts of the Endangered Species Act-such as Safe Harbor, Candidate Conservation Agreements with Assurances and No Surprises-are much less durable and provide much less regulatory certainty than portrayed by the Interior Department because they are done administratively, not statutorily.

And third, given that the Interior Department cannot be trusted and that administrative remedies are insecure, the only durable solution for landowners, business and states dealing with the Endangered Species Act is legislation; either to amend the Act or formulate an entirely new approach.

Brian Seasholes is director of the endangered species project at Reason Foundation. This article originally appeared at Watchdog.org.

The post Why Obama’s Alaskan Wilderness Plan Matters for the Endangered Species Act appeared first on Reason Foundation.

According to the Post story:

[I]n science, a result is supposed to be verifiable by a subsequent experiment. An irreproducible result is inherently squishy.

And so there’s a movement afoot, and building momentum rapidly. Roughly four centuries after the invention of the scientific method, the leaders of the scientific community are recalibrating their requirements, pushing for the sharing of data and greater experimental transparency.

Top-tier journals, such as Science and Nature, have announced new guidelines for the research they publish.

“We need to go back to basics,” said Ritu Dhand, the editorial director of the Nature group of journals. “We need to train our students over what is okay and what is not okay, and not assume that they know.”

The Post story adds:

Reproducibility is a core scientific principle. A result that can’t be reproduced is not necessarily erroneous: Perhaps there were simply variables in the experiment that no one detected or accounted for. Still, science sets high standards for itself, and if experimental results can’t be reproduced, it’s hard to know what to make of them.

The Post story focuses heavily on the Center for Open Science, a non-profit company based in Charlottesville, Virginia, which produces software that allows scientists to share and post data in an open and transparent format. According to the story:

“The whole point of science, the way we know something, is not that I trust Isaac Newton because I think he was a great guy. The whole point is that I can do it myself,” said Brian Nosek, the founder of a start-up in Charlottesville, Va., called the Center for Open Science. “Show me the data, show me the process, show me the method, and then if I want to, I can reproduce it.”

Nosek and other reformers talk about “publication bias.” Positive results get reported, negative results ignored. Someone reading a journal article may never know about all the similar experiments that came to naught.

There’s a natural tendency to tidy up the experiment, and make the result prettier and less ambiguous, Nosek said. Call it airbrushed science.

“What is able to get published is positive, innovative, novel, and it’s really clean and beautiful. But most research in the laboratory doesn’t look like that,” Nosek says. “We are incentivized to make our research more beautiful than it is.”

The problems identified in the Post story are very applicable to problems with how the Endangered Species Act is implemented; specifically how federal agencies privilege science and expert opinion, as well as skew the peer review process in favor of research and opinions that agree with agency actions. A recent report released by the House Resources Committee documents a number of troubling examples of these problems.

One example is the listing by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service of the Gierisch mallow, a species of plant that lives in the Arizona Strip, an area of largely federal land in northern Arizona and southern Utah where gypsum mining occurs. According to the report:

On August 13, 2013, the FWS finalized an endangered listing for the mallow. The FWS remarked in the final rule designating critical habitat for the mallow that the “peer reviewers generally concurred with our methods and conclusions” in the final rule to designate critical habitat. However, the FWS’ statement could not be verified by Committee Majority oversight staff’s review of the published comments on the mallow. Indeed, of the 23 public comments received by the FWS, only two comments could be clearly identified as peer reviews, and one of those was anonymous.

The only clearly identifiable peer reviewer was Lee Hughes, a former ecologist with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. Dr. Hughes’ work was cited 20 times in the proposed rule, and 29 times in the final rule. Primarily, the FWS relied upon unpublished studies Dr. Hughes had conducted from 2005 to 2012, which surveyed the plants in the Arizona Strip, to justify the range of the Gierisch mallow and to establish critical habitat boundaries.

In his peer review comments, Dr. Hughes critically concluded the rule was premature, stating that the “rule has been precipitated by a lawsuit and not a well thought out observation over a lot of years of the plant and man’s operation in its habitat, which this kind of action requires.” He further noted that “man induced threats just have not materialized for the listed plant populations on the [Arizona] Strip” and that “a lot of misspent effort is put in to preventing imaginary threats, and the real threats are discovered later.” The FWS did not address Dr. Hughes’ statements about the timeliness of the rule, or his concerns about the FWS’ identified threats, in its final rule.

It is difficult to ascertain who the other peer reviewers were and what their specific comments were or how the FWS addressed them, because the FWS did not identify the peer reviewers in the final rule, and none of the other public comments posted on Regulations.gov were identified as coming from peer reviewers.

Given the apparent pervasiveness of the problems identified in the House Resources Committee report, any meaningful solution must be legislative because the regulatory agencies cannot be expected to fix these problems on their own. One legislative approach is HR 4315, which passed the U.S. House in the July 2014 (but would have to be reintroduced, as a new Congress, the 114th, commenced in January 2015). According to the Resources Committee, HR 4315 would:

• Require data used by federal agencies for ESA listing decisions to be made publicly available and accessible through the Internet, while respecting state data privacy laws and private property. (Sec. 2 reflects the text of H.R. 4315 as reported)

• Require the federal government to disclose to affected states data used prior to an ESA listing decision and it would require the “best available scientific and commercial data” used by the federal government to incorporate data provided by states, tribes, and local county governments. (Sec. 3 reflects the text of H.R. 4317)

Given that the Center for Open Science provides a sophisticated, ready-made, free-of-charge online platform for data sharing and transparency, federal agencies could easily implement measures to make their decision making processes open, transparent and available for all to see. It is high time the growing movement in the scientific community for greater transparency and data sharing also be applied to federal regulatory agencies, including those that implement the Endangered Species Act.

The post Bringing the Endangered Species Act in to the 21st Century Through Increased Data Transparency appeared first on Reason Foundation.

Yet the Federation and Coalition make little if any mention of two far more significant threats to the crane; wind turbines and transporting oil by rail instead of by pipeline.

“The truth is, these incredible whooping cranes desperately need our help. With the very real risk of oil spills from this dangerous pipeline, these endangered birds could be swimming in pools of oil before our eyes – and at that point it might be too late to save them,” claims the National Wildlife Federation. The Endangered Species Coalition ups the ante with an article titled “Keystone Pipeline Could Push Endangered Whooping Crane Into Extinction.”

In reality, the threat the whooping crane from Keystone XL is extremely small because the pipeline would be buried about four feet underground. Also, the chance of a leak is very low because pipelines are the safest method for transporting oil, and because the technology for constructing pipelines, as well as monitoring them for corrosion and leaks, has improved over the past several decades.

There are, however, two much more significant risks to the whooping crane, the foremost of which is the potential for cranes colliding with the increasing number of wind turbines along the migratory route, from the Texas Gulf Coast to North Dakota, for the 250 birds that constitute the species’ largest and only self-sustaining population.

Even environmental activists are concerned. “Are wind turbines killing off the whooping crane population?” is the title of an article on Watts Up With That?, which bills itself as “The world’s most viewed [web]site on global warming and climate change.”

Yet a search of the National Wildlife Federation’s and Endangered Species Coalition’s websites reveals little if anything on the threat to whooping cranes from wind turbines.

At the same time, the Federation also claims the 300 miles of power lines that will need to be built to supply pumps for Keystone XL pose a threat to whooping cranes. While this claim is actually accurate, it conveniently fails to mention that the thousands of miles of power lines put up for wind turbines pose a far more serious threat. “Collisions with power lines are already the largest known cause of death for migrating whooping cranes,” states the Endangered Species Coalition.

If activists like the Coalition and National Wildlife Federation get their way, and Keystone XL is not built, the result will be a bigger threat to the environment, including the whooping crane, as more Canadian oil is transported by rail through the crane’s migratory route. “The State Department report estimates that the Keystone XL carrying 830,000 barrels a day would likely result in 0.46 accidents annually, spilling 518 barrels a year,” according to Terry Anderson, president of the Property and Environmental Research Center. “Under the most optimistic rail-transport scenario for a similar amount of oil, 383 annual spills would occur, spilling 1,335 barrels a year.”

The Keystone XL pipeline is a divisive issue, but as the exaggerated and ignored threats to the whooping crane from the pipeline reveal, if you want accurate information about Keystone’s environmental impacts you would better served not relying on environmental pressure groups.

Brian Seasholes is director of the endangered species project at Reason Foundation. This article originally appeared at The Daily Caller.

The post Keystone XL Poses Very Little Danger to Whooping Crane appeared first on Reason Foundation.

Gunnison County, Colorado, along with Utah and Colorado, have filed notices of intent to sue the Interior Department in attempts to rescind the listing of the Gunnison sage grouse under the Endangered Species Act. Even the Denver Post, normally pro-environmental regulation, came down on the side of Colorado’s and Gunnison County’s lawsuits, which is consistent with the paper’s opposition to the federal government’s November decision to list the grouse. And like Colorado’s intent to sue (which I wrote about here), Gunnison County’s planned lawsuit is interesting politically, in addition to important substantive issues raised in all three notices of intent to sue. (This post will focus primarily on Gunnison County’s and Utah’s pending lawsuits because of the aforementioned previous post on Colorado’s notice of intent to sue.)

But why does the saga of the Gunnison sage grouse matter, especially because there are only a few thousand of the birds located in remote southwestern Colorado and southeastern Utah? It matters because it is one of the foremost examples of what is wrong with the Endangered Species Act and the federal government’s implementation of the Act. Over the past twenty-plus years, extraordinary efforts to conserve the grouse, led by Colorado and Gunnison County, but also including Utah and the other counties across the bird’s range, have been successful and resulted in a healthy, stable population. Colorado has invested about $40 million in sage grouse conservation, Utah and San Juan County (where the state’s grouse population lives) have invested almost $18 million, and Gunnison County has chipped in with over $1 million and an exceptional range of conservation measures, including sage grouse-specific zoning ordinances and hiring the nation’s only municipal biologist tasked with focusing on the conservation of a single imperiled species.

If these extraordinary and successful conservation efforts on behalf of the Gunnison sage grouse cannot prevent its listing under the Endangered Species Act, then there is greatly diminished hope that other efforts to prevent additional species from being listed in various parts of the country can have any realistic chances of success. So in a very real sense, people across the country involved in efforts to conserve imperiled species, keep them off the endangered species list, and prevent the much-feared Endangered Species Act and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service from entering the picture are part of Colorado’s, Utah’s and Gunnison County’s fight to get the Gunnison sage grouse off the endangered species list and uphold the ability of states, municipalities, landowners and businesses to manage imperiled species, free from the environmentally destructive and unwanted interference of the Endangered Species Act and Fish and Wildlife Service (a detailed summary of Colorado’s and Gunnison County’s successful and innovative sage grouse conservation efforts, and how listing would harm the grouse, is available here).

In terms of Gunnison County’s planned lawsuit, one interesting aspect of it is politics. While Colorado’s intent to sue is surprising-because it came at the behest of a loyal Democrat Governor, John Hickenlooper, who decided he had no option but to have a high profile conflict with the Democrat Obama administration, and an internecine fight may have negative national implications for Democrats because Colorado is predicted to be a swing state in the 2016 presidential election-Gunnison County’s impending lawsuit is in many ways even more surprising and a sign of how out of touch the Obama administration is.

Colorado is a “purple” state, meaning on the federal level it is split fairly evenly between Republicans and Democrats and therefore a swing state, but Gunnison County is solidly “blue,” or Democrat. (In the past two presidential elections the county voted for Obama; 63% in 2008 and 58% in 2012, while the Republicans candidates got 35% and 39% of the vote, respectively. In the past four U.S. House elections, starting with 2008, the county voted for the Democrat candidate by margins of 74% to 26%, 58% to 39%, 51% to 42%, and 47% to 46%; this despite that since 2010 Republican Representative Scott Tipton has won Colorado’s Third District, which includes Gunnison County, by margins of 50% to 46%, 53% to 41%, and 58% to 36%. In the two most recent U.S. Senate elections, the county voted for the Democrat candidate 61% to 44% and 55% to 39%, despite that in 2014 the Republican candidate, Cory Gardner, won the state 49% to 46% and unseated the Democrat incumbent. Over the past two elections for governor, Gunnison County has been more in step with Colorado, voting for two-term Governor, John Hickenlooper by margins of 60% and 57%.)

Clearly, it would take something significant for solidly Democrat Gunnison County to engage in a very public fight with the Obama administration. The decision to sue the administration is a sign of how aggrieved the county is over the listing of the sage grouse and that it feels it has no other option but to undertake the expensive and time-consuming ordeal of suing the federal government. Gunnison County is likely going to spend many thousands, or even tens of thousands, of dollars on the lawsuit, which is no small consideration for a municipality with a population of 15,500 and a 2014 budget of $96 million.

