Capitol Ideas / Species Logic
Bethell, Tom
How Enviros Kill Endangered Species Species Logic The property rights movement, now consisting of about 1,800 groups across the country, is a decentralized army without a commander-inchief. But...
...Guess what...
...His father was a teacher in Los Angeles who had a part-time job as a summer ranger with the National Park Service...
...In 1990, the Domenigonis discoveredtrespassing biologists surveying their ranch...
...Fifty-one years old, he looks a bit like Burl Ives...
...I am told he is not a stupid man...
...A Competitive Enterprise Institute staffer who went to North Carolina said the clear-cut area"looks like ground zero of a nuclear explosion...
...He has sustained a loss exceeding one million dollars...
...and hey, a government that shuts down the competition can't be all bad...
...Richard Stroup of the Political Economy Research Center in Montana noted the irony that the Constitution explicitly forbids the U.S...
...provide food and shelter for] a soldier...
...If the army had the power to billet soldiers that Fish and Wildlife has to billet animals, Stroup added, "we could expect to see soldiers feared, despised and perhaps even ambushed, as listed species reportedly are today...
...The k-rat is listed as endangered...
...But once listed species on private land brought with them the prospect of severe penalties, owners did begin to see endangered species as a threat to their livelihood...
...Cone is planning a lawsuit against Fish and Wildlife...
...Has he ever heard of the disincentives generated by communal property, one wonders...
...Sights like these now cause us great concern that our livelihood and our heritage will be stripped away from us...
...Richard Pombo's recent hearings on reauthorization of the Act...
...In 1977 he moved to the Pacific Northwest and began fighting for the rights of property owners full-time...
...In jeopardizing property, the act began to endanger the very species it was meant to protect...
...We're not talking inholdings here, but outright private property...
...But Fish and Wildlife guidelines stipulated that a circle with half a mile radius is the habitat of each bird colony (since reduced to a quarter mile...
...In the U.S., this "public trust" at first resided with the states, but like almost everything else connected with government it was progressively transferred to the federal government...
...Ploughing would constitute an illegal "take" of the rat and would subject them to a $50,000 fine and/or a year in prison per rat disturbed...
...0 ne such scare is the claim that thousands of species are threatened with extinction...
...A mbushed, the man said...
...Then "harm" was added to "take," and through court rulings and agency interpretations, "harm" was interpreted more and more liberally...
...In 1962 he was forced to sell his house in Yosemite to the Park Service...
...A paper chain of lunch tickets was wrapped around his neck...
...Even without a decline in numbers, altering habitat could be construed as a crime...
...chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee that has responsibility for rewriting the Endangered Species Act, went to North Carolina and reportedly was impressed with Cone's story...
...Eight cockroaches are listed, and the Delhi Sands Flower-Loving Fly exacted millions of dollars in donated land before a hospital could be built in San Bernardino...
...The 1980s saw a great increase in the number of listed species—and in the power of the wildlife police...
...We incurred over $400,000 in lost income and direct expenses due to k-rat regulations...
...But Cushman tired of explaining that they weren't motel-owners, Tom Bethell is The American Spectator's Washington correspondent, and a visiting media fellow at the Hoover Institution...
...We had so much good luck that people with properties in national forests and Bureau of Land Management areas also came to us...
...For three years we were not able to farm this field," Domenigoni testified in Rep...
...He was one of the founders, and remains one of the key organizers of the movement...
...In 1970, Cushman himself bought a cabin in Yosemite, just when the Park Service was trying to eliminate all private owners within the park...
...Georgia Pacific signed an agreement with Interior to dedicate broad acres to the woodpecker...
...The long time-horizons of secure ownership have for him been dramatically shortened...
...He has 8,000 acres in Pender County, and for a number of years managed the land for the benefit of the wildlife...
...20 The American Spectator August 1995 Agents of the Fish and Wildlife Service are standing by to make sure you don't violate those rights...
...We are no longer pleased to see an eagle, or a hawk or a previously unnoticed flower on our land...
...He mentioned Cindy Domenigoni of Riverside County, California, who was in the audience as he spoke...
...To forestall a total loss of the use of his property, Cone has been clear-cutting rapidly where the woodpecker has not yet taken over...
...Congress is expected to rewrite the act this summer...
...Gradually the organization expanded...
...and so changed the name to the American Land Rights Association...
...The Endangered Species Act became law in 1973, without a dissenting vote...
...a good thing, as he is a liberal who is expected to oppose key changes in the Act...
...Now we come to the unintended consequences...
...Later the small fish turned up in lots of places and never was endangered...
...Michael Bean, head of the Environmental Defense Fund's wildlife program, told a Fish and Wildlife training seminar last November that there is evidence that at least some private landowners are actively managing their to avoid problems—especially problems caused by "adverse modification of habitat...
...The government came in and took her land and her livelihood...
...In no instance is the cause of extinction definitely known...
...In 1984, a federal judge ruled that "habitat modification" could constitute "harm" and therefore a taking...
...For others, the whole idea was to get control of private property and to stop economic development in the first place...
...Ideology does seem to be the problem...
...CI 22 The American Spectator August 1995...
...Biologists believe that 99.9 percent of all species in history have become extinct, the vast majority before Homo sapiens arrived on the scene...
...By cutting down a tree, for instance...
...The illegally acquired data was forwarded to the Fish and Wildlife Service (Department of the Interior), which told the Domenigonis not to farm the 800 acres left fallow the previous year...
