Section: Cover Story: Project GreenThe
Race For Survival
Enlisting endangered species in the fight against global
warming is either a brilliant tactical maneuver--or an arrogant abuse of the
law.
Ten years ago, when environmental lawyer Kassie Siegel
went in search of an animal to save the world, the polar bear wasn't at all an
obvious choice. Siegel and Brendan Cummings of the Center for Biological
Diversity in Joshua Tree, Calif., were looking for a species whose habitat was
disappearing due to climate change, which could serve as a symbol of the dangers
of global warming. Her first candidate met the scientific criteria--it lived in
ice caves in Alaska's Glacier Bay, which were melting away--but unfortunately it
was a spider. You can't sell a lot of T shirts with pictures of an animal most
people would happily step on.
Next, Siegel turned to the Kittlitz's murrelet, a small
Arctic seabird whose nesting sites in glaciers were disappearing. In 2001, she
petitioned the Department of the Interior to add it to the Endangered Species
list, but Interior Secretary Gale Norton turned her down. (Siegel's organization
is suing to get the decision reversed.) Elkhorn and staghorn coral, which are
threatened by rising water temperatures in the Caribbean, did make it onto the
list, but as iconic species they fell short insofar as many people don't realize
they're alive in the first place. The polar bear, by contrast, is vehemently
alive and carries the undeniable charisma of a top predator. And its dependence
on ice was intuitively obvious; it lives on it most of the year, lurking near
breathing holes to occasionally snatch a 150-pound seal from the water with one
bone-crunching bite. But it took until 2004 for researchers to demonstrate, with
empirically derived climate and population models, that shrinking sea ice was a
serious threat to the bears' population. On Feb. 16, 2005--the day the Kyoto
Protocol to curb greenhouse-gas emissions took effect, without the participation
of the United States--Siegel petitioned to list polar bears as endangered. Three
years later her efforts met with equivocal success, as Interior Secretary Dirk
Kempthorne--under court order to make a decision--designated the bears as
"threatened," a significant concession from an administration that has stood
almost alone in the world in its reluctance to acknowledge the dangers of
climate change. The Endangered Species Act (ESA), whose quaint lists of snails
and bladderworts sometimes seemed stuck in the age of Darwin, had been thrust
into the mainstream of 21st-century environmental politics. Break out the T
shirts!
Or, maybe, not so fast. Polar bears, all 20,000 to
25,000 of them--a population that would fit inside some basketball arenas--have
joined the 1,985 species of plants and animals listed as either "endangered" (in
imminent danger of going extinct) or "threatened" (not quite endangered, but
heading there), under the terms of the ESA. That requires the government to
designate and preserve their "critical habitat"--the area necessary for their
survival--and develop a "recovery plan" to keep them alive. While many
endangered species live out their lives of quiet desperation far from the public
eye--need we say more than "rock gnome lichen"?--getting your name in the papers
as endangered can put you in a difficult spot, as numerous species have
discovered over the years. That would include the formerly obscure spotted owl
(the subject of a tug of war between environmentalists and loggers) and the
snail darter, a three-inch-long freshwater fish whose critical habitat in the
Tennessee River delayed for months the completion of a $130 million dam.
(Congress finally passed a law specifically allowing the dam to be built,
presumably condemning the snail darter to extinction--although scientists have
since found the fish alive in other places.) Even now, a court battle is shaping
up over another talismanic American species, the gray wolf, which was taken off
the list on March 28--whereupon the citizens of Wyoming promptly shot at least
16 of them. Americans almost universally endorse the lofty goal of the act,
which in roughly its present form was signed into law in 1973 by President
Richard Nixon: to preserve the biological diversity of the planet as an end in
itself. The species we set out to protect may be beautiful, like the Florida
panther, or they may be useful, like the rosy periwinkle--or they may be
considered pests, or for that matter even eat people, as the polar bear itself
has been known to do. But the law makes no distinction between good and bad
species, and, in theory at least, gives them precedence over most human
needs--including economic ones. Conflicts inevitably arise, but most such
disputes have been local, except when they become public-relations icons for
environmental groups on the one side and free-market advocates on the other. But
the polar bear is a national, indeed a global, cause, and the implications of
Kempthorne's action could be enormous--as Siegel hopes, and pro-business groups
fear.