On the substantive side of the issue, the three notices of intent to sue (only Colorado’s appears to be available online) also make clear how disconnected from reality the Obama administration is, the Interior Department in particular, with the realities of grouse conservation. For example, Gunnison County has spent the past two decades engaging in highly effective conservation efforts for the grouse, which is why the Gunnison Basin grouse population is so large and healthy (approximately 4,000 birds and slowly increasing). In its notice of intent to sue, Gunnison County alleges the Interior Department violated the Endangered Species Act, the Administrative Procedures Act and National Environmental Policy Act by listing the Gunnison sage grouse. Here are a few of the allegations made by Gunnison County about the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service:

• Failure to properly analyze listing factors

• Failure to use the best available scientific and commercial data

• Failure to appropriately consider [state, county and private] conservation efforts

• Failure to establish the Gunnison Basin population is “threatened”

• [U.S. Fish and Wildlife] Service’s failure to consider accurately other PVAs [Population Viability Analyses]

• Service’s failure to respond to comments [submitted by Colorado, Utah, and counties in both states]

• Failure regarding peer reviews [of data used to justify listing]

Gunnison County’s notice of intent also mentions the county’s extensive and long-term sage grouse conservation efforts:

Gunnison County has duly adopted policies and regulations including the review, approval, conditioning or denial of proposed activities and uses of land and natural resources that reasonably might impact the Gunnison sage grouse.

Gunnison County, since 1995, consistently has provided personnel, facilities, financial support in excess of one million dollars…to protect and foster the Gunnison sage grouse and its habitat.

In 1995, the county formed the Gunnison Basin Local Working Group to coordinate sage grouse conservation efforts, which was incorporated in 2005 by the Gunnison County Board of County Commissioners as the Gunnison Basin Sage-grouse Strategic Committee. The Strategic Committee is a very broad-based group of twenty-seven members with representatives from the two counties in the Gunnison Basin (Gunnison and Saguache), the State of Colorado (Colorado Parks & Wildlife), the federal government (National Park Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resource Conservation Service, and Bureau of Land Management), commercial interests (Gunnison County Stockgrower’s Association, and the development community), and environmental and outdoors advocates (High Country Conservation Alliance, and someone representing outdoor recreation interests).

In 2005 Gunnison County hired Jim Cochran, who is believed to be the nation’s only municipal biologist focused on a single imperiled species. Over the past ten years, Jim has implemented the county’s stringent sage grouse-specific zoning ordinances. In this capacity, according to the notice to sue, he has:

evaluated over 500 land use related applications (including building permits, individual septic system permits, driveway permits, reclamation permits) and prepared a Gunnison sage-grouse Site Specific Analysis for each. The intent of the evaluations is to reach any application that may have the potential to affect Gunnison sage-grouse. Gunnison County works with applicants to achieve a net benefit in habitat quality on the subject land beyond the direct impacts of the proposed activity. The Analysis identifies specific criteria as permit conditions to avoid, minimize and/or mitigate impacts to Gunnison sage-grouse and their habitats.

Similarly, Utah’s notice of intent to sue provides an overview of the state’s and San Juan County’s conservation efforts:

To date, the State and San Juan County have invested close to $18 million in voluntary conservation programs, land acquisition, research, monitoring activities, habitat treatments, translocation, and predator control programs aimed at conserving the GuSG [Gunnison sage grouse] and its habitat. State and county-led voluntary conservation programs have resulted in protection of over 20,000 acres of privately owned habitat. Because over 90% of the GuSG habitat in Utah occurs on private land, the Utah GuSG plan outlined strategies to encourage voluntary cooperation and participation by key landowners to conserve the species, while maintaining economic viability. In combination with areas of habitat that are federally owned and managed, approximately 75% of occupied habitat has some level of protection.

And, as Utah’s notice points out, the state and Colorado have superior scientific knowledge of the Gunnison sage grouse:

UDWR [Utah Division of Wildlife Resources] staff biologists provide population counts and other raw data concerning the status of the species in Utah, and conduct many ongoing research projects critical to a more nuanced understanding of the needs of and threats to the GuSG. In cooperation with Colorado, which has been a leader in GuSG research and conservation efforts throughout the species’ range, UDWR and their counterparts in Colorado have worked closely with local communities and other stakeholders to generate invaluable data and analysis and to enhance the effectiveness of conservation programs.

Utah’s notice of intent to sue also paints the bigger picture, which is equally applicable to Colorado and Gunnison County:

Voluntary cooperation of private landowners will be much more effective in improving habitat for the GuSG than protections that may be afforded by the listing and designation of critical habitat in this area. The Service failed to give adequate consideration to the efficacy of the conservation agreements which have been placed into service in Utah.

A federal listing of the GuSG at this time provides no additional protection or resources beyond those already in place.

This is the reality of conservation of the Gunnison sage grouse and so many other species that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service fails to grasp. States, municipalities, landowners and businesses will willingly and effectively conserve imperiled species, but the key is that this must be achieved cooperatively. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, wielding the highly punitive Endangered Species Act, works directly against the type of cooperative and voluntary efforts that are needed for successful conservation to occur.

In sum, Utah’s intent to sue contends:

Utah specifically asserts that the satellite population of GuSG, found in the Monticello area [of San Juan County], is viable, and that the protections put in place through the Conservation Plan, conservation agreements, and habitat improvement work generated by the state’s Local Working Group, has been effective in securing the conservation of the species in Utah.

One of the more remarkable portions of Gunnison County’s notice of intent to sue addresses the fact that for years the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had many opportunities to criticize the county’s and state’s conservation efforts, or otherwise let the state and county know they were on the wrong track to prevent the grouse’s listing, but never did so:

From September 2006 through December 2012, a representative of the [U.S. Fish and Wildlife] Service attended 69 meetings of the Gunnison Basin Sage-grouse Strategic Committee. But, during that time, that representative did not inform the Committee that the efforts [of] the Committee, states, local governments and others were inappropriate, insufficient or otherwise unacceptable to the Service as measures to appropriately conserve the species. Nor did the Service propose or initiate conservation measures of its own.

The Service reviewed Gunnison County’s draft land use regulations in 2006 and 2007 and provided no substantive comments nor any indication that the regulations were inadequate or ineffective in any way.

It is astounding that the Fish and Wildlife Service for over six years provided no substantive input, including not letting the state or county know whether they were on the wrong track to prevent the grouse’s listing, but unfortunately this is business as usual for how the Service implements the Endangered Species Act. Instead of providing substantive input to states, municipalities, businesses and landowners about what specific steps are needed to prevent species from being listed, or to avoid violating the Act for species already listed, the Fish and Wildlife Service sits back and plays “bring me another rock,” a game in which the agency will only indicate whether a conservation plan, or plan to avoid violating the Act, is sufficient once it is fully formulated. Yet formulating, writing and trying to gain the Service’s approval of these plans can be extremely time-consuming and expensive, often costing hundreds of thousands or even millions or dollars–to say nothing of the often higher costs incurred by implementing these plans. Instead of providing much-needed and often asked-for input to states, municipalities, businesses and landowners in the early stages of formulating these plans, so that those putting the plans together can know whether they’re on the right path or not and thereby avoid spending time and money unnecessarily, the Fish and Wildlife Service will almost invariably only give a thumbs-up or thumbs-down when presented with a “rock,” or finalized plan. Often, the Service will deem the “rock” insufficient and demand another “rock.” But when those formulating a plan ask what specific goals must be met to get the plan approved by the Service, or what must be done to avoid violating the Endangered Species Act, the Service replies that it cannot make such a determination until presented with a finalized plan, or a plan different from the one already rejected. And so it goes in circles.

While this game of “bring me another rock” played by the Fish and Wildlife Service is absurd and may even seem amusing, it is anything but amusing in real life. Due to the Endangered Species Act’s massive power and ability to curtail and halt otherwise normal and legal forms of land and resource use, such as agriculture, home building and energy development, the Act can pose a serious threat to the property values, livelihoods and financial well-being of the rural Americans who own most of the country’s endangered species habitat, as well as to hard working people who depend on natural resource-based jobs to support their families and communities. Given these realities, coupled with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s penchant for playing “bring me another rock,” it is not hard to understand why landowners, states, municipalities and businesses find the Endangered Species Act and Fish and Wildlife Service so frustrating and why there is such resentment and anger towards the Service and Act.

Gunnison County also had reason to believe the sage grouse would not be listed because the Fish and Wildlife Service indicated that it looked favorably on the county’s sage grouse conservation efforts. According to the notice of intent to sue:

On July 16, 2013, the Service Director Dan Ashe visited Gunnison County to observe local Gunnison sage-grouse conservation efforts and to meet with federal, state and local government, local conservation groups, landowners and private citizen partners in conservation efforts.

Director Ashe commented at a public meeting at Western State Colorado University that the conservation efforts were “inspirational.” He noted that regulatory measures were “highly certain…and likely to be implemented,” and that “incentive based measures are important.” He noted also that the “amount of land covered…by conservation agreements…[is] highly relevant.”

On September 9, 2013, the Service stated: “Gunnison County has set a standard for implementing local regulations designed to avoid or minimize impacts on Gunnison sage-grouse cause by land development and improvements.” (The Service’s written response to Gunnison Basin Strategic Committee questions, received by Gunnison County on September 9, 2013).

Colorado’s, Utah’s, and Gunnison County’s notices of intent to sue the federal government over the listing of the Gunnison sage grouse all paint a disturbing picture of an Interior Department that is detached from reality, including seemingly uncaring about the broken promises listing represents and damaged relationships listing creates, and that is unaware or unconcerned that listing may well create a backlash that will ultimately be detrimental to the sage grouse and other species (as I wrote about here). As Gunnison County Commissioner Jonathan Houck remarked to the Denver Post in September, when listing seemed increasingly likely:

A listing will have a lot of people saying, “I’m done.” I don’t mean we’re going to purposely bring harm to the bird and the habitat. But if you voluntarily alter how you work your land and that’s not enough, it sends a clear shot across the bow. It says, “Why put in the effort, why put in the money, why tax your resources? Because in the end it will never be enough.”

As Gunnison County Commissioner Houck remarked to the Denver Post:

“A listing will have a lot of people saying, ‘I’m done.’ I don’t mean we’re going to purposely bring harm to the bird and the habitat. But if you voluntarily alter how you work your land and that’s not enough, it sends a clear shot across the bow. It says, ‘Why put in the effort, why put in the money, why tax your resources? Because in the end it will never be enough.'”

– See more at: https://reason.org/blog/show/save-the-gunnison-sage-grouse-from#sthash.mKoThxbW.dpuf

As Gunnison County Commissioner Houck remarked to the Denver Post:

“A listing will have a lot of people saying, ‘I’m done.’ I don’t mean we’re going to purposely bring harm to the bird and the habitat. But if you voluntarily alter how you work your land and that’s not enough, it sends a clear shot across the bow. It says, ‘Why put in the effort, why put in the money, why tax your resources? Because in the end it will never be enough.'”

– See more at: https://reason.org/blog/show/save-the-gunnison-sage-grouse-from#sthash.mKoThxbW.dpuf

As Gunnison County Commissioner Houck remarked to the Denver Post:

“A listing will have a lot of people saying, ‘I’m done.’ I don’t mean we’re going to purposely bring harm to the bird and the habitat. But if you voluntarily alter how you work your land and that’s not enough, it sends a clear shot across the bow. It says, ‘Why put in the effort, why put in the money, why tax your resources? Because in the end it will never be enough.'”

– See more at: https://reason.org/blog/show/save-the-gunnison-sage-grouse-from#sthash.mKoThxbW.dpuf

Paula Swenson, Chair of the Gunnison County Board of Commissioners, pointed out, in a November article in E&E News, that the potential listing of the Gunnison sage grouse:

is going to send a sign to every single local effort across the U.S. that it doesn’t matter what you do–they’re still going to list the species. Never in the history of the Endangered Species Act has the Fish and Wildlife seen these kinds of efforts [as occurred in Gunnison County].

While the federal government is mired in an antiquated, conflict-driven and ultimately counterproductive approach to endangered species conservation, Colorado, Utah, Gunnison County, and other counties across the grouse’s range are fortunately not. Greg Sheehan, Director of the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources, stated to the Salt Lake Tribune:

Placing the bird under the oversight of the federal government will greatly reduce our ability to help the bird. Putting the bird under the management authority of the federal government will create roadblocks that will make it difficult to complete work to help the species.

Rep. Rob Bishop of Utah, Chairman of the U.S. House Resources Committee, said to the Desert News that states and municipalities are better positioned to conserve the Gunnison sage grouse:

This is yet another case of the federal government thinking it is smarter and more capable than the states and communities-a notion I flatly reject.

John Swartout, Rural Policy and Outreach Director for Governor Hickenlooper, and the state’s point person on sage grouse, reflects the type of broad, progressive and pragmatic view found in Colorado and Utah. Swartout sees the sage grouse issue in the context of battles that took place twenty years ago over the Clinton administration’s natural resource policies that alienated many ranchers, farmers, and natural resource users. The Colorado governor at the time, Roy Roemer, paved the way for a more collaborative approach between the state, federal government, landowners, natural resource industries, and environmental groups. At the time, Swartout had an up-close view of this when he worked for then-U.S. Senator Wayne Allard. The key to the more collaborative approach was to build trust among the parties involved, especially between the rural landowners, who controlled many of the resources and key wildlife habitat, and the regulatory authorities. While reflecting on current Endangered Species Act controversies involving the sage grouse and lesser prairie chicken and the threat the Act poses to Colorado’s innovative conservation efforts for these and other species, Swartout remarked in July 2014 to USA Today:

It took a long time to develop that trust. If this goes south and we lose those partnerships…that will all have been wasted.

