The Senate so burdened its budget legislation for the Department of Interior this session that the bill collapsed in a heap Wednesday after a proposal arose to add a Patients Bill of Rights to it. While Senate leaders figure out why a health care bill belongs in the legislation, other senators have a chance to more fully debate one of its primary amendments, reauthorization of the Endangered Species Act.

Legislation as important as the Endangered Species Act should never be simply tacked onto larger bills and passed through without the usual round of public debates, hearings and amendments. Its sponsors, GOP Sens. John Chafee of Rhode Island and Dirk Kempthorne of Idaho, turned to the Interior appropriations bill only after opponents from both industry and environmental groups threatened to stall the act again, five years after it was due for reauthorization.

Both sides have their reasons for wanting to see the legislation die because the amendment does not simply re-approve the ESA; it significantly changes the listing process, increases public participation and expands the number of ways landowners could be exempted from the process. Sens. Chafee and Kempthorne have tried to give a little something to everyone, but the one thing missing in all of their changes is money. Without it, their changes will cause serious delays for listing endangered species.

Further, the bill has problems that only a full airing without the pressure of passing a spending bill can provide. For instance, it has reasonable provisions to hold harmless landowners who carry out approved habitat conservation plans. But then it allows some plans to remain in effect for as long as 150 years. Surely, all sides can agree that the way the nation views species protection will change dramatically during that time. Another provision that lessens the role of biologists in influencing the uses of public lands also needs to be discussed further. But it is the lack of funding that should most concern senators.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service already is underfunded for its ESA work; the proposals in the Senate bill would add tens of millions of dollars annually to the service’s costs without increasing its budget. (There is some small irony here in that Fish and Wildlife is funded through the Interior Department appropriations bill, so if the sponsors wanted to increase funds for the service, this was the place to do it.) The mismatch between funding and responsibility guarantees more acrimony and gridlock and a further opportunity to attack the Endangered Species Act.

The problem can be seen with the possible listing of the Canada lynx, which the service held a hearing for Tuesday in Old Town. The lynx debate has produced, on one side, environmentalists saying, “List it as endangered or we’ll sue”; and landowners on the other saying, in effect, “List it and we open fire.” No one can say with certainty how many lynx are in Maine, how long they have been here, whether there was an established population here, what specific benefits or effects a listing would have, and so on. Basic information that rational people need to make choices has yet to trickle out to the public. No wonder the act creates so much antagonism.

The money for researching species such as the lynx and for sharing that research with the public must precede a debate on whether a species is threatened or endangered. If senators who support the Chafee-Kempthorne bill care so much about improving the act, the least they can do is make sure it is adequately funded.