This battle is playing out in the final year of the Bush
administration, which has compiled an environmental record most
environmentalists consider dismal. Since taking office, it has protected only 60
species--compared with 522 during the Clinton administration, and 231 during the
one-term administration of the first President Bush. The Interior Department has
consistently missed the deadlines for making listings, or for determining that a
species should not be listed. (The law requires it to respond to a petition for
listing a species within 90 days, after which the department may launch a
further one-year review to collect necessary research; recently some decisions
have taken more than two years.) It took an order from a federal judge to pry a
decision on the polar bear out of Kempthorne, and that was one of only two
domestic species proposed for listing since he took office in May 2006, compared
with 50 turned down during that period. Instead, species have piled up on a
"candidate" list, with an average waiting time that's now up to 19 years.
Ever-dwindling generations of yellowcheek darter and Phantom Cave snail have
been born, lived and died in this bureaucratic limbo. Allegations that political
pressure against listing species sometimes outweighed the scientific evidence in
favor led to the resignation of a high-ranking department official last
year.
Kempthorne and Dale Hall, director of the Fish and
Wildlife Service, agree that they've been slow to add listings, but blame
environmental groups for monopolizing their time with endless petitions and
lawsuits. (Other administrations also faced this crush of paperwork, of course,
but changes in the law made the bureaucratic end of things much more onerous
after 1997.) In any case, Kempthorne tells NEWSWEEK, his priority has been to
study and manage the species already listed: monitoring population size,
defining their critical habitats and drawing up recovery plans. "Of the species
that are listed, we now have recovery plans for 80 percent of them," he says.
"That's significant." Moreover, he says, the logjam has now been broken. By
Sept. 30, he promised, the department will determine the fate of 71 species now
on the waiting list, nearly a quarter of the total. It's likely that most of
these will win designation as either endangered or threatened. Anyone eager to
learn the fate of the sheepnose mussel or the interrupted rocksnail will know in
a few months--although a quick scan of the list suggests that most of the
species constitute a group of plants from Hawaii so obscure they have only a
scientific, rather than a common, name. It would not be surprising if much of
their critical habitat was relatively small, overlapping and probably not of
much interest to the oil industry.
And it certainly isn't any part of Kempthorne's plan for
the polar bear to save the Earth. That was Siegel's idea: that the law requires
the government to protect the critical habitat of endangered species. Ergo, if
global warming is threatening the polar bear's habitat, the government could be
forced to crack down on greenhouse-gas emissions, a step that environmentalists
consider vital to the survival even of species that live in houses and would
never dream of biting the head off a walrus.
The Interior Department came to agree that the polar
bear was threatened by climate change, although it took a while for it to get
there. "This is cutting-edge science," says Hall, explaining why the department
missed the original deadline set in January to rule on Siegel's petition. "I
needed time to understand it." That was another way of saying that the decision
was not, as some critics have charged, actually delayed to avoid complicating
the sale in February of oil and gas leases on 29.4 million acres of polar-bear
habitat in the Chukchi Sea. The two matters were "not at all" related, says
Kempthorne.
The case for listing the polar bear was, however,
complicated by the fact that its numbers are not actually declining across their
range; in fact, there are probably more polar bears alive now than a few decades
ago, before the United States banned trophy hunting. (It's still allowed in
Canada.) But then last year the U.S. Geological Survey--which itself is part of
the Interior Department--reported that if sea ice continued melting at the rate
projected by current climate models, two thirds of the world's polar-bear
population would be wiped out by the middle of the century. At the press
conference announcing his decision, Kempthorne showed satellite imagery
indicating that the Arctic ice cover last year fell to the lowest level ever
recorded, 39 percent below the long-term average. It broke the previous record
low, in 2005, by 460,000 square miles, an area larger than Texas and California
combined. And although it's still early in the season, there is a 59 percent
chance of another record low by the time the ice reaches its minimum in
September, says Sheldon Drobot of the University of Colorado's Center for
Astrodynamics Research. Viewing images of broken ice in parts of Hudson Bay and
the Beaufort Sea last week, he called the situation "anomalous, and a little bit
disconcerting."
Polar bears depend on sea ice to hunt for ringed and
bearded seals, their main food source. "The ice is a platform to hunt seals, and
if they don't have that platform they are in big trouble," says Ian Stirling,
research scientist emeritus at Environment Canada in Edmonton. The bears are
poor swimmers, and in the open water seals can easily evade them. Steven
Amstrup, senior polar-bear scientist at the USGS Alaska Science Center in
Anchorage, remembers when in some years the sea ice would never leave the shores
of the Beaufort Sea. Now in summer it retreats as far as 600 miles off the
coast, putting the seals, who prefer the shallow water near the shore, out of
reach of the bears. The one-year survival rate for new cubs has dropped to 40 or
45 percent from 60 to 65 percent two decades ago, which Amstrup believes may
result from the presence of more open water (cubs perish after 10 minutes in
freezing water) and areas of rough ice that females with new cubs might have
difficulty negotiating. Scientists have also witnessed a handful of cases of
drowning, cannibalism and starvation among polar bears, things they've
rarely--if ever--seen before. "We can't say that those events were definitely
caused by global warming or any other particular event," says Amstrup. "But they
are consistent with the changes in the environment that we've been seeing."