Let’s hope for the sake of the Gunnison sage grouse and other species across the country that Colorado, Utah and Gunnison County prevail in their lawsuits so that they can be free once again to pursue their innovative and successful approaches to sage grouse conservation.

The post The Saga of the Gunnison Sage Grouse and Why it Matters appeared first on Reason Foundation.

Almost all of the eighteen species profiled in the report have been listed as a result of the “tidal wave” of over 750 species that are in the process if being evaluated for listing under the Endangered Species Act as the result of the 2011 lawsuit settlement between the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and two groups, Wild Earth Guardians and the Center for Biological Diversity. Given the pressure the Service is under to list these species, coupled with the agency’s institutional bias in favor of listing, both of which, as the recent report documents, lead to cutting corners and skewing data, it is all the more imperative for states to produce high quality data to counterbalance the rush to list species that may not merit the Endangered Species Act’s protection.

Before looking into the broader issue of what to do about the Fish and Wildlife Service’s biases, it bears taking a close look at five of the eighteen species detailed in the report, the Gunnison sage grouse and four species of Texas salamanders. Doing so provides an eye-opening look at how the Fish and Wildlife Service stacks the deck in order to list species under the Endangered Species Act (Please excuse the rather lengthy excerpts that are cited below, but this was done to provide a fuller sense of how the Service skews the process).

The report’s section on the Gunnison sage grouse contains the following:

According to the final rule, which was published November 11, 2014, five peer reviewers were solicited, all of whom responded. However, only four of the peer reviewers’ comments could be identified as such out of an assessed total of 36,171 public comments. Contrary to other peer reviews conducted by Region 6, the FWS did not post the names of the peer reviewers for its Gunnison sage-grouse decision to its Region 6 website.

The faculty biography for one of the scientists who served as a peer reviewer, Dr. Jessica Young, provides that she has “document[ed] [the Gunnison Sage-grouse’s] imperiled habitat and status.” Indeed, Dr. Young’s peer review states she had “studied the biology and participated in conservation discussions about the Gunnison Sage-grouse . . . for over 20 years,” and that her “Ph.D. dissertation and resulting publications assisted in the grouse being recognized as a new species in 2000.” Her work on the grouse is recognized by the FWS, which cites her studies nearly 100 in the proposed and final rules to support claims concerning the species’ taxonomy, behavior, and potential threats. Furthermore, Dr. Young’s curriculum vitae notes that she currently serves as an international grouse specialist for the International Union for Conservation of Nature (“IUCN”), which publishes the IUCN Red List – a list that is frequently used by the FWS to evaluate the conservation status of plant and animal species.

Another peer reviewer, Dr. Matt Holloran, has studied various aspects of sage-grouses in Wyoming since 1996. His studies were approximately 60 times by the FWS in support of the proposed and final rules. In his peer review, Dr. Holloran states that “additional information is required” to support the “conclusion that [Gunnison sage-grouse] should be listed as endangered.”

The two other identified peer reviewers, Dr. Michael Phillips and Dr. Terry Messmer, were minimally cited (less than 10 times each) throughout the proposed and final rules for studies or research they had conducted or published. Dr. Phillips, an avian researcher with Colorado Parks and Wildlife, was cited only twice concerning an email exchange he held with the FWS regarding movement distance of sage-grouse in the Gunnison Basin. The FWS did not cite Dr. Messmer. In his peer review, Dr. Phillips was highly critical of the proposed rule stating “concern[] about the frequent use of speculation and commentaries as empirical evidence.” “Given the flaws in this review,” he concluded, “[the FWS] do[es] not present a convincing argument that [the Gunnison sage-grouse] should be listed as endangered.” Similarly, Dr. Messmer, a professor at Utah State University and a scientific advisor to the Utah Governor’s Greater Sage-grouse Task Force, expressed concern about the proposed rules’ “discussion of the biology and habitat used by Gunnison sage-grouse [being] based largely on greater sage-grouse literature rather than studies conducted in . . . Colorado and Utah.”

The four species of Texas salamanders in the House Resources Committee report are the Austin blind salamander, Jollyville Plateau salamander, Georgetown salamander and Salado salamander. In reference to them, the House Resources Committee report states:

FWS initiated its peer review process for the listing decision in July 2012. As part of this process, FWS first solicited peer reviews “of the portion of the listing decision that includes a discussion of the scientific information reviewed and our analysis (but not our conclusion regarding the status of the species or critical habitat boundaries).” According to the peer review plan, FWS planned to send requests for peer reviews to three “independent scientific reviewers with expertise in invertebrate ecology, conservation biology, and/or desert spring ecology.”

In the final rule, the FWS stated it had actually sought peer reviews from “22 knowledgeable individuals with scientific expertise concerning the hydrology, taxonomy, and ecology that is important to these salamander species.” Thirteen of the individuals FWS contacted provided a response. Several of the individuals were taxonomists whose focus was to evaluate the FWS’ proposal in light of an unpublished study questioning whether the salamanders were actually unique species.

Because FWS received contradictory public comments and “found new information relative to the listing determination,” FWS solicited a second round of peer review. During the second round, FWS contacted 20 peer reviewers who were asked to evaluate only two issues: (1) salamander demographics and (2) urban development and stream habitat. Eight peer reviewers provided responses.

While the 13 first round responses and eight second round responses were posted to the online docket for this rulemaking on Regulations.gov, the peer reviewers’ names and identifying information were redacted. The redactions undermine the public’s ability to hold FWS accountable for ensuring that the peer reviewers were independent. It also makes it impossible to discern whether the 20 peer reviewers FWS solicited for the second round represent a subset of the 22 peer reviewers solicited for the first round, and if so, why two of the original peer reviewers were later excluded.

It also appears that FWS explicitly asked the second round peer reviewers to focus on comments that disagreed with the FWS’ position. One anonymous second-round peer reviewer wrote: “As per your email, my review is focused on ‘significant public comments that disagree with the link we are making between watershed urbanization and salamander habitat degradation.'” It is unclear why the FWS would undergo a second round of peer review specifically focused on countering public comments that disagreed with FWS’ opinion.

In the final rule listing the species, FWS acknowledged that one reviewer believed the evidence supporting the uniqueness of one of the salamander species was “weak but suggestive” and admitted “that the understanding of the taxonomy of these salamander species can be strengthened by further research.”

The question then turns to what should be done about the Fish and Wildlife Service’s biases that can have significant impacts on whether and how species are listed and subsequently protected under the Endangered Species Act. One approach is to pass legislation to amend the Act, which the U.S. House of Representatives did in July when it passed, by a vote of 233-190, HR 4315, the 21st Century Endangered Species Transparency Act. According to the House Natural Resources Committee, the Act would:

• Require data used by federal agencies for ESA listing decisions to be made publicly available and accessible through the Internet, while respecting state data privacy laws and private property.

• Require the federal government to disclose to affected states data used prior to an ESA listing decision and it would require the “best available scientific and commercial data” used by the federal government to incorporate data provided by states, tribes, and local county governments.

• Require the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to track, report to Congress, and make available online the federal taxpayer funds used to respond to ESA lawsuits, the number of employees dedicated to ESA litigation, and attorneys’ fees awarded in the course of ESA litigation and settlement agreements.

• Prioritize species protection and protect taxpayer dollars by placing reasonable caps on attorneys’ fees to make the ESA consistent with existing federal law. For example, the federal government limits the prevailing attorneys’ fees to $125 per hour in most circumstances, including federal suits involving veterans, Social Security, and disability. But under the ESA, attorneys are being awarded huge sums, in many cases, at a rate much as $600 per hour.

While the first two of these provisions in particular would most likely improve data used under the Endangered Species Act, it is necessary for high quality data to be available in the first place. In many ways, states are best positioned to provide such data because they often have the necessary resources and expertise to fund and carry out research. Two states that have had success doing this are Colorado and Texas.

One example involves the black-tailed prairie dog in Colorado. In 1998, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service received two petitions to list the black-tailed prairie dog across hundreds of millions of acres in eleven states (Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota and Montana). One petition was from the National Wildlife Federation, the other from the Biodiversity Legal Foundation, the Predator Project and a private citizen. Based on the petitions, the Fish and Wildlife Service estimated the prairie dog occupied 93,000 acres in Colorado.

Officials and experts in Colorado were very sure this was a massive underestimate, but they had no hard data for the entire state. So Colorado decided to gather its own data in an effort to avert listing. According to Greg Walcher, who at the time was Executive Director of the Colorado Department of Natural Resources:

Colorado had good reason not to trust the federal data, which came from the National Wildlife Federation’s listing petition, had been changed several times with different petitions, and were based entirely on computer modeling. So the State commissioned an aerial survey to obtain actual counts of both the prairie dog numbers and their occupied habitat. For around $75,000 and about 3 months, we obtained specific information proving that there were thousands of times more animals than the federal estimate, and that they occupied more land in Colorado alone than the petitioners claimed for the entire country. Together with the State’s threatened lawsuit if an endangered listing ignored this data, the USFWS service was persuaded to issue instead a “warranted but precluded” finding – a temporary relief at best.

In response to the proposed listing, Colorado reportedly submitted comments to the Fish and Wildlife Service in 1999 signed by Greg Walcher, Ken Salazar, the state Attorney General who would go on to be Interior Secretary during the Obama administration, and Don Ament, the Agriculture Commissioner, in which they stated:

The anecdotal information that does exist indicates that black-tailed prairie dogs are widely distributed and common throughout their historic range, and that is particularly the case in eastern Colorado…Under the circumstances, and given the obvious impact to its citizens, it appears Colorado would have little choice than to move forward with litigation to protect its interests should the pending petition ultimately result in a final rule listing the black-tailed prairie dog as “threatened.”

In February 2000, the Fish and Wildlife Service found the prairie dog warranted listing but doing so was precluded by other higher priority endangered species issues. As Greg Walcher points out, Colorado knew this was a temporary reprieve and that the Service and the groups that submitted listing petitions would continue to try to get the black-tailed prairie dog listed.

So Colorado conducted several surveys, the first of which was published in October 2000 and consisted of field surveys that found black-tailed prairie dogs occupied 314,114 acres in the state. But Colorado decided to buttress this survey with the more extensive and comprehensive scientific aerial survey in 2002 that Greg Walcher referenced. The results, which were published in a peer reviewed journal, found the black-tailed prairie dog occupied 631,102 acres in Colorado, which was an almost sevenfold increase from the Fish and Wildlife Service’s estimate.

In 2006 and 2007, Colorado undertook another aerial survey, this one with the aim of ground-truthing aerial data and determining which prairie dog colonies were occupied and which were unoccupied in order to arrive at a more accurate count. As with the previous survey, this one was also published in a peer reviewed journal, but it found 788,674 acres occupied by the prairie dog, or 8.5 times the estimate the Fish and Wildlife Services was going to use to list the species. The authors of the study conclude, in the understated style typical for scientists writing in scholarly journals, “These results are useful to state and federal agencies and other conservation partners in determining the condition of the species when conducting status reviews.” Indeed.

Due to surveys by Colorado and other states, the Fish and Wildlife Service issued another finding on the black-tailed prairie dog because findings of “warranted but precluded” are reevaluated annually and the petitions to list are treated as still active. In 2004, the Service found the prairie dog did not warrant listing because state-based surveys, such as those carried out by Colorado, showed the prairie dog was far more common than originally believed.

Not surprisingly, a number of groups that specialize in filing lawsuits under the Endangered Species Act, but doing no meaningful actual conservation work, were very unhappy with the Fish and Wildlife Service’s decision. So in 2007 they, led by Forest Guardians (which later changed its name to Wild Earth Guardians), filed a legal complaint and yet another petition to list the black-tailed prairie dog. In 2009, the Fish and Wildlife Service again found the black-tailed prairie dog did not warrant listing, in large part because of the surveys and conservation efforts carried out by states.

One of the ironies of the 1999 petition to list the black-tailed prairie dog is that it caused harm to the species. “The petition has created difficulties for us,” said Dennis Flath, a biologist with the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks, in an article in High Country News. “Now private landowners don’t want us to find out if there are any prairie dogs. They want to get rid of prairie dogs quickly, while they have the opportunity,” before listing occurs. The Montana Department of Agriculture would typically get 20 or so requests annually to help ranchers poison prairie dogs, which are perceived as competing with cattle for grass. Following the petition, however, the Department had already received approximately 30 such requests by March 1999.

Yet the National Wildlife Federation, which engages almost exclusively in “paper” conservation (e.g., lobbying, lawsuits, and press releases), did not grasp the reality of how the Endangered Species Act’s penalty-based approach backfires and causes harm to species. “This [petition] is the best possible use of the Endangered Species Act,” said then-Federation President Mark Van Putten in 1998. “If we all work together to make common-sense changes now, we can head off real problems later.” Van Putten also said, “Anyone who tries to turn this into a political football by stirring up fear and opposition is not looking out for the long-term welfare of this ecosystem or the people who depend on it.” It is ironic and telling that Van Putten equated states’ opposition to listing, which resulted in much more high quality research and data, as anti-conservation and anti-science.

