Listing an endangered species is a serious business. Steve Damele was one Idahoan who did his best to protect a troubled Western plant. One of several private landowners with slickspot peppergrass, he followed other ranchers and joined a state-led effort to preserve the plant on his Mountain Home land by altering a number of his rangeland practices.
Then last October, after a decade of scientific studies and lawsuits, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced it would list slickspot peppergrass as threatened. And Damele, along with the others, now asks why he should bother to help any species when it won’t make a difference.
“It’s safe to say everything gets listed eventually,” said Damele’s fellow rancher Ted Hoffman.
The Endangered Species Act isn’t that simple. But locals and state officials who have dealt with it daily argue that the peppergrass decision is the latest sign that something is wrong.
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Federal agencies rush but fail to meet deadlines for the ever-growing number of species brought to their attention. A core of activist environmental groups files lawsuits at a moment’s notice. And a decision next month about a humble desert-dwelling bird, the Greater sage grouse, threatens to change land use across the West.
Talk to those agencies or conservationists working to save creatures in trouble, however, and you’ll get a different picture. Pressured by resources, deadlines and a public that knows of only a portion of the work they do, federal biologists simply do their best to cope with the strain of survival.
The state of collaboration
On one level, last fall’s peppergrass listing may simply have been reality failing to meet expectations.
“Anytime you try to do a collaborative process, you can raise some expectations that you will succeed,” observed Jim Werntz, head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Idaho operations, whose agency had no role in the decision. “They’re doing it to prevent the trigger being pulled on the Endangered Species Act. But then when it doesn’t work out, everybody’s disappointed.”
But the decision also played into a common complaint — that states and local residents who understand the species in question don’t get enough say.
Former U.S. Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne made state delegation and landowner incentives key aspects of a controversial 1997 attempt to reform the ESA when he was a senator in Congress. As Idaho governor in 2000, he worked with legislators to create the Governor’s Office of Species Conservation to push for a larger role for the state in species issues.
“The need is tremendous,” Kempthorne said. “The states should be absolutely encouraged and allowed to expand.”
In southwest Idaho, ranchers and other locals were faced with resuscitating a plant that depends on slickspots — small areas of heavy clay that trap water and salt — because it can’t compete with other plants across the rest of the desert. Though ESA restrictions for plants are less intrusive than for animals, a peppergrass listing would limit grazing and other land uses across federal land.
When the Office of Species Conservation first proposed the ranchers sign conservation agreements, the idea was considered ridiculous, Hoffman said. But people eventually saw value in protecting the “weed,” he said, especially if the agreements kept it off of the endangered list.
Today, Damele has altered the way he does business. He’s promised to pull his cattle off one particular pasture by Feb. 1, for example, where previously he only had to leave during three summer months. Other actions in the agreements range from limiting placement of roads and water troughs to coordinating weed control so it doesn’t kill the peppergrass.
Justified or not, the ranchers were left with the impression if they put their backs into it, they could secure the peppergrass’ future and avoid the need for the feds to step in.
“We’ve made a deal, and we stuck with it,” Hoffman said.
Goals on the ground
Whether that deal would have accomplished anything is another issue. Justin Hayes with the Idaho Conservation League criticized the OSC push as “running political interference to keep the act from happening” rather than actually fixing the peppergrass problems.
In general, taking politics out of the ESA equation would allow good science to thrive and make way for effective action to keep species from being listed, Hayes said, noting his concern with the act is it often requires “fairly draconian” efforts by the time it kicks in.
“The governor’s office likes to say slickspot peppergrass shouldn’t be listed or grouse shouldn’t be listed,” Hayes said. “But the truth of the matter is those species are in decline. … State efforts to fix stuff haven’t done anything.”
Though it makes a good political argument, the states already have a fair amount of leeway, said Louisa Willcox with the Natural Resources Defense Council in Montana. She pointed to the authority Idaho gained last year to manage gray wolves even while they were on the federal list as an example of what the act allows.
“It actually happens quite a bit,” she said.
Steve Aslett is a rancher and outfitter who runs a year-round cattle operation on 15,000 acres near Three Creek. He’s pursued habitat projects on his land for 10 years, largely steps such as fencing off ponds and riparian areas to benefit everything from sage grouse to mule deer.
Aslett said he wanted to show agencies and environmental groups that landowners also care about wildlife. But his efforts won him little in the way of commendations, he said. And he’s become convinced that a lot of agency staff need to get out of the office and on the ground.
“For the most part, a lot of these folks are looking at a map and reviewing a little bit of literature,” he said.
The agencies in charge of the ESA rebut the accusations that they’re out of touch, and point to recovery plans and other work that incorporates state opinions.
Two regional managers with Fish and Wildlife — Endangered Species Program Manager Pat Sousa and Regional Listing and Critical Habitat Chief Kristi Young — said they do their best to get out of their Portland offices “a few times a year” to see projects and meet landowners. Both said they view local, on-the-ground communication as vital to their work.