In accepting the science, however, Kempthorne made it
clear he was rejecting Siegel's interpretation of the law. "Endangered" species
get the highest level of protection; anything that threatens their survival--or,
for that matter, a single individual--is outlawed. By listing the bear as
"threatened" instead, Kempthorne gave the department leeway to decide which
level of protection to apply. Specifically, he promised not to allow the
Endangered Species Act to be "abused" by environmentalists to affect
global-warming policy. "This listing," he warned, "will not stop global climate
change or prevent any sea ice from melting." To the Bush administration and to
its allies in the business community, it's self-evident that the act was meant
to cover the kind of threat a steamroller poses to a Santa Cruz long-toed
salamander, not that which an SUV in Atlanta poses to a polar bear, by way of
the atmosphere. To Kristina Johnson of the Sierra Club, "it's like the
administration has admitted the polar bear to the ER but now is leaving it to
die."
Authorities on environmental law don't necessarily agree
with the government's interpretation, either. The whole point of the act, they
say, is to protect critical ecosystems, not just species in isolation. "It's
lawful, and Congress was well aware of that when it enacted the law in 1973,"
says Patrick Parenteau, a professor at the Vermont Law School. "You can't
artificially decide what has an effect on the species. If it's being listed
because of climate change, you can't turn around and say, 'We're not going to
take climate change into account'." Siegel was disappointed, although hardly
surprised, by Kempthorne's position. At least in the short term, the main impact
of listing the polar bear will be on American hunters who shoot bears in Canada;
they will now be prevented from bringing their trophies back into the United
States. "I suppose we're doing what they're accusing us of doing," Siegel says,
meaning using the polar bear to achieve a broader environmental goal, "but [the
administration] just frames it in this weird, misleading way. They oppose
regulation on behalf of industries concerned about short-term profits, not about
the future of our children and grandchildren and the world they live in."
The accusation about profits might be a sly reference to
a former top official of the Interior, deputy assistant secretary Julie
MacDonald, who resigned last year one week before Congress opened an
investigation of how she handled Endangered Species listings. The resulting
report, issued May 21 by the Government Accountability Office, found that she
had consistently ruled against positions advocated by Fish and Wildlife Service
biologists. According to the report, MacDonald took a particular interest in a
petition to list the white-tailed prairie dog, whose habitat in four Western
states is also coveted by ranchers, developers and energy companies. The Center
for Native Ecosystems presented research indicating that the animal's range has
shrunk by 92 percent from its historical extent. Investigators found that
MacDonald--who is not a biologist--deleted and rewrote portions of the report by
Fish and Wildlife Service scientists, reducing the extent of the threat that oil
and gas drilling posed to the prairie dog. The report also charged that she
pressured staffers to make critical-habitat designations smaller than field
biologists had recommended. The GAO report did not accuse her of any illegality;
it merely raised strong suspicions that under her watch decisions that were
supposed to be made on the science were tainted by politics. MacDonald has
refused to comment on any of this, including to NEWSWEEK, but in a letter she
wrote to the department's inspector general after her resignation, she charged
that the department's internal review of her work was based on "inaccurate and
incomplete information." MacDonald has not yet responded to the GAO report
published last month.
In the wake of the episode, Kempthorne ordered a review
of the decisions taken under MacDonald's watch, and found eight cases that
warranted another look, the white-tailed prairie dog among them. Seven of those
decisions, most a question of where to draw critical-habitat boundaries, were
reversed or sent back for additional review, including the negative
recommendation on the white-tailed prairie dog. Also getting a reprieve is the
Preble's meadow jumping mouse, which under MacDonald had been proposed for
removal from the list; the listing will be amended instead. Kempthorne,
acknowledging that the 73,000 people in his department may have "different ways
to interpret things," says that MacDonald was an anomaly. "Our responsibility is
to look at the science," says Hall, "and once we figure out what we think the
truth is, our only agenda is to follow the truth."