Another state that has taken an innovative and successful approach to dealing with the Endangered Species Act is Texas. Over the past ten years Texas, under the leadership of Susan Combs, first as Agriculture Commissioner and for the past eight years as Comptroller, (but has been succeeded as Comptroller in January 2015 by Glen Hegar), has carried out a number initiatives, including state-based research on species that are proposed and candidates for listing. The signal success story so far is preventing the dunes sagebrush lizard from being listed, which the Fish and Wildlife Service proposed to list in 2010. A listing would have imposed significant costs on the oil, gas and agriculture industries because the lizard’s Permian Basin habitat in eastern New Mexico and western Texas produces 15% of U.S. oil, 5% of U.S. gas, and has significant amounts of agriculture.

In response, Texas provided funding to Texas A&M University to conduct surveys for the lizard in June 2011. The results, which were published in a report, included an additional 28 lizard populations in Texas, which was a substantial increase from the 3 Texas populations U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service cited in the proposed listing. These surveys were incorporated into the innovative conservation plan formulated by Texas for the lizard. When the federal government decided in 2012 that listing the dunes sagebrush lizard under the Endangered Species Act was not warranted, it cited the Texas Conservation Plan as a key factor in its decision.

As the examples of Colorado and Texas demonstrate, high quality state-based research and data can have significant impacts on whether species are listed under the Endangered Species Act. Unfortunately, the issue of the federal government using shoddy data in support of listing species is not a new phenomenon. In fact, it has been going on for the entire 41-year history of the Endangered Species Act, and in some instances even longer. This is the case for many of the species that were listed under the Endangered Species Act’s two predecessors; the 1966 Endangered Species Preservation Act and the 1969 Endangered Species Conservation Act. Many species listed under these two predecessor acts were carried over to the Endangered Species Act of 1973 with no substantive examination of their status, including whether they merited listing under the ESA.

For example, the American alligator is one of the species that to this day is cited by advocates of the ESA as one of the Act’s foremost success stories, despite that it never should have been carried over to the ESA because by 1973 its population was too abundant-almost 734,000-and healthy (increasing, actually) to merit listing. But by 1973 the alligator, due to vigorous public relations and lobbying efforts by the federal government and environmental pressure groups (especially the National Audubon Society), was one of the “charter” members (the term used then-Assistant Secretary for Fish, Wildlife and Parks, Nathaniel Reed) of the endangered species program and lobbying campaign that, because it brooked no dissent, bore more of a resemblance to a crusade than a scientifically based inquiry (a detailed profile of the Alligator and its regulatory history is available here).

Other examples are the Hawaiian hawk, Tinian monarch (a bird from the tropical Pacific island of Tinian), and three other birds from the tropical Pacific islands of Palau (Palau owl, Palau ground dove, and Palau fantail flycatcher). Detailed profiles of all these species are available here.

As documented in the profiles of these species, there are a number of factors that explain why the Fish and Wildlife Service uses shoddy data, misrepresents existing data, and ignores contrary data and opinions in order to justify listing species. First is a combination of a self-selecting process and politics. Those who work for the Fish and Wildlife Service tend to have a strong bias in favor of the Act, which includes a belief that the Endangered Species Act’s penalty-based approach to conserving imperiled species is productive. In turn, this leads to an institutional bias in favor of listing species, including ignoring contrary data and skewing existing data in support of listing. Second is the possibility that some of those who make listing decisions are lazy and incompetent. But this begs the question why the Fish and Wildlife Service, which is staffed by many competent biologists, would not put more effort in to acquiring higher quality data and would also so badly misrepresent existing data. Third is the Service has limited resources with which to evaluate the status of species. But this, too, begs the question of why in those instances when the agency devotes substantial resources to the listing of species, such as in the case of the Gunnison sage grouse, the Service clearly skews the process in favor of those data and scientists that support listing.

The use and misuse of data is an issue that has been a problem since before the Endangered Species Act’s passage in 1973, and it will continue to be a problem for the foreseeable future. While a step in the right direction is to amend the Act to require the Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service to incorporate state, municipal and tribal data, high quality data must be available in the first place so that it can be supplied to these agencies. As Colorado and Texas have shown, a highly successful and productive way to deal with this problem is for states to take the lead in funding, producing and distributing high quality data on endangered and potentially endangered species.

The post Report Highlights Need for States to do Their Own Endangered Species Research appeared first on Reason Foundation.

Colorado’s notice of intent to sue is notable for a couple reasons, one of which is politics. The federal government has so badly overreached by listing the Gunnison sage grouse that Gov. Hickenlooper, a loyal Democrat, feels he has no recourse but to sue and engage in a very public fight that could damage the Obama administration and Democrats in general. The Gunnison sage grouse lawsuit has significance that reaches far beyond the borders of Colorado.

Colorado is a “purple” state, which means that it is one of a handful of swing, or battleground, states in presidential elections. Gov. Hickenlooper made it clear months ago that he would sue if the Gunnison sage grouse was listed. So it is astounding the Obama administration went ahead and knowingly did something-listing the grouse-that would put Democrats in an unfavorable light and give Republicans political ammunition. While the Interior Department’s decisions to list species under the Endangered Species Act are technically insulated from political considerations, the reality is the White House could have pressured Interior Secretary Sally Jewell and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Dan Ashe, both political appointees, not to list the grouse.

In 2012, Obama won 51.5% of Colorado’s popular vote, to Romney’s 46.13%. Following the 2014 federal and state elections, Colorado became even purpler. At the federal level, Cory Gardner (R) beat incumbent Mark Udall (D) by a margin of 48% to 46% for the contested U.S. Senate seat, Colorado’s other Senator, Michael Bennet, is a Democrat, and the state’s Representatives continue to be split 4-3 in favor of Republicans. In the 2014 state elections, Republicans also gained ground, picking up one Senate seat, thereby achieving an 18-17 majority, and picking up three House seats, which narrowed Democrats’ majority to 34-31.

Colorado’s Gunnison sage grouse lawsuit may drag on for much of 2015 and perhaps in to 2016, which will be a constant reminder to many voters, both in Colorado and elsewhere, that the Obama administration, and by association Democrats (especially those seeking federal office), are out of touch with state and local priorities.

With the 2016 presidential election cycle fast approaching, a couple of factors involved with the Gunnison sage grouse are going to be in play. Democrats are worried that the legacy of an increasingly unpopular president will damage them, especially in the all-important swing states. Colorado’s Gunnison sage grouse lawsuit will serve as a reminder of this, especially because it was filed at the behest of a Democrat governor.

Also, in the 2016 federal elections the environment is going to be an issue Democrats use to hammer Republicans by portraying them as out of touch with American values, corporate shills, mean-spirited and backward-looking. Yet by listing the Gunnison sage grouse the Obama administration has handed Republicans an enormous gift for the 2016 election cycle that they can use to portray Democrats as out of touch, eager to rely on heavy-handed, one-size-fits-all solutions from an imperious and distant federal government, dismissive of state and private approaches that are a better fit for many issues, and, if Republicans take environmental issues seriously, as anti-environment.

More broadly, Republicans can use the lawsuit, the looming possibility of the greater sage grouse being listed across 11 western states and 165 million acres, and conservation in general to demonstrate that they are pro-environment, forward-looking, and in favor of innovative state-based and private solutions to many environmental issues that are superior to inflexible and insensitive dictates from Washington, D.C. Democrats figured out long ago that conservation is an effective political issue and fundraising tool because its outstanding visual and public relations values elicit sympathy from a broad spectrum of voters, and because Republicans have ceded the field to them. Perhaps with issues like the Gunnison sage grouse this will begin change.

The second reason Colorado’s notice of intent to sue over the Gunnison sage grouse’s listing is remarkable is its substance, which paints a damning picture of the federal government, especially the Fish and Wildlife Service, or FWS as its referred to in much of the notice (In a previous post, here, I detailed Colorado’s extraordinary conservation efforts for Gunnison sage grouse conservation, which were undertaken with the understanding the federal government would not list the grouse). The notice of intent to sue states:

“In making the listing decision, FWS improperly analyzed the required factors to make its determination that the Gunnison sage-grouse is threatened; failed to rely on the best available science; and failed to give adequate weight to the extensive conservation efforts undertaken by state and local governments and private landowners. In designating critical habitat for the Gunnison sage-grouse, FWS failed to consider economic impacts of the designation and failed to demonstrate that currently unsuitable habitat included in the designation is essential to the conservation of the species.”

The notice of intent to sue then provides details about conservation efforts, most notably in the Gunnison Basin, located in Gunnison County, Colorado that “comprises approximately 86% of the population and covers almost two-thirds (63%) of the occupied habitat of the species.” According to notice:

“With the exception of federally listed species and migratory birds, Colorado has exclusive jurisdiction over wildlife within its boundaries. To date, the State has invested close to $40 million in voluntary conservation programs, land acquisition, research, monitoring activities, habitat treatments, translocation, and predator control programs aimed at conservation of Gunnison sage-grouse and its habitat. State and county-led voluntary conservation programs have resulted in protection of over 140,000 acres of privately owned habitat. In combination with areas of habitat that are federally-owned and managed, approximately 75% of occupied habitat has some level of protection.”

The logical question is: what more could Colorado and Gunnison County have done to prevent the grouse’s listing and what benefit does listing under the Endangered Species Act provide?

In its notice of intent to sue, Colorado alleges the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service violated the Endangered Species Act by listing the Gunnison sage grouse because the agency “failed to consider sufficiently the best science and impacts of conservation efforts.” The notice provides the following examples that give a sense of how incorrect and out of touch with reality the Service is, and which strongly suggest the Service was less interested in an objective evaluation of the data than in reaching a predetermined decision to list the grouse:

• “The Service accorded little weight to indications that the Gunnison based population is stable and thriving, including the fact that the current population now exceeds the targets set in the Rangewide Conservation Plan and that the Gunnison basin lek counts are at an all-time high.”
• “The Service misinterpreted or ignored population viability analysis showing a very low probability (less than one percent) that the species will go extinct within the next fifty years. Current estimated male counts in the Gunnison basin are more than 50% higher than they were when two of the models were developed”
• “The service acknowledged that current residential development is a threat of ‘low magnitude to the Gunnison based birds at the population level,’ but concluded that residential development elsewhere, in some of the satellite populations, poses a threat to the species range wide, included the Gunnison basin and that future development in Gunnison County continues to pose a threat.” (This assertion by FWS is particularly telling of the agency’s willingness to use false information to support listing because Gunnison County enacted very restrictive sage grouse-specific zoning ordinances and hired the nation’s only county-based endangered species biologist to help implement the ordinances.)
• “The Service accorded little or no weight to scientific evidence submitted by CPW [Colorado Parks & Wildlife] regarding the degree of threat to the Gunnison based population posed by disease, drought, fire, and climate change.”
• “In determining that the Gunnison basin population could not likely survive if the satellite populations were extirpated, FWS engaged in speculation that is unsupported by the best available data.””In evaluating threats to sagebrush habitat in the Gunnison based, FWS misinterpreted the best available science regarding the historical range and distribution of the species. The Service overestimated the extent of historical range and relied on an improper understanding of habitat fragmentation as applied to the Gunnison sage-grouse.”

In sum, according to Colorado’s notice of intent to sue:

“The Service underestimated the level of protection that has been provided via federal, state, local and private conservation efforts to conserve sagebrush habitat in the Gunnison basin. The Gunnison basin area has met or exceeded the Rangewide Conservation Plan target for conservation and protection of seasonally important habitat on private lands.” (This is the critically important moist habitat-meadows, wetlands streamsides-that adults and chicks depend on for high quality forage and insects in the summer, when the sagebrush uplands become dry and contain little palatable food)

“Federal and state agencies responsible for management of publicly owned habitat have entered in to a formal agreement [sic] to protect sage-grouse habitat on their lands, and other federal programs have also resulted in the protection, improvement and restoration of habitat in the Gunnison basin. [Federal and state agencies have entered into two such agreements, a Candidate Conservation Agreement with Assurances, or CCAA, that covers private land, and a Candidate Conservation Agreement, or CCA, that covers federal land]. The Service’s conference opinions on the CCAA and the CCA found that the implementation of the programs would provide a long-term, net benefit for the Gunnison sage-grouse on a landscape level. FWS acknowledged the effectiveness of these efforts and noted that they have had the most impact in the Gunnison basin, but did not adequately weigh them in the listing decision.”

“In addition, FWS engaged in a formal analysis of conservation efforts under its PECE (Policy for Evaluation of Conservation Efforts), but never released a draft or final version of the analysis [to] the public for review. Accordingly, the State is unable to evaluate whether the analysis was reasonable and gave sufficient weight to the many ongoing conservation programs.”