...So we fought back, and we stopped them there, and then people in other parks asked for our help...
...It brings its own property rights with it...
...It burned nearly all of the k-rat study area and surrounding lands...
...Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt himself would like to do away with "the individualistic view of property," and adopt a more "communitarian notion," with fences a thing of the past...
...Where "listed" species may have strayed, federal agents fear not to tread...
...The big tree-growing companies have so much land that they can afford to comply...
...As the ruined environment of countries with state ownership should have taught them, this is the opposite of the truth...
...They told him that if he didn't sell to them, he would never work for them again," Cushman said...
...Just as all individuals die, so it seems that all species go extinct...
...This is politics dressed up as science, of course, but it has enabled Beltway environmentalists and their government allies to invade private property and usurp the rights of owners...
...By contrast, the environmental community "brings in $700 to $800 million a year...
...Benjamin Cone of Greensboro, North Carolina, is another who came for the Fly-In...
...I wish they were," he said...
...At first the law said it was a crime to "take" listed species...
...One of the best known was the Tennessee snail darter, which delayed construction of the Tellico Dam...
...In the nightmare image, sportsmen blazed away at swarms of passenger pigeons, until the last specimen was alone in a cage...
...the (highly speculative) theory in fashion involves meteorite collisions in ages past and is no doubt wrong...
...Our whole budget is $300,000 a year...
...He is good at stirring up the troops—in particular mobilizing thousands of allies with fax alerts and other summons to action...
...She fallowed her fields every four years, letting brush and weeds grow for a year, creating a wildlife habitat for meadowlarks and sparrows...
...That is the most important reason why it needs to be changed...
...This is a big business these guys are in...
...About 950 domestic species are listed by Tom Bethell as endangered or threatened today...
...So the enviros know what's going on...
...Right off, Cone, who has an MBA from Harvard Business School, had lost one-fourth of his property to the woodpecker, and as a direct result of his good stewardship...
...D o the enviros see where fanaticism has led them...
...In return Georgia Pacific gets good PR and a photo-op with Bruce Babbitt...
...John Chafee (R-R.I...
...What happened...
...An inholding is a private property or some other private right within the boundaries of a federal or a state-managed area...
...Little did they know they would be protecting distinct population segments of cockroaches and flies...
...She added that the regulations imposed by the Act "have placed ourselves and the species and habitats in adversarial roles...
...Using laws that go back to the Code of Justinian, governments have claimed sovereignty over wild (unowned) animals...
...By 1991, however, he was playing host to twenty-nine red cockaded woodpeckers—listed as endangered...
...Because they impute evil and greed to their opponents, they think that bad outcomes are further evidence of human wickedness...
...So we expanded across the country...
...And they will try to preserve the counterproductive penalties in the law...
...An undeclared defense doctrine was covertly formulated: Shoot, shovel, and shut up...
...They've got to make controversy by saying the sky is falling and things are terrible...
...A critter lands on your property...
...At the Washington meeting, R. J. Smith of the Competitive Enterprise Institute pointed out that good conservation practices are now imprudent thanks to the Act...
...The California fire of 1993, Domenigoni testified, "devastated over 25,000 acres and twenty-nine homes...
...Property taxes were unabated...
...Yet the government can require the same citizen to quarter a grizzly bear, a spotted owl, or any other member of a threatened or endangered species, at the landowner's expense...
...This was an open invitation for the federals to meddle wherever they felt inclined, and at that point the enviros had what they wanted...
...But when several hundred footsoldiers met in a Washington hotel recently, Chuck Cushman of Battle Ground Washington was among their number...
...But among their number, of course, is a hard core of extremists who expect the world to accommodate itself to their intentions...
...The kangaroo rat came into the field, and that shut down the use of her land...
...The enviros had falsely assumed that private owners are too greedy to care about wildlife...
...Recently he was asked if "big corporations" were backing him...
...Because the woodpecker primarily uses older trees for both nesting and foraging, some landowners are deliberately harvesting their trees before they reach sufficient age to attract woodpeckers...
...They overlook their own ill-considered schemes of retribution against Homo sapiens...
...In about 1970, the idea took hold that Homo economicus presents the most serious modem threat...
...Army, even in the name of national defense, from requiring that a citizen quarter [i.e...
...Get your saw out, my friend, and you may have to pack a bag for the Federal Penitentiary...
...Shortly before a discussion of the Endangered Species Act on the first day, I spoke to Cushman, who was festooned like a Christmas tree with campaign buttons, pens, and name tag...
...His careful management of the property, with controlled burns and preservation of "old growth," was just right for them...
...They thought they were protecting bald eagles, grizzly bears, and whooping cranes," said the Competitive Enterprise Institute's Ike Sugg, an expert on this subject...
...Two years later, the same bureaucrats refused the Domenigonis' request to plough firebreaks on their property, thereby exposing their neighbors to fire hazard...
...They talk about the problem among themselves, but an admission of error would hurt fundraising and is not to be expected...
...It was called the National Inholders Association...
...There's a million people who own property inside Federal land, not including holders of grazing or mining permits," he said...
...The Washington gathering was called a Fly-In: strategy sessions, followed by three days' lobbying on Capitol Hill...
...Habitat" became a dreaded word...
...Reforming the Endangered Species Act is a key item on the agenda of Cushman's organization and the property rights movement generally...
...That shouldn't happen again...
Vol. 28 • August 1995 • No. 8