Environmentalists are also trying to reopen the case of
the greater sage grouse, a chicken-size bird of the grasslands of the
Intermountain West. A petition to list the grouse was rejected in 2005, after
MacDonald extensively edited the scientists' report--at one point disputing,
according to a copy obtained by NEWSWEEK, the biologists' description of the
bird's diet. A federal judge has ordered a review of that decision, on the
ground that it was based on faulty science supplied by oil and gas interests.
Grouse have the misfortune to be uncomfortable around drilling rigs and gas
wells, a problem since about 90 percent of their habitat in Colorado has been
leased for energy development. "Vertical structures put them on edge because
historically that's where raptors perch. So when a gas well appears, they get
out of there," says Gary Graham, director of Audubon Colorado, an affiliate of
the National Audubon Society. "Studies show that when you build a well, the
grouse will show up for a couple years, but eventually they disappear." The
state of Colorado is planning to restrict oil and gas drilling during the birds'
mating and nesting times, a total of about 90 days a year--regulations that the
oil companies view as an effort to "scale back the oil and gas industry,"
according to Americans for American Energy, an industry trade group.
Another Western species that conservationists are eyeing
is the wolverine, a reclusive, but ferocious, predator like an oversize raccoon
that lives in the northern Rockies, patrolling home territories that can cover
hundreds of square miles and feeding off deer and elk carcasses. Wolverines,
which den and give birth in snow caves, are also threatened by global warming,
as the mountain snowpacks melt earlier in the spring. A petition to list them
drew opposition from the recreational-snowmobile industry, which doesn't want to
risk being ordered out of the animal's critical habitat. That's not unrealistic.
"Where there are snowmobiles, there are few wolverines," says Dave Gaillard of
Defenders of Wildlife. In Montana, researchers witnessed a wolverine mother
abandoning her den and carrying her kits away when snowmobiles ventured nearby.
The petition was turned down earlier this year, on the ground that there are
healthy populations of wolverines in Canada and Alaska, so why worry about the
ones in Montana? But by the same rationale, the bald eagle--one of the great
success stories of the Endangered Species Act--might never have been listed,
either; there were always plenty of those in Canada and Alaska, too.
The gray wolf--a species unrelated to the wolverine--is
another success story. After being listed in the Lower 48 states in 1974 and
reintroduced to the northern Rockies in 1995, it came off the list this March,
as its population reached an estimated 1,500 in Montana, Wyoming and Idaho
combined. That may not sound like very many, but it was enough to inspire the
region's hunters, and its sheep and cattle ranchers, to get their rifles out. A
new Wyoming law allows wolves to be shot on sight in a "predator zone" that
covers 90 percent of the state, and residents wasted no time. Three wolves fell
on the first day, including an aging male with a limp who was known to tourists
as Hoppy. In April, two wolves in Ashton, Idaho, were shot by a rancher who
spotted them hanging out near his horse corral. He had to chase one a mile on
his snowmobile before downing it. In the past, wolves could be shot only for
approaching sheep or cattle with hostile intent. But under a new Idaho law, they
can be killed for "worrying" livestock. Since sheep get understandably nervous
if a predator just walks past them, this pretty much puts the burden of avoiding
getting killed on the wolf. The county prosecutor's office investigated the
shootings but determined they were justified. Now both sides are up in
(metaphorical, so far) arms: environmentalists suing to overturn the delisting,
and ranchers who think extinction is exactly what the wolves deserve, at least
in their part of the world. (Hunters would like to keep just enough of them
around to shoot.)
To wind up in federal court is the fate of much of
American wildlife now. One might well ask whether the term "wildlife" has any
meaning when the creature in question is tracked by satellite across its
designated swath of critical habitat that's been drawn up by negotiation among
bureaucrats who wouldn't recognize a flattened musk turtle if it landed in their
soup. Even the majestic polar bear, roaming the far reaches of the Arctic, is
exhibit A in lawsuits planned by conservation groups aimed at getting the
government to act more aggressively to save it, and also in a suit announced by
Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to reverse the listing, on the ground it might hurt the
state's oil- and gas-dependent economy. (And another one by a big-game hunting
group, protesting the ban on importing trophies.) The fate of the entire planet
is a lot of responsibility to lay on just 20,000 bears, but those are the rules
set by the only species whose opinion counts at the moment. Let's hope it
chooses wisely.