Last is the issue of how the Fish and Wildlife Service designated critical habitat. According to Colorado’s notice of intent to sue:

“The ESA requires the [Interior] Secretary to consider economic impacts in designating critical habitat…The Service had an economic analysis prepared, but did not take the results into account when designating critical habitat. Further, the Service included areas as critical habitat that are not suitable for Gunnison sage-grouse, and failed to demonstrate that inclusion of currently unsuitable habitat was essential to the conservation of the species. FWS also determined that all currently occupied areas are essential for the persistence and conservation of the Gunnison sage-grouse, even though under the ESA…barring unusual circumstances, critical habitat should not include the entire geographical area which can be occupied by the species.”

Given all this, it is no wonder Colorado is suing to rescind the listing of the Gunnison sage grouse and return management to the state. It will be interesting to see how this case, and the larger issues on which it touches, shake out.

The post Federal Overreach, the Gunnison Sage Grouse, a Lawsuit, and Politics appeared first on Reason Foundation.

The decision today to list the Gunnison sage grouse leaves the bird, its cousin the greater sage grouse, and many other imperiled species facing bleaker futures. Listing deters not only conservation in the Gunnison sage grouse’s Colorado and Utah range, but also conservation in many states, communities and businesses across the country that are working very hard to conserve imperiled species, prevent their listing and avoid the Endangered Species Act’s punitive and expensive regulations.

This is especially true for by far the biggest listing decision in the Act’s history; it seems enormous conservation efforts at a price of more than $1 billion were not able to prevent the greater sage grouse’s listing, which could cost 32,000 jobs and $5.6 billion in annual economic output across eleven western states and 165 million acres.

Greg Walcher, who was heavily involved in sage grouse conservation as Executive Director of the Colorado Department of Natural Resources from 1999-2004, asserts, “Massive investment and local participation was made with the clear understanding that the Gunnison sage grouse would not be added to the federal endangered species list.”

Gunnison County, which contains 93 percent of the grouse’s population, is ground zero for conservation efforts that include hiring the nation’s only full-time municipal endangered species biologist, stringent sage grouse-specific zoning ordinances, forming a working group in 1995 to organize and implement conservation initiatives, and protecting 97 percent of privately owned habitat with various agreements.

This private land is part of the 64,000 acres of sage grouse habitat in Colorado under conservation easements that cost the state $30 million and the 126,500 acres in a federally-approved Candidate Conservation Agreement with Assurances, which was sold to people, especially the forty-seven landowners who enrolled their land, as key to preventing listing.

“Nobody could do more than we’ve done,” Paula Swenson, chair of the Gunnison County Board of Commissioners, told the Denver Post.

The result has been a healthy, slowly increasing grouse population, most notably in Gunnison County. Despite all of this, the federal government has reneged and listed the grouse.

Communities and landowners in Colorado and Utah feel deeply betrayed and anxious because of the Endangered Species Act’s much-feared land and resource use regulations. “The community most impacted – ours – overwhelmingly opposes [listing the grouse]” states Chris Dickey, publisher of the Gunnison Country Times, a weekly newspaper and website. “The Gunnison Basin is a model for a community’s conservation-minded response to an imperiled species.”

The sage grouse also loses due to its listing. “A listing will have a lot of people saying, ‘I’m done,'” Jonathan Houck, Gunnison County Commissioner, told the Post. “I don’t mean we’re going to purposely bring harm to the bird and the habitat. But if you voluntarily alter how you work your land and that’s not enough, it sends a clear shot across the bow. It says, ‘Why put in the effort, why put in the money, why tax your resources? Because in the end it will never be enough.'”

John Swartout, Colorado Gov. Hickenlooper’s point person on sage grouse, remarked to the Denver Post,“What private landowner in [Colorado’s three counties with greater sage grouse] is going to step up to work with us?”

The federal government, and environmental lawsuit mills that pushed for listing, have so overreached that Democrat Gov. Hickenlooper has pledged to sue the Obama administration’s Interior Department to rescind the listing.

The listing of the Gunnison sage grouse will have a lot of people around the country asking the same questions as Commissioner Houck and John Swartout. This is the sad but predictable result inherent in the Endangered Species Act’s penalty-based approach to conserving species. Only when the penalties are removed will conservation be truly successful. This is entirely attainable because the U.S. Department of Agriculture has a wide range of highly successful conservation programs that rely on the open hand of friendship, not the closed fist of regulation, to gain landowners’ participation. The path to successful endangered species conservation goes in the opposite direction of the Endangered Species Act.

Brian Seasholes is director of the endangered species project at Reason Foundation. This article originally appeared at The Daily Caller.

The post The Endangered Species Act Set to Harm Another Imperiled Species appeared first on Reason Foundation.

After recent federal Estate Tax reform, which raised significantly the amount exempt from the tax, many landowners and others thought their problems were solved. Not so, according to Prof. Cushing:

“Lurking in the background, however, and receiving little attention from the forestry community, media, and even some tax advisors, was the lingering bogeyman of state estate tax laws (or state death taxes). Even after the federal estate tax burden was lifted for 2011 and beyond, a number of states retained – and still retain – more oppressive estate tax burdens.”

In 2012, Congress reformed the federal Estate Tax by making permanent the 2011 temporary exemption of $5 million per person of an estate’s value (or $10 million per couple), fixed the top tax rate at 40% (which prevented a possible return to the 55% rate that prevailed for much of the 1980s and 90s), included an adjustment for inflation, and added a portability provision (which allows the unused portion of a deceased spouse’s estate tax exemption to be transferred to the surviving spouse). Even so, a top rate of 40% is still very steep, to say nothing about the larger issue of whether there should even be a tax on inherited assets.

Due to the 2012 reforms, owners of large or valuable pieces of land, such as forest owners, felt a sense of relief. But there remains a big but relatively unnoticed problem, as Prof. Cushing points out:

“Many forest landowners have been under the belief that very few of them will have to worry about the estate tax with the federal exemption now set at over $5 million and adjusting for inflation each year. Programming efforts (mine included) have shifted to focus on succession planning rather than the traditional programs to explain how to minimize taxes on transfer at the time of death. Don’t fail to account for state death taxes just because you are below today’s federal estate tax exemption, especially if you live in a state with a death tax – or own land in one that does.”

The environmental tie-in for all of this is that estate taxes, whether federal or state, can force heirs of large or valuable pieces of land to subdivide the land and sell off pieces in order to pay federal and state estate taxes. When federal and state estate taxes are combined they can run in the range of 52-59% for the top rates and must be paid within one year of the owner’s death. Land tends to have higher environmental values, including for wildlife and endangered species, if it is in larger, more contiguous chunks. Habitat destruction and degradation, which occurs when land is fragmented, is the leading threat to all wildlife species, common and imperiled. For states like Washington, Oregon and Minnesota that have large amounts of valuable privately owned timber land, the combination of the federal and state estate taxes is especially problematic and very likely to lead to land fragmentation. The state estate tax rates and maximum exemptions for these states are: Washington, 10-19% estate tax rate and $2,012,000 exemption; Oregon, 10-16% and $1,000,000; Minnesota, 9-16% and $1,200,000.

Leading wildlife experts acknowledge the detrimental effects of the federal Estate Tax on the environment, and similar effects apply to state estate taxes, especially because the combination of the federal and state taxes can create a greater chance of land being fragmented. According to Michael Bean, when he was with the Environmental Defense Fund (and currently at the Interior Department), and the person widely acknowledged as the foremost expert on the Endangered Species Act and U.S. Wildlife law, the federal Estate Tax is:

“highly regressive in the sense that it encourages the destruction of ecologically important land in private ownership. In order to pay estate taxes, cash-poor inheritors of ranches, farms, and forests must often liquidate timber assets, subdivide the property, or otherwise destroy ecologically valuable land that had been cared for by owners who had truly loved it.”

The best solution to this problem is to eliminate the Estate Tax at the federal level and in the fourteen states where they still exist. Unless these taxes are eliminated, there will always be the threat that perpetually revenue hungry legislatures will seek to increase the tax rates and decrease the maximum exemptions, or seek to fiddle with estate taxes in other ways. Landowners need clear signals from government so they can plan better for the future. One clear signal they could receive, which would be an enormous benefit to American wildlife, would be the elimination of the federal and state estate taxes.

The post The Anti-Environment Tax Rolls On: the State-Based Version appeared first on Reason Foundation.

Proponents of the Endangered Species Act have long claimed that the Act does not restrict or prevent normal and legal land and resource use, in an effort to shield the Act from legal challenge that it violates the Constitution’s Taking’s Clause, which states “nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.” Despite this plain language, and that landowners, such as those in southern Utah with prairie dogs on their land, have had significant portions of their property converted into de facto federal wildlife refuges for endangered species, proponents of the Endangered Species Act maintain otherwise.

In 2013, John Platt, in his widely read Scientific American blog, Extinction Countdown, addressed “The Five Biggest Myths about the Endangered Species Act.” Platt’s “Myth # 2: It will take away your land” is substantiated by an excerpt from a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service website:

“Presence of a listed species on your land does not preclude projects or activities from happening on your land and does not grant access to your land by Federal employees.”

In response, Reed Hopper of the Pacific Legal Foundation stated:

“This is so misleading it is hard to know where to begin. We get calls all the time from landowners reporting that federal employees have ‘accessed’ private land to observe activities that may affect listed species. These landowners often receive a follow-up letter from the Fish and Wildlife Service ‘suggesting’ that ongoing land use activities, like ordinary farming, building, or timber activity, ‘may’ harm protected species and that continuing such activities ‘may’ subject the landowner to severe civil penalties or even criminal prosecution. The practical effect of such a ‘warning letter’ is to preclude such activities on the land. If the landowner seeks a permit for the activity, the application usually runs in the tens of thousands of dollars or the mitigation is so expensive that the landowner can’t afford to implement it and must abandon the activity. In addition, when an area is designated ‘critical habitat’ for a listed species the federal government effectively gains a veto power over any use of the land. We currently represent a landowner in Louisiana whose property (over 1500 acres) was designated critical habitat which the service itself reports could cost the landowner $30 million in lost revenue. But that’s not all. The ESA has a citizen suit provision which allows anyone to sue a landowner over any activity which may harm a listed species. The truth is that the ESA does something far worse than ‘take away your land.’ It often converts your land into a defacto federal preserve while sticking you with the bill.”

While the assertions by Platt and the Fish and Wildlife Service do not pass the laugh test, they are reminiscent of a similar claim made twenty years ago by John Kostyack of the National Wildlife Federation in a letter to the editor of the Wall Street Journal (May 12, 1994) about the Endangered Species Act: “In fact, the Act has never prevented property owners from developing their land.”

These claims by Endangered Species Act proponents are not only demonstrably false, they are embarrassing and symptomatic examples of a cynical race-to-the-bottom mentality that is contemptuous of the rural, blue collar and middle class Americans who often have to bear the brunt of the Act’s costly land use control regulations. At the same time, proponents like to claim that protecting endangered species is a public good because it benefits the entire nation. If this is the case, then the entire nation should shoulder the financial burden of protecting these species, not just the relatively few landowners whose property contains endangered species and the habitat necessary to support them.

While the Utah prairie dog case disproves the patently false claim that the Endangered Species Act does not restrict land and resource use, the government ironically put itself in the position of having to admit this. The crux of the government’s case is that federal protection of the prairie dog is legally justified because the rodent is involved in interstate commerce. According to this line of thought, this triggers protection under the Act because the Commerce Clause of the Constitution gives Congress the power “to regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes.” Over the years, and especially since the New Deal era, the scope of the Commerce Clause has been expanded so massively that the federal government feels it can regulate just about anything, however tenuous or even nonexistent its links to interstate commerce. The problem with the government’s Commerce Clause claim in the case of the Utah prairie dog is that the rodent lives entirely within Utah and is not involved in, or has any effect on, interstate commerce.

Yet because the federal government put itself in the untenable position that protection of the prairie dog under the Endangered Species Act is legally justified due to the Commerce Clause, the feds had to admit the Act prevented otherwise normal and legal forms of land use in order to try to create a “nexus,” or link, to interstate commerce.

Consider the following examples from the government’s brief in the case (all the case documents are available on the Pacific Legal Foundation’s website, here). On p.8 the government states:

“Some agricultural fields became so densely populated by prairie dogs that they were ruined for agricultural use.

“FWS also wanted to find more effective methods for balancing the conservation of the species with the interests of private landowners other than agricultural producers whose land has become prairie dog habitat during the last few decades.”

Then on p.32 of the brief, the government admits the following:

“…the Court need only look at the history of the rule described in detail in the Background section to see that one of the primary purposes of the original rule was to find a balanced approach to protecting the prairie dog through the regulation of agricultural lands. See 49 Fed. Reg. at 22330 (previous regulation of take was affecting the agricultural community, costing farmers about $1.5 million annually).”