“I like to be reminded why I went into the business occasionally,” Young joked about escaping the office.
“I’m not so sure that we’re as effective as we could be on that,” Sousa said. “When you’re tied up trying to get documents through that a court ordered, it’s tough to, say, ‘go down and find a rancher.’”
Abundant activism
Citizen involvement and loyal watchdog opposition all have a role in the listing process. But some critics argue large, organized environmental groups are too fond of their jobs, and contribute to the problem with mass listings — sometimes of more than 200 species — that clog up the courts.
“They should not have the litigation power that they have,” said Steve Westphal, a Filer resident and member of a big game preservation organization.
The ranchers see their role as promoting “good science” to counter alleged misdirection and spin from environmental groups. That includes studies used in the peppergrass decision, Hoffman said, arguing that the work was flawed because it was done by only a few people focused on a narrow area.
The plant became the subject of court fights. Hoffman argued the listing went forward because Western Watersheds Project overwhelmed the courts with “misinformation” and the ranchers were too busy countering it to present their own side.
“The more incorrect things you throw out there, the more likely one will stick,” Hoffman said.
That includes accusations that grazing harms peppergrass — something Fish and Wildlife decided wasn’t a major concern in its listing decision. Damele actually believes the plant benefits from a bit of disturbance and is testing the theory on a private stretch of ground not covered by his agreement. But while he said the plant thrives in an area his cattle wander, he hasn’t been able to draw the attention he wants to his conclusions.
“If you get on the ground and look at it, it is absolutely ridiculous,” Damele said of the argument against grazing.
But Katie Fite, biodiversity director for Western Watersheds, argued litigation wouldn’t need to be used so often if the federal government would just follow the ESA.
“If people would just take care of things, and if the federal agencies would just require that public lands and resources be taken care of … there wouldn’t be this constant, constant battle,” she said.
Kempthorne believes the courts are the wrong place to decide ESA issues because one judicial opinion can overthrow the balance from years of collaboration.
“Now one person will outweigh thousands and say, ‘This is the solution,’” he said. “Often the solution doesn’t give a prescription for recovery.”
Conservation groups only pursue the lawsuits they do because there’s too much political interference with scientific decisions, said Hayes.
“When politics and science collide, the loser usually goes to the courts,” he said. “And if people feel like there have been too many Endangered Species Act lawsuits lately, they have to question whether national politics is such that politics has been trumping science for the last eight years.”
Complaints from private landowners about the impositions of the act really aren’t justified, Fite said. Locals with listed species on their land become a top priority for a “huge safety net” of funding.
“It’s just the way it’s been spun in the media that essentially, people believe something that’s not reality,” she said.
Digging their way out
The immense workload shoved onto federal agencies isn’t all due to the courts.
Much of the delays and paperwork come from the requirement for federal agencies to clear their projects with Fish and Wildlife and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the two agencies that oversee the ESA.
Fish and Wildlife Idaho State Supervisor Jeff Foss said he and his staff do their best to get money on the ground for recovery projects. But they’re also legally required to perform consultations to ensure federal actions don’t harm listed species, and that takes “the lion’s share” of his resources.
David Mabe, state director for NOAA Fisheries’ habitat conservation division, said the consults make up perhaps four-fifths of his office’s workload. And he’s aware of how delays are viewed in the public eye.
“It’s one of the major criticisms people have of us,” he said.
In the end, it comes down to resources. The policymakers in control of NOAA’s budget have a strong say in how much will get done, Mabe said.
“You have to decide how much of an investment you want to make up front to get a quick turnaround, versus how much work (is needed) to get it done right,” he said.
Werntz, whose agency does not administer the act, said the worst ESA delays come from statewide permits where researchers may not have all the science they want at their fingertips.
Many people recognize the problems of limited resources.
Matthew Miller, spokesman for the Nature Conservancy in Idaho, said his organization only wants one improvement to the ESA process — more expanded incentives and assistance for landowners.
“We want common species to remain common,” he said. “Ideally, we can work with landowners before a species is listed.”
Kempthorne’s Washington experience proved to him that the federal government can’t keep up with the deadlines even when it tries.
“Why? Because they’re spending so much time on so many issues … because we’re inflexible,” he said.
The former interior secretary argued that relaxing the rules on some consults, something he attempted in D.C., would have helped matters. The deadlines are important to have to make sure the work gets done, he said. But it may also be worth examining slightly extending some of them — he compared it to times he extended deadlines to allow for more public comment.
While the slow process understandably aggravates people, Werntz argued that it’s not necessarily a bad thing and that the ESA is a very good law.
“It’s appropriate that when species are threatened or endangered, that the federal government avoid actions to imperil them,” Werntz said.
“It’s not a fast process,” he added later. “I think some would argue it’s not supposed to be.”
