ENDANGERED SUCCESS

It’s been more than six years since the federal government said it planned to take bald eagles, which once numbered only a few hundred in the continental United States, off the endangered species list. While the de-listing process is slow, the bald eagle recovery is a good example of an endangered species success. It also highlights why current efforts by some Republicans in Congress to significantly weaken the act are misplaced.

Bald eagles were put on the list when the Endangered Species Act was signed into law in 1973. At that time, there were only 417 nesting pairs outside Alaska, where the birds remained more plentiful. There were only 21 nesting pairs in Maine. With ESA protection and the banning of the pesticide DDT, which caused eagle eggs

to have very thin shells that were crushed when adult birds sat on them during incubation, eagle numbers steadily increased. In 1994, the birds were downgraded from an endangered to a threatened species. In 1999, President Bill Clinton announced that the government planned to take the birds off the list entirely.

Since then, the de-listing process has been bogged down in bureaucracy. The explanation from the Department of the Interior is that there are legal issues that need to be worked out because eagles will now be primarily protected under the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act. Interior staff members are trying to figure out how best to ensure that eagle habitat remains protected under that act.

Since de-listing was proposed, the number of bald eagles has increased from 5,787 breeding pairs to more than 8,200 across the country. This year, 371 nesting pairs have been counted in Maine. The population here increases about 7 percent a year.

Meanwhile, some Republicans want the Endangered Species Act overhauled. A bill sponsored by Rep. Richard Pombo of California would dramatically increase the paperwork required to get a species on the list and would require another layer of scientific review. Critical habitat, which has been documented to help species recover, would only be required if necessary for a species’ survival, a high standard that would doom some animals and plants to extinction.

Rep. Pombo argues that the Endangered Species Act is hindering development. This has not been the case in Maine or nationally. Since 1990, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has reviewed more than 1,100 projects in Maine. In only eight cases, a “formal consultation” was warranted in which federal agencies got together to discuss ways to avoid harming a species. In each of these cases, the service found that work could be done without harming the species in question, usually bald eagles, and the projects were allowed to proceed.

Nationally, out of 186,000 projects that the service reviewed, only 600 required changes because of endangered species concerns. Only 100 projects were stopped, with some of them re-started after endangered species problems were addressed.

The federal government cannot use the act to tell private landowners what they can do on their property, unless they are undertaking a project that requires a federal permit or uses federal money.

As bald eagles show, the Endangered Species Act works, but it is slow. Slowing it down further is not the answer.