And also on p.32, the government had this to say in reference to People for the Ethical Treatment of Property Owners (PETPO), an organization consisting of land and business owners in southern Utah that was formed to shine a light on problems created by federal protections for the Utah prairie dog and that was the plaintiff in the case:

“PETPO’s standing declarations make clear that this case is about commercial activity. PETPO members assert that the rule prevents them from: (1) developing property into a car dealership or otherwise selling the property, ECF No. 55-2; (2) improving the golf course grounds for patrons, ECF No. 55-3; (3) selling lots in a residential subdivision, ECF No. 55-4; and (5) developing or selling property so that the member may ‘profit from [his] investment,’ ECF No. 55-5. Consideration of PETPO members’ land use and activities is relevant here…”

On p.33, the government addresses the Endangered Species Act’s prohibition on “take” of listed species:

“[T]he prohibition on take includes significant habitat modification or degradation resulting in take, see id. § 17.3 (definition of harm). Although this provision only applies when an actual take occurs, the rule may regulate activity on property that is considered habitat for the prairie dog, which itself has commercial value, regardless of how the owner intends to use the property at issue.”

The judge’s ruling on the Utah prairie dog case also makes note of the government’s admission that the Endangered Species Act has been used as a land use control tool. On pp.11-12 the ruling states:

“Defendants’ argument that the rule has a substantial effect on interstate commerce because it has frustrated several proposed agricultural and commercial activities misses the mark… In other words, the question in the present case is whether take of the Utah prairie dog has a substantial effect on interstate commerce, not whether the regulation preventing the take has such an effect. Consequently, the fact that PETPO members or other persons are prohibited from engaging in commercial activities as a result of special rule 4(d) is irrelevant to the Commerce Clause analysis.”

The federal government is surely going to appeal the Utah prairie dog decision, and when it does it will likely have to admit again that the Endangered Species Act restricts normal and legal forms of land use. As more of the country is subjected to the Endangered Species Act’s unjust and unconstitutional taking of private property, there are going to be more examples like the Utah prairie dog in which the Act’s supporters are put in the untenable position of claiming the Commerce Clause applies to the many hundreds of species that live entirely within the borders of one state and are simply not involved in interstate commerce.

The post In Recent Prairie Dog Case, the Federal Government Admits Something it Tries to Cover-Up appeared first on Reason Foundation.

In reality, the poll asks such loaded questions and in an order that “primes” people to respond in a certain way that it is of limited, if any, validity. Let’s take the first question, which asks:

“If current state and local conservation plans are inadequate and fail to protect the species from the threat of extinction, would you support or oppose placing the sage-grouse on the Endangered Species list to prevent it from going extinct?”

In response, 67% of voters support listing, 28% oppose listing, and 6% don’t know.

This response should not be surprising because the question is loaded so heavily in favor of the desired response: listing the sage grouse under the Endangered Species Act. The question casts aspersions on “current state and local conservation plans” by placing this term in close proximity to, and defacto paired with, the unflattering words “inadequate” and “fail.” Meanwhile, the Endangered Species Act is put in a very favorable light because the term “Endangered Species list” is in close proximity to, and defecto paired with, the noble phrase “prevent it from going extinct.”

In the academic study of survey research and polling, this technique is known as “framing.” According to two of the leading experts on polling, Michael Link, currently chief methodologist for research methods at The Nielsen Company, and Robert Oldendick, professor of political science at the University of South Carolina:

“How questions are asked and the response categories provided are crucial to determining results. Common sense tells us that the use of loaded words or the phrasing of a question can affect the pattern of responses to a survey question.”

And as the Pew Research Center points out:

“The choice of words and phrases in a question is critical in expressing the meaning and intent of the question to the respondent and ensuring that all respondents interpret the question the same way. Even small wording differences can substantially affect the answers people provide.”

The second key question in Defenders of Wildlife’s sage grouse poll was asked directly following the question about state and local conservation plans, and it is phrased as:

“Would you be more likely or less likely to vote for a candidate for office who supports protecting the sage-grouse?”

In response, 51% of voters are more likely, while 31% are less likely.

As with the first question, this second question relies on a tried-and-true trick to garner the desired response. In survey research and polling, “priming” is the term used to describe this trick because respondents are primed to give a desired response by the preceding question or questions. Respondents are primed to favor candidates that support protecting the sage grouse (which implicitly means protecting with the Endangered Species Act because of how the preceding question was framed), because the order in which these two questions were placed.

According to Dr. Philip Garland, Vice President of Methodology for Survey Monkey, the popular online survey development company:

“The order questions appear in your survey can directly impact the responses you gather. One of the more well-known examples (Iyengar & Kinder, 1987) of question order effects is in the domain of politics…This phenomenon is called priming. Respondents are primed to think about one issue while answering the subsequent question.”

Again, the Pew Research Center provides useful insight on the issue of the order in which poll questions are asked:

“Once the survey questions are developed, particular attention should be paid to how they are ordered in the questionnaire. The placement of a question can have a greater impact on the result than the particular choice of words used in the question.”

The only thing that can be concluded from Defenders of Wildlife’s highly flawed sage grouse poll is that asking loaded questions in a certain orders will produce desired and predictable results that have little if any validity and objectivity.

Another recent flawed poll on sage grouse conservation was released in July by Pew Charitable Trusts’ Western Lands Initiative. The poll purports to show that large majorities of the public in Oregon, Colorado, Nevada and Montana support protecting the greater sage grouse. In reality, the poll asks such loaded questions in favor of the Bureau of Land Management’s plans to protect sage grouse that very little if anything of value can be concluded. Yet the poll appears valid in part because it was conducted by a Democrat firm, Benenson Strategy Group, and a Republican firm, Public Opinion Strategies.

The upshot of these two flawed polls on sage grouse conservation is that desired responses can easily be obtained by the ways in which questions are phrased, coupled with and the order in which questions are asked. If nothing else, these two polls are good case studies in flawed polling methodology.

The post Fundamentally Flawed Poll on Sage Grouse Conservation Gets Desired but Invalid Results appeared first on Reason Foundation.

This victory comes on the heels of another legal victory a month ago in which the Federal District Court in D.C. found in favor of the 2012 decision by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service not to list the dunes sagebrush lizard under the Endangered Species Act. The judge in the case based much of his ruling on a conservation plan for the lizard that is successful due in no small part to its protection of participating landowners’ confidentiality. This encourages landowners to participate without fear that data about their property could be used by the Fish and Wildlife Service to invoke the Endangered Species Act’s much-feared regulations. The Texas Comptroller, Susan Combs, who led the effort on the conservation plan, was granted lead intervenor status in the case. The conservation plan involves a wide range of stakeholders, including various oil and gas trade associations, which were also granted intervenor status. More broadly, the court’s decision is a vindication of the approach taken by the Texas Comptroller’s office over the past several years to find creative, state-based solutions to endangered species issues, which are often complex, conflict-ridden, and involve a dizzying array of public and private sector interests-all of which are trying to cope with the country’s most powerful environmental law.

The Utah prairie dog case is different than the dunes sagebrush lizard case but equally as important. The crux of the lawsuit brought by People for the Ethical Treatment of Property Owners and the Pacific Legal Foundation is that the federal government’s use of the Constitution’s Commerce Clause as justification for protecting the prairie dog-because the rodents are somehow involved in interstate commerce, which creates a “nexus” for federal regulation-is invalid because, quite simply, the prairie dog lives entirely within Utah and is not involved any interstate commerce. “The problem, for the federal government, is that the species is only found in this small area of Utah and has nothing to do with the nation’s $15 trillion economy,” according to Jonathan Wood. “Yet, the government attempted to justify its intrusion into this local matter based on the Constitution’s Commerce Clause.”

The court found:

“Although the Commerce Clause authorizes Congress to do many things, it does not authorize Congress to regulate takes of a purely intrastate species that has no substantial effect on interstate commerce. Congress similarly lacks authority through the Necessary and Proper Clause because the regulation of takes of Utah prairie dogs is not essential or necessary to the ESA’s economic scheme.”

The court also found:

“If Congress could use the Commerce Clause to regulate anything that might affect the ecosystem (to say nothing about its effect on commerce), there would be no logical stopping point to congressional power under the Commerce Clause.”

Also figuring in the court’s decision is the Necessary and Proper Clause of Constitution, which states:

“The Congress shall have Power…To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.”

While this case has to do with Constitutional law, the reason why residents of southern Utah are so upset-in particular those in Iron County because it contains most of the prairie dog’s population-is that for decades they have been forced to bear the costs, often substantial, of living with prairie dogs. The examples are legion, but a few of them are:

• Children have been prevented from playing in the field owned by and adjacent to Grace Christian Church in the town of Parowan because prairie dogs pockmarked the field with burrow holes, which could easily cause injury to a running child.
• In the town of Paragonah, prairie dogs reside in the cemetery where their burrows undermine headstones and cause them to lean and even tip over.

• Prairie dog burrows undermine the runway of the Parowan airport, causing it to sink and buckle in places, which poses a serious safety hazard.
• Farmers have long suffered from machinery and irrigation infrastructure damaged by prairie dog burrows, as well as prairie dogs eating crops. In 1984, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service estimated the Utah prairie dog was costing farmers $1.5 million annually due to crop loss and equipment damage.
• In Cedar City, the seat of Iron County, “The town has been inundated with prairie dogs that are leaving parks, gardens, vacant lots, the golf course and even the local cemetery pockmarked with burrows and tunnels,” Jonathan Wood of the Pacific Legal Foundation told the Deseret News.

The desecration of cemeteries in Paragonah and Cedar City by prairie dogs is in many ways the issue that most angered residents of Iron County. According to the lawsuit filed by the Pacific Legal Foundation:

“The city wishes to operate a cemetery that is a pleasant and peaceful place of reflection for people visiting the remains of their deceased loved ones. But the Utah prairie dogs are a safety hazard for visitors to the cemetery. Their burrowing creates an uneven ground on which it is more difficult to safely traverse, particularly for the elderly and disabled.

“The Utah prairie dog threatens the peaceful operation of the cemetery and the sanctity of the grave sites. Recently, a funeral service was interrupted by a prairie dog that scampered around the service and began barking loudly and incessantly. This disturbance caused great stress to the unfortunate widow. The prairie dogs also destroy remembrances left at grave sites. For example, the prairie dogs eat flowers and other plants that visitors place near tombstones. Also, the city wishes to expand the cemetery to provide much needed space for additional grave sites. This expansion, however, has been prevented because the prairie dog has infested the area.”

In response to these problems, the Fish and Wildlife Service in 1984 reclassified the prairie dog from endangered to the less-imperiled status of threatened and promulgated a 4(d) rule that allows “take” of prairie dogs through translocation and lethal means. But this has done little to solve the problem of prairie dogs occupying and damaging private land. According to the Service’s 2012 recovery plan, private lands contain 78% of the Utah prairie dog’s population. The reason for this is private lands have higher quality forage due to mowing and irrigation. This is especially true of private lands in Iron County, which contain 67% of the population.

Since 1984, as it has become increasingly clear that even with the Fish and Wildlife Service’s permitted “take”, property damage caused by prairie dogs and resentment by people forced to bear the costs of harboring the rodents without any compensation has been getting worse. This is vividly illustrated by a survey, published in 2007 in a scholarly journal (the results of which I discuss in detail in my ESA study). Responses to the survey reveal:

• 33% of landowners take actions to discourage prairie dogs from inhabiting their property.

• Very few landowners are willing to have prairie dogs translocated to their land, a management strategy promoted by the federal government.

• The above-two responses are likely due to landowners’ fear of ESA regulations.

• Landowners involved in agriculture have a strong preference for compensation and relief from the Endangered Species Act’s regulations.

• While landowners do also favor lethal control of prairie dogs, this is less popular when compared compensation and regulatory relief.

• Farmers in southern Utah are very unwilling to enroll all or a portion of their land in a conservation easement for the purpose of conserving the Utah prairie dog. The likely reason for this response, as revealed by surveys of landowners in other parts of the country, is Utah landowners highly value their autonomy and do not like to encumber their land for the long, or even indefinite, periods of time common in conservation easements.

• Another revealing question is about farmers’ preferences for working with various groups to address conflicts caused by Utah prairie dogs. The responses provide confirmation of aspects of other landowner surveys, most notably that landowners fear the Endangered Species Act and as a result do not trust organizations they perceive as being involved with implementing and enforcing the Act. The likely reason for the unwillingness of 74% of farmers to work with the Environmental Defense Fund and 68% with the Nature Conservancy is that at the time of the survey in 2005 these groups had been heavily involved in Utah prairie dog conservation efforts that did little to help landowners. The Environmental Defense Fund was heavily promoting the Safe Harbors Program as a solution to human-prairie dog conflicts. Clearly, farmers in southern Utah were not buying it, and the likely reason is that Safe Harbors does nothing to alleviate problems, including lost income and lowered property values, due to regulations on existing endangered species. Safe Harbors only protects property owners against additional (i.e., above the “baseline” number of species at the time the agreement is signed) endangered species taking up residence.

• Farmers in the Utah prairie dog’s range trust the Utah Farm Bureau and the Utah State University Extension because they use non-regulatory approaches to gain landowners’ willing cooperation for conservation initiatives.

