Bill To Reform Species Act
Facing Administration's Axe

WASHINGTON —(AP)— Congressional Republicans are renewing their effort to cushion the impact of the federal Endangered Species Act on private landowners, this time by requiring the government to pay landowners who are forced to keep their land dormant because of the act.

A bill written by Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska, and co-sponsored by more than 25 House Republicans, equates the ESA's impact on private land to a ``taking'' of the land for public use.

The measure would prevent the government from such a ``taking'' unless it obtains landowner permission, negotiates an agreement or pays compensation.

This latest proposal, introduced last month, is another signal that the Republicans haven't given up on a cause they embraced when they rose to majority power in 1994. Young and his allies have been trying rigorously in recent Congresses to get the ESA off the backs of private landowners.

But environmental activists expect Young's bill to meet with the same kind of failure as his other recent efforts. They contend Democrats and moderate Republicans are reticent to support any proposal that would make the publicly popular ESA more difficult to enforce.

``I'd bet Don Young a beer his bill has no chance of passing,'' said Bill Snape, legal director of Defenders of Wildlife. ``He vastly overstates the hand he holds with regard to the Endangered Species Act.''

Young cites the Constitution as the basis for his proposal. He points out that the 5th Amendment states in part that ``nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.''

``It just makes sense that if the government forces you to make your property into a federal wildlife refuge, then you should be compensated,'' he said when he introduced his bill.

But the Clinton administration has threatened to veto the ``Landowners Equal Treatment Act of 1999.''

The Young bill goes far beyond what the courts have upheld as a ``taking'' under the Constitution, Jamie Rappaport Clark, director of the Fish and Wildlife Service, said in testimony at an April 14 hearing of the House Resources Committee, which Young chairs.

Young's bill could be applied so broadly that it would require federal agencies to spend most, if not all, of their budgets compensating landowners, Clark said.

``Taxpayer money spent on compensation ... is money not spent protecting and recovering the species needing the protections of the ESA,'' she said.

(Forgive our old-fashioned cussedness, but right is right, wrong is wrong, and theft is theft, no matter who engages in it. If the government is determined to take something, it should pay for it just like anyone else. Imagine that same government's attitude toward a taxpayer who announced on April 15 that he wasn't going to pay his income tax because he preferred to spend the money on a new car. If the federal bureaucrats and their activist allies can't afford both their obligations and their whims, perhaps they need to scale back their ambitions. — Ed.)

Snape said there is support for modest ESA reforms, such as deferring estate taxes for private landowners who take actions to help endangered species. But he said Young's bill goes too far.

Still, some private landowners are happy for the effort.

Dave Pechan, a grape grower near Stockton, Calif., still gets angry when he recalls a 1997 threat he said the Fish and Wildlife Service made. He said agency officials talked of not allowing him to plant a vineyard on his 40 acres because it might hurt the fairy shrimp.

Pechan, who had already received permission from the Agriculture Department for the vineyard, continued with his project. The agency never followed through on its threat.

Still, he said, the ESA has ``placed a real chill, I think, in this area of California. ... I see this as purely a government control thing over the rights of private property owners.''

At the April 14 hearing, Nancie Marzulla told of a retired builder in suburban Washington, D.C., who has been kept from building a home on a small lot unless he takes steps to help protect an eagle nest located on a neighbor's property.

``The property owner is really a sitting duck, so to speak,'' Marzulla, president of the group Defenders of Property Rights, said later in an interview. ``This bill would really level the playing field.''

Elizabeth Megginson, chief counsel for the House Resources Committee, said many private landowners are hesitant to pursue their rights in court because cases drag on for a decade and can cost landowners more than $500,000.

``The government fights them every step of the way,'' she said.

The Clinton administration, however, contends that it has already made the ESA more landowner friendly through the expanded use of habitat conservation plans, or HCPs. The plans allow private landowners to "harm" a species or species habitat in return for taking action to help the species long-term, such as setting aside land elsewhere for habitat.

After having just 14 HCPs on the books in 1992, there are now more than 240, largely because the administration has included guarantees that they will be in place for decades or more.

``HCP's are proving to be a popular conservation tool,'' Clark said in her testimony.

Administration and activist critics of the Young measure insist property rights are no valid protection against rules and regulations imposed for what they claim to be the "public good."

``These landowners are not sovereign nations,'' said Leeona Klippstein, conservation program director of Spirit of the Sage Council in Pasadena, Calif. ``There are environmental regulations to protect our natural resources and to uphold the public trust.''

(Please forgive us again, but it comes to mind that this administration is currently bombing a sovereign nation to force its leader to recognize civil and property rights the administration itself rejects. And it wonders why it has no credibility? — Ed.)