CASE
STUDY: INSECT
A Rare Florida Beauty, MIAMI BLUE BUTTERFLY
Cycl. thomasi bethunebakeri
One of the scarcest insect species in North America, it
numbers just 45 to 50 adults, most of which live in Bahia Honda State Park on
Bahia Honda Key, Fla. In 2005, the North American Butterfly Association
petitioned the Fish and Wildlife Service to list the butterfly under the
Endangered Species Act, but the invertebrate remains on the agency's candidate
list.
NORTHERN SPOTTED OWL Strix
Occidentalis
STATUS: Listed as threatened in 1990
from habitat loss in old-growth forests of the Northwest due primarily to
logging. About 15,000 remain.
NEW THREAT: In 2007, the FWS proposed
lifting logging restrictions in some of the forests.
SPERM WHALE Physeter macrocephalus
STATUS: Listed as endangered in 1973;
only 7,000 survive in U.S. waters. An estimated 1 million were hunted in the
last 200 years.
LEVIATHAN: The largest toothed animal
in the world, it eats squid and fish and was the prototype for "Moby-Dick."
BLUE PIKE Stizostedion vitreum
glaucum
STATUS: Declared extinct in 1983 when
it disappeared from lakes and rivers after decades of overfishing.
ABUNDANT HARVEST: At one time, it made
up more than 50 percent of the commercial catch in the southern Great Lakes
region.
OAHU TREE SNAILS Achatinella spp.
STATUS: Forty-one distinct species were
listed as endangered in 1981, victims of invasive predators and deforestation.
Some may be extinct in the wild.
BACK FROM THE BRINK? Captive-breeding
programs are trying to resurrect the species.
WHITE-TAILED PRAIRIE DOG Cynomys
leucurus
STATUS: Not currently listed. It is,
however, under a 12-month review for consideration, as it continues to vanish
from its habitat.
NEW THREAT: The most recent survey
estimates just 118,000 of the animals, in the Western U.S.
BIGHORN SHEEP Ovis canadensis
STATUS: Fewer than 70,000 remain, down
from some 2 million in 1800, due to hunting, livestock grazing and habitat loss.
Listed as endangered in 1998.
PRIZE CATCH: The huge curved horns are
coveted for ceremonies and as hunting trophies.
GREATER SAGE GROUSE Centrocercus
urophasianus
STATUS: A candidate for
endangered-species protection; its numbers have fallen to between 100,000 and
500,000 as its sagebrush habitat in the northern Rockies shrinks.
LUCKY GUYS: Only one or two males in a
large flock get to mate.
WOLVERINE Golo luscus
STATUS: Although scientists say it
faces a high risk of extinction, in March the government declined to give it
protection under the ESA.
PERIPATETIC: A wolverine can travel
scores of miles a day in pursuit of elk, deer and other big prey.
DUSKY SEASIDE SPARROW Ammodramus
maritimus nigrescens
STATUS: Driven to extinction by a
combination of habitat loss and pollution. The last one died on June 17,
1987.
HAPPIER DAYS: The songbird once
populated the marshes of southern Florida.
WEST INDIAN MANATEE Trichechus
manatus
STATUS: Listed as endangered in 1967,
it lives off Florida. Only 3,000 remain, but in 2007 the government
(unsuccessfully) proposed weakening its status to threatened.
LETHAL RUN-INS: Boats and canal locks
kill scores each year.
KASSIE SIEGEL Center for Biological
Diversity
Siegel led the drive to list the polar bear as a
threatened species, hoping to publicize the urgency of global warming.
DIRK KEMPTHORNE Secretary of the
Interior
Kempthorne granted the polar bear protection but warned
against "abusing" the decision to make climate-change policy.
CASE
STUDY: MAMMAL
Trying to Keep Their Cool, POLAR BEAR
Ursus maritimus
Last month the Department of the Interior declared the
world's 20,000 to 25,000 polar bears "threatened" because of their rapidly
shrinking habitat. Scientists predict that two thirds of the current polar-bear
population will vanish by the middle of the 21st century, as the Arctic ice on
which they hunt their main prey—ringed and bearded seals—melts into the
sea.
CASE
STUDY: REPTILE
An Ancient Mariner, GREEN SEA TURTLE
Chelonia mydas
All six of the sea-turtle species that swim in U.S.
waters or nest on U.S. beaches are listed as threatened or endangered. Last year
biologists reported a worrisome drop in the number of North Atlantic sea
turtles. These creatures rank among the largest living reptiles. Because they
are highly migratory, saving them will require the cooperation of many
nations.
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~~~~~~~~
By Jerry Adler
with Daniel Stone, in Washington; Anna Kuchment, in New
York and Paul Tolme, in Arcata, Calif.
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