• The Utah prairie dog survey also queried three groups of people-farmers in the prairie dog’s range, rural landowners in the prairie dog’s range who are not in agriculture, and urban residents in the Salt Lake City region-about their view on compensation for property lost and damaged by the Endangered Species Act’s restrictions for prairie dogs. These three groups were asked that if compensation is provided, then who should be responsible for providing it. Interestingly, all three groups thought environmental groups were most responsible, followed by the federal government and then state government. It is also striking that all three groups thought private insurers were least responsible, an indication respondents were aware that government should bear the burden of compensating landowners for conserving wildlife protected under a public law.

As a result of the survey’s findings about the opinions and preferences of landowners, especially those forced to bear the costs of conserving the Utah prairie dog, the authors conclude:

“The fear generated by ESA regulation is a poor motivator for species conservation on private lands. Rather, incentive based approaches that consider the needs of landowners are more likely to result in species conservation over the long term.”

This survey is based largely on the PhD research of Dwayne Elmore, who is currently a professor in the Department of Natural Resource Ecology and Management at Oklahoma State University. According to Elmore, state universities’ cooperative extension services, which typically include education and natural resource management advice for landowners, are a good model for organizing endangered species conservation efforts:

“Cooperative Extension is an ideal facilitator for volatile wildlife issues such as endangered species management on private lands. Often, lack of trust in government agencies or fear of Endangered Species Act regulations hinders conservation efforts on these private lands. Extension personnel have close ties to local affected communities and thus can be instrumental in educating landowners regarding options that may be available to them in regards to sensitive, candidate, threatened, or endangered species.”

Unfortunately, the Fish and Wildlife Service and environmental pressure groups have failed to respond substantively to landowners’ and communities’ growing anger over costs imposed by federal protection of the Utah prairie dog, as well as many other species. This is not surprising because those in the federal government and non-governmental groups who work to implement, enforce and advocate for the Endangered Species Act are self-selecting. They tend to believe strongly in the Act’s penalty-based approach to conservation, and as a result they are relatively insensitive to the concerns of landowners and others who are forced to bear the costs of harboring endangered species.

Due to the failure of the Fish and Wildlife Service and pressure groups to address substantively and seriously problems caused by the Utah prairie dog, many residents of Iron County felt they had no option but to file a lawsuit to regain use of their land and control of their communities. Yet this would have been unnecessary but for the counterproductive way the Endangered Species Act goes about achieving its goal of conserving species.

There are a couple take home points from yesterday’s court decision about the Utah prairie dog. First, the court’s ruling is going to be challenged, but if it stands up on appeal it could have broad ramifications. There are many other species like the prairie dog for which there is no nexus with which the federal government can reasonably invoke the Commerce Clause as the basis for protection under the Endangered Species act.

Second, while proponents of the Endangered Species Act are portraying yesterday’s court decision as a mortal threat to the Act, the opposite is true. If the federal government was prohibited from using the Act’s much-feared regulations to threaten landowners and force them to harbor species, this would compel the federal government to adopt a much friendlier and open approach to gain landowners’ trust and willing cooperation. After all, as the survey for the Utah prairie dog shows (as well as other landowner surveys discussed in my ESA study), landowners are very willing to conserve endangered species so long as they are not threatened, their autonomy and property rights are respected, and they are provided some modest compensation. One of the ultimate results of yesterday’s court decision may be more successful endangered species conservation.

The post Another Endangered Species Act Legal Victory for Landowners and Conservation appeared first on Reason Foundation.

All of this will likely come as a surprise to many North Dakotans because until now the Endangered Species Act has had a relatively modest impact on the state. This is due in large part to the fact that over almost the entire Act’s 40-year history only eight species in North Dakota have been listed.

But with the recent listing of two butterflies, the Dakota skipper and the Poweshiek skipperling, North Dakota is entering a new era of Endangered Species Act. The state’s number of endangered species is likely to increase by around 75%, which has the potential for significant negative impacts on the state’s economy, especially the agriculture and energy sectors, as well as conservation efforts for imperiled species. The reason for the new era stems from four factors:

• A “tidal wave” of over 750 species nationwide that are going to be considered for listing over the next decade or so, which will increase by about 50% the number of species protected under the Act
• The increasingly aggressive implementation and enforcement of the Act by the federal government
• Environmental pressure groups that are very willing to use the citizen suit provision of the Act to direct the federal government to make the Act even more onerous
• Growing evidence that the Act’s punitive approach works directly against species conservation.

For much of its 40-year history, the Endangered Species Act has been thought of as largely a Western issue that has also impacted limited regions of country, such as in Texas and some of the South. But with the tidal wave of species in the process of being listed, huge portions of the country that have been relatively untouched by the Act are going to be heavily impacted, such as the Great Plains, Midwest, Intermountain West, East, as well as much of the South that has thus far escaped the ESA (as I wrote about in a previous post, here).

The tidal wave of species is the result of a 2011 lawsuit settlement between the federal government and the two most aggressive pressure groups-the Center for Biological Diversity and Wild Earth Guardians-under which the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is obligated to consider for listing more than 870 species (to date, about 120 of these species have been listed). North Dakota contains six of these lawsuit settlement species, two of which are the just-listed butterflies. In the pipeline are several species that have significantly more potential than the butterflies to cause problems for North Dakota, most notably Sprague’s pipit, a grassland bird that lives in the western three-quarters of the state, including in the oil rich Bakken region.

The just-listed butterflies aptly illustrate two of the main problems with the Endangered Species Act that are now facing North Dakota, one of which is the poor quality of the data upon which species are usually listed and decisions made about restricting land and resource use. North Dakota contains 25% of the known historical U.S. populations and 39% of known current populations of the Dakota skipper. According to the Fish and Wildlife Service, of the 54 known historical populations of Dakota skipper in North Dakota, 16 are extant, 13 extirpated, 11 possibly extirpated, and 14 (26%) are of unknown status. The situation for the Powesheik skipperling is much the same. North Dakota contains 17 (or 6%) of the known historical U.S. populations, and of these 3 are extirpated, 6 possibly extirpated, and 8 (47%) are unknown. Imagine a private sector business trying to make decisions based on no information about 25-50% of its inventory and assets. Furthermore, these butterfly data are very likely incomplete because some landowners, fearful of the Endangered Species Act’s penalties and distrustful of the Fish and Wildlife Service, are probably not revealing that they have butterflies and suitable butterfly habitat on their land. Yet this is business as usual under the Endangered Species Act, which is very problematic because these poor quality data are used by the federal government to restrict land and resource use and by litigious environmental groups to push the feds toward even more restrictions.

A more significant problem is that the Endangered Species Act is used as a powerful land and resource use control tool, which imposes substantial costs on the private sector and works against the goal of conserving imperiled species. The final rule listing the butterflies is filled with ominous language about the threats to the butterflies from farming, ranching, and the oil and gas industry. According to the Fish and Wildlife Service, “prescribed burns, haying before July 16, broadcast herbicide treatments, some insecticide treatments, and permanent conversion of the Dakota skipper’s grassland habitats,” are threats.

At the same time, the Service is also trying to sell the listing of the skipper as not much of a threat to agriculture because the butterfly is listed under the less-imperiled status of “threatened,” and the agency promulgated a 4(d) rule, which presumably provides regulatory flexibility. “The 4(d) rule now exempts take of Dakota skippers caused by grazing on all non-federal lands in the United States,” according to Fish and Wildlife. The Service adds, “take of Dakota skipper caused by haying in transportation rights-of-ways and corridors after July 15 is exempt under the 4(d) rule, as long as it is associated with livestock ranching activities. The 4(d) rule exempts take of Dakota skippers caused by mowing recreational trails, a term that is defined in the rule, even when it is not associated with livestock grazing.”

The problem with this portrayal of the alleged regulatory flexibility made possible by a threatened listing is that the Endangered Species Act is so powerful and federal government’s discretion to implement the law so broad that the difference between species’ status as “threatened” and the more-imperiled status of “endangered” can be rendered effectively meaningless. For example, the northern spotted owl was listed as threatened in 1990, but this still led to massive land use restrictions that had a devastating impact on the timber industry in the Pacific Northwest.

Under the Endangered Species Act, even habitat unoccupied by endangered or threatened species can be regulated. Consider the Fish and Wildlife Service’s view of the potential effects of the oil and gas industry in North Dakota on the two butterfly species (note the highly speculative way in which potential future impacts are phrased):

“Specifically with regard to our evaluation of impacts from oil and gas activities, much of this activity is currently occurring in areas of native prairie overlying the Bakken and Three Forks formations, to the west of known locations for both butterfly species. However, current Bakken oil and gas development is occurring in two counties that have records of Dakota skippers (McKenzie and McLean counties in North Dakota). In those areas, oil and gas development is a stressor to the populations that may be present. Because there are few locations where the butterflies may still be extant, significant stressors to these few populations can be threats to the species as a whole. Furthermore, although oil and gas development is unlikely to occur throughout the entire range of the two butterflies in the foreseeable future, there may be future development or increases in current activities associated with the shale-oil formations (such as the Bakken formation in North Dakota) that may affect butterfly populations in those areas.”

While these two butterfly species pose a challenge to North Dakota because they have habitat in scattered patches across the state, the more serious threat is Sprague’s pipit, the grassland bird, because the state lies at the heart of its U.S. breeding habitat. The Fish and Wildlife Service often focuses on breeding habitat when invoking the Endangered Species Act’s land use control provisions. Under the 2011 lawsuit settlement, the Fish and Wildlife Service must, if warranted, publish a listing proposal for Sprague’s pipit by September 2015. If listing is proposed, then a final listing decision must be made by September 2016.

For a sense of the likely impacts if Sprague’s pipit is listed, as well as the economic activities pressure groups and the federal government would likely target, a good place to start is Wild Earth Guardians’ petition to list Sprague’s pipit. According to the petition:

“The Sprague’s pipit is particularly sensitive to anthropogenic disturbance. The birds avoid roads, for example. Increased oil and gas exploration and extraction have likely increased disturbances throughout the pipit’s range and caused habitat losses as well. Pesticide applications and harassment techniques to prevent crop losses to birds, particularly blackbirds, in the pipit’s migratory corridor may be a growing threat to safe stopover points needed during migration.”

The threat posed to oil and gas development by the two just-listed butterflies is more speculative, but this is not the case for Sprague’s pipit because the bird’s habitat overlaps the entire Bakken region that has made North Dakota the nation’s second-largest oil producing state, with production of about 1 million barrels per day. Wild Earth Guardian’s listing petition provides a road map of how activists and the federal government will likely use the Endangered Species Act to go after the oil and gas industry if Sprague’s pipit is listed. The petition states:

“Oil and gas exploration and extraction is likely a severe threat to Sprague’s pipit habitat. The imposition of infrastructure for oil and gas extraction facilitates the spread of weeds and establishes structures and roads that pipits avoid. Drilling for oil and gas has increased significantly in the past decade.

“Migration routes may be disrupted, feeding and nesting sites may be isolated into parcels too small to use, and the general effect of widespread activity creates noise, emits pollutants, and generally disturbs animal behavior. Specifically, mineral extraction development causes habitat fragmentation that perpetuates and exacerbates degradation.”

The listing petition adds:

“Possible environmental disruption includes, but is not limited to: noise pollution, human intrusion, alteration of vegetation and land and introduction of harmful substances. Habitat alteration, one of the greater threats to Sprague’s pipit, is caused by seismic trail clearing, clearing and grading of right of ways, site development, excavation of storage and mud pits, borrow pit excavation, construction of process, treatment and storage facilities, installation of flow lines, erection of power lines, communication systems development, trenching and pipe installation, pipe burial and backfill, effluent accidents and development of ancillary industry (i.e., boomtowns associated with labor forces).”

In addition to major impacts on the economy, the other aspect of the Endangered Species Act that people in North Dakota will become increasingly familiar with is that the Act’s penalty-based approach harms the very species that are supposed to be protected (as I discuss at length in my recently release study, available here). The reason for this is the Act’s draconian penalties-$100,000 fine and/or 1 year in jail for harming one butterfly, bird, or even their habitat, regardless of whether the habitat is occupied or simply deemed to be of a suitable type-turn species into financial liabilities. In response, landowners harboring endangered and threatened species do what anyone with a financial liability does; they try to eliminate or lower it. This process happens in four ways, the three most damaging of which are:

• Landowners actively destroy habitat for endangered species
• Landowners refrain from managing habitat so as to render it unsuitable for species
• Landowners and others go silent and hope the presence of species and habitat on their land goes unnoticed by regulatory authorities and aggressive environmental pressure groups.

These three responses are so damaging because habitat destruction and degradation are by far the leading causes of species imperilment, and having basic knowledge about species numbers and distribution is essential to successful conservation. The fourth way, which tends to get a lot of attention because it is sensationalistic, is when landowners kill species, otherwise known as shoot, shovel, and shut-up.

In short, the Endangered Species Act goes about achieving its goal of conserving imperiled species in exactly the wrong way. As a result, there is widespread evidence landowners are taking actions to rid their property of species and habitat. And this is also why the ratio of declining to improving species is an abysmal 9 to 1 on private land but a much better 1.5 to 1 on federal land.

Fortunately, there is a much more productive approach to conserving endangered species, which is based on the voluntary cooperation of landowners, that has been pioneered over the past eight years by the Texas Comptroller (as I wrote about here). This approach, which is modeled on the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Conservation Reserve Program that pays landowners to conserve environmentally sensitive land, will immediately make sense to many North Dakotans because the state has over 13,000 farms and more than 1.6 million acres enrolled in the Conservation Reserve Program. There is a reason why landowners across the country willingly pick up the phone and call their local Department of Agriculture extension office but would not dream of contacting the Fish and Wildlife Service if they have imperiled species on their property. The Department of Agriculture personnel come with the open hand of friendship, while the Fish and Wildlife Service brings the closed fist of regulations.

North Dakota is unfortunately learning that the Endangered Species Act’s penalty-based approach to conservation harms the species the law is supposed to protect, the people who harbor these species and the state’s economy. This lose-lose-lose situation can be turned around if a new, incentive-based approach is used. North Dakotans, like most Americans, are proud, patriotic people who want to conserve their state’s land, water and wildlife so long as they are not punished for doing so. Those serious about endangered species conservation should seek to tap the enormous goodwill, energy and talent of America’s landowners by charting a new course that respects property rights and compensates landowners for the costs incurred conserving endangered species.

The post North Dakota in the Crosshairs of the Endangered Species Act appeared first on Reason Foundation.

• LOCAL BUDGETS: Report Finds Slow Recovery, Headwinds for Cities
• PENSIONS: Pension Funding and the “Transition Costs” Myth
• PRIVATIZATION: School Services Contracting Continues Rise in Michigan
• INNOVATORS IN ACTION: Johns Creek, Georgia’s Evolving PPP Model
• ENVIRONMENT: FAQ on Endangered Species Act Reform
• News & Notes
• Quotable Quotes

LOCAL BUDGETS: Report Finds Slow Recovery, Fiscal Headwinds for Cities

Earlier this month, the National League of Cities issued the 2014 edition of its annual City Fiscal Conditions report, which found that cities remain early in their post-recession economic recovery, though they still face significant fiscal headwinds moving forward.
» FULL ARTICLE

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PENSIONS: Pension Funding and the “Transition Costs” Myth

With state and local governments facing over $1 trillion in unfunded pension liabilities, one proposed solution is to shift government employees from defined-benefit pension systems-in which retired government employees receive a set annual payment for life-to 401(k)-style defined-contribution systems like those typically found in the private sector. However, critics often argue that this reform will result in transition costs that outweigh the benefits of the change. A new Reason Foundation policy brief examines that claim and finds it to be false: the transition costs argument is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of how public employee pensions are funded and should not discourage governments from exploring a shift away from defined-benefit pensions to defined-contribution retirement plans.
» FULL REPORT

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PRIVATIZATION: School Services Contracting Continues Rise in Michigan

The privatization of non-educational school support services-primarily food, custodial and transportation services-is a common occurrence in school districts nationwide but has been infrequently studied, with the notable exception of Michigan, where the Mackinac Center for Public Policy has conducted an annual survey of local school districts dating back to 2003. The 2014 edition of this report was released earlier this month and found record levels of school service outsourcing in Michigan, which has generally been on an upward trend for over a decade.
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INNOVATORS IN ACTION: Evolving the Public-Private Partnership Model in Johns Creek, Georgia

The latest installment of Reason Foundation’s Innovators in Action monthly interview series-which profiles innovative policymakers in their own words, highlighting good government efforts delivering real results and value for taxpayers-examines Johns Creek, Georgia, which incorporated in 2006 not as a traditional city, but one that relied on a large-scale public-private partnership that saw most municipal services outside of public safety delivered by private contractors, as opposed to municipal employees. I recently interviewed Johns Creek Mayor Mike Bodker on the city’s startup, its evolving use of public-private partnerships, what’s next for the city, and more.
» FULL INTERVIEW

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ENVIRONMENT: FAQ on Endangered Species Act Reform

Proponents of the Endangered Species Act claim it is a success because it has saved many species from extinction. Others question its record, noting that there is increasing evidence the Act is causing widespread harm to the species it is supposed to protect. A recent Reason Foundation study proposed a new approach-known as the Endangered Species Reserve Program-which would eliminate counterproductive penalties that encourage landowners to make their land inhospitable to endangered species, and replace them with an entirely voluntary system in which landowners are compensated for investing in habitat and species conservation. A new article answers the frequently asked questions about endangered species protection, the failures of the Endangered Species Act, and the potential benefits of a new approach.
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NEWS & NOTES

GAO Finds Decline in Federal Agency Use of Performance Information: A new report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) evaluating the implementation of the Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) Modernization Act of 2010 found an overall decline in federal agencies’ use of performance information in decision making between 2007 and 2013. Of the 24 agencies surveyed, only two (Office of Personnel Management and Department of Labor) showed a statistically significant increase in use of performance information, while four agencies (Department of Veterans Affairs, NASA, Department of Energy, and Nuclear Regulatory Commission) showed a statistically significant decline. The full GAO report is available here.

NCHRP Releases Leading Practices Guide on Privatized Transportation Maintenance: A new report released as part of the U.S. Domestic Scan Program of the National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) examines practices, challenges and opportunities for the large-scale outsourcing of maintenance functions at state departments of transportation. Among the issues explored are the factors influencing the decision to outsource maintenance, contractual considerations and approaches, outsourcing success factors and concerns, and more. The full report is available here.

New Report Recommends Infrastructure Life-Cycle Cost Analysis: A new report from the American Society of Civil Engineers and the Eno Center for Transportation explores the benefits of life-cycle cost analysis in transportation projects and ways to eliminate barriers to its implementation in public infrastructure decision-making. The report finds that life-cycle cost analysis-accounting for the total costs of an infrastructure project over its expected life, as opposed to policymakers’ current emphasis on upfront costs, with little attention to future costs-“can ensure the sustainability of future budgets and better management of our vital infrastructure.” The report also finds that life-cycle costing is more widespread in the private sector than the public sector and recommends the use of public-private partnerships to help accelerate the use of this tool by government agencies. The full report is available here.

Toll Concession Project Opens in North Texas: The first two segments of the North Tarrant Express toll concession project opened to the public on October 4th, marking the state’s second public-private partnership highway to launch this year. The $2.1 billion project-a 13-mile upgrade of the Interstate 820 and SH 121/SH 183 corridor in Northeast Tarrant County to nearly double the capacity of the congested corridor-included a reconstruction of the general purpose lanes with expanded capacity through four new managed (dynamically tolled) lanes and additional frontage lanes. The project used a combination of state funding and private financing under a 52-year concession model, notable for having the Dallas Police and Fire Pension System included in the private developer consortium as one of the direct equity investors in the project. More information is available at the project’s website here.

Philadelphia City Council Rejects Sale of City Gas Utility to Shore up Underfunded Pensions: The Wall Street Journal reported this week that the Philadelphia City Council has issued a statement rejecting Mayor Michael Nutter’s proposed sale of the city-owned Philadelphia Gas Works over concerns regarding the financial terms of the deal and potential risks to customers. The Nutter administration announced in early March that UIL Holdings Corp., a Connecticut-based energy company, had agreed to buy the utility for $1.86 billion, which was expected to generate between $424 million and $631 million to shore up the city’s pension fund, which is facing an $8.3 billion unfunded liability. In rejecting the utility sale, the council noted that it would seek new ways to improve the operations of the Gas Works, though it did not discuss any plans to address the unfunded pension liability. “Unfortunately, the only other option to generate that kind of money [to shore up pensions] would be to either take it from the general fund or increase citizens’ taxes,” Mayor Nutter told reporters in response to the rejection, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Pennsylvania DOT Selects Team for Bridge Replacement Public-Private Partnership: Last week, the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT) selected a winning bidder for the state’s Rapid Bridge Replacement Project, a public-private partnership to reconstruct 558 structurally deficient bridges statewide. Plenary Walsh Keystone Partners-a consortium that includes the Plenary Group, The Walsh Group, Granite Construction Company, and HDR Engineering (along with 11 Pennsylvania-based subcontractors)-will finance the $899 million project in an availability-payment concession and will manage the bridges’ design, construction and maintenance under one comprehensive to streamline project delivery. All 558 bridges will be replaced within three years of the 2015 project start date, and the consortium will maintain each bridge for 25 years after completion. PennDOT estimates the average per-bridge cost under this project to be $1.6 million, compared to an average of more than $2 million under a traditional delivery approach. More information is available here, and my recent interview with Bryan Kendro, who directs PennDOT’s Office of Policy & Public Private Partnerships, is available here.

Phoenix Leases Struggling City Golf Course to Private University: The Arizona Republic reported last week that the City of Phoenix has approved a 30-year lease with the private Grand Canyon University to take over the management of the city-owned Maryvale Municipal Golf Course, which ran a $250,000 deficit under city management during the last fiscal year. Under the deal, the university will take on all operating costs and invest $8 million into course repairs and an upgraded clubhouse, and it will make payments to the city at a level of 10 percent of net revenues after it recoups its upfront investment. Phoenix officials have been seeking alternative management solutions for city-owned golf courses to reduce taxpayer subsidies after the courses racked up millions in operating deficits over the past decade.

Georgia County Selects Finalist for Multi-Departmental Services Contract: Earlier this month, officials in Barrow County, Georgia selected CH2M HILL as the preferred contractor to submit a bid to potentially take over the operations of nearly a dozen county departments, including public works, general administration, transportation, human resources, community development, parks and engineering. According to the Barrow County News, the firm is currently preparing a bid, and the county’s board of commissioners is expected to vote on a resulting contract in November. While several municipalities have incorporated in Georgia over the past decade using a contract city model (see my interview with Johns Creek Mayor Mike Bodker above), Barrow County could become the first in Georgia-and possibly the nation-to convert from traditional service delivery to a largely contract-based model.

Osceola County, Florida Officials Approve Jail Healthcare Contract: The Osceola News-Gazette reports that county commissioners have approved a five-year, $21.8 million contract with Armor Correctional Health Services to provide healthcare services at the Osceola County Jail, a move officials expect will save taxpayers $677,000. All current county employees will be offered interviews, and the county can terminate the contract at will with 120-day advance notice.

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QUOTABLE QUOTES

“[T]he days of public employees-or anyone, for that matter-paying nothing toward their health-insurance costs are numbered, and rightly so. State and local taxpayers shouldn’t be asked to subsidize a public-employee perk that they themselves can only dream of.”

-Charles Chieppo, “When Public Employees Won’t Budge on Their Benefits,” Governing.com, October 24, 2014.

“Private sector partners know their number one job is to focus on service to earn a paycheck […] We foster a teamwork environment and our private sector partners play an essential role and are partners in delivery services to the public.”

-Sandy Springs, GA Mayor Rusty Paul, on his city’s widely publicized use of private contractors to provide nearly all municipal services (outside of police and fire). Quoted in Patricia-Anne Tom, “Striking the Right Note: Despite some discord, properly managed public-private partnerships can find harmony,” American City and County, September 24, 2014.

“Getting managers to use performance information isn’t just a procedural or technical exercise. It is a fundamental change in how they do their day-to-day jobs and how they approach problem-solving. Bob Behn of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, says that using performance information is a leadership strategy, not a set of processes and procedures. In fact, GAO found that training managers on how to technically develop performance measures actually led to a decrease in their use by managers. GAO found that training managers on how to analyze and use performance information was far more conducive.”

-John Kamensky, IBM Center for the Business of Government, “Why Isn’t Performance Information Being Used?,” Government Executive, October 14, 2014.

“[The Indiana Toll Road concession] got into trouble because its traffic projections were overoptimistic. The 2007-09 recession cut into truck traffic at the same time overall driving miles fell. Revenue from tolls came up far short of forecasts, and with much of the deal financed by debt, ITR fell into arrears. It missed a debt payment in June and declared bankruptcy this month. The toll road, however, continues to function normally, with no disruptions expected because the lease requiring routine maintenance of the road remains in effect. The lease is now an asset that will go to the highest bidder – who will be obligated to abide by its terms – as ITR works through bankruptcy. The biggest losers will be ITR’s debt and equity holders.”

-Rick Newman, “How taxpayers fleeced well-heeled investors, for once,” Yahoo Finance, September 26, 2014.

“California’s effort to provide medical services in the state prison system has been an abysmal failure. For more than a decade, the state has provided what one federal judge called a system of “at times outright depravity,” with a standard of health service delivery that has failed to pass constitutional muster. […] There are alternatives. In 2012, California’s Legislative Analyst’s Office suggested that the state look at contracting out health care services. Dozens of states contract out a variety of correctional health services. Texas contracted with its state university system to provide inmate medical care. Kansas contracts all medical services with a private company. The LAO notes that of all models, contracting out through a competitive bidding process, with a clearly defined contract and sets of expectations, yields the best results in terms of service delivery and controlling costs for state governments.”

–Orange County Register editorial board, “Editorial: California prison health care is seriously ill,” October 1, 2014.

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Additional Resources:

• Reason Foundation privatization research archive
• Annual Privatization Report 2014 homepage
• Innovators in Action 2014 homepage
• Privatization & Government Reform Newsletter archive

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