(Edited 12/04/07 -- Added info on extension of public comment period for the endangered species recovery credit system.)
Panthers at Large
As a journalist for the St. Petersburg Times, Jeff Kinkerberg tagged along with eight Florida Game and Fresh Water Fish Commission scientists and veterinarians, and a couple of dogs on a panther catching expedition in March, 1993. The dogs treed a panther, chasing it 30 feet off the ground and out on a tree limb. The biologists sedated the cat, which then laid down in a stupor on the limb, instead of falling onto the inflated crash bag and net below. So a biologist climbed up the 30 feet, inched out to the panther and tied a rope around it. The scientists were then able to push the cat off the limb. But the endangered Florida panther (Puma concolor coryi), dubbed "#50", surprised everyone by landing on its feet. As Kinkerberg wrote:
The fall has invigorated the drugged panther. Flexing his claws, he scrambles out of the net and leaps to the ground...Dave Maehr...grabs the panther's tail and is dragged across the ground...[Pauline Nol] hugs the panther around the neck. She is dragged with Maehr. The rest of us try to block the panther's escape. He stops, turns and runs toward me. I extend my notebook and camera - paltry weaponry under the circumstances - and retreat behind a tree.
The mayhem continued....
Turning, the panther sprints between the legs of a U.S. Fish and Wildlife employee, Mark Lotz, knocking him over. With Maehr still clinging to the tail, Jayde Roof slides down the tree and tackles the panther across the hips. The panther claws his leg, tearing open his pants, puncturing his knee and drawing blood. The panther, a watermelon seed with fur, slips from their grasp without even a growl. Roof and Maehr and Nol dive on the panther again and try to entangle him in the net...
The panther is protected under the US Endangered Species Act. The escapade to tag the panther and chart its health was an iota of the effort expended in the multi-decade project(s) to repopulate the endangered panther in Florida. Scientists and politicians have engaged in an epic struggle to reinvigorate the dwindling population, and along the way, wrestled not only with animals, but with many legitimate questions about the pros and cons of such an effort.
Ironically, the panther may be one of the luckier endangered species. Even in its most beleaguered days, as a mangy population of 50 sickish specimens, the panther was fortunate to be the recipient of sustained public attention. Other endangered or rare species don't have such poster appeal, get little public attention, and therefore aren't recipients of preservation efforts and funding.
Small Toads Haplessly Trampled
In the case of the California's red-legged frog and the arroyo toad (John Roberts famously called it "hapless"), Investor's Business Daily asked recently (Nov. 28, 2007), how it's possible that such tiny species can sooo gum up the works:
"Both are almost a couple of inches, small enough to be trampled underfoot without the trampler's knowledge. Yet they've been favored over human activity on several occasions as developers have been sidelined by regulators."
Actually, the smaller the species, it seems, the less likely it will show up in the New York Times -- and all the easier to "trample it underfoot". Grim are the futures of spiders and flies?
Even apart from spurts of wanton disregard from disparate quarters, endangered species policy is -- when all parties are agreeable -- thorny business. The panther netting episode could be a metaphor for the larger, longer political struggle over endangered species -- albeit one that's less satisfying in its physical, acrobatic aspects and perhaps its outcomes.
Seven Species Saved....?
Last week, the U.S Fish and Wildlife Service reversed the decisions on seven species whose listing status was politically influenced by former Deputy Assistant Secretary Julie MacDonald, who decided that certain species didn't need the protection scientists had determined was necessary for species survival. A review of eight decisions last summer found that MacDonald had bullied scientists, edited their reports, passed confidential information to private parties outside the agency, and manipulated the final decisions. The species whose fates she temporarily influenced were the Canada lynx, the White-Tailed prairie dog, the California red-legged frog, the Southwestern willow flycatcher, the Arroyo toad, the Preble's meadow jumping mouse, and 12 species of Hawaiian picture-wing flies.
Although people express relief over the change in these decisions, MacDonald was involved with more than 200 endangered species decisions. The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) says that in more than 30 cases over the last 7 years they identified political interference. To the UCS, the problem is less with one individual, than with the agency's process that's not-transparent. MacDonald is not the only official within the federal agency who has been accused of influence peddling. As a 2005 poll showed, most employees of the Fish and Wildlife Service admit to knowing several instances of official finagling.
It's an unfortunate time, with global warming and increasing numbers of species likely to be in danger, for the Endangered Species Act to be further bogged down in politics. The Audubon Society's recent 2007 Watchlist identifies 178 species of birds in the continental U.S. and 39 in Hawaii that are declining or are already rare. But the Bush administration continues its march of obstruction. The administration has now refused to move to protect penguins -- ten of twelve species of penguins that the Fish and Wildlife Service found to be endangered because of global warming. If the popular penguin can't get favor from Bush...who can??
Recovery Credit System -- Like Offsets? Privatizing Endangered Species?
There's a growing trend afoot, to engage private landowners in species habitat protection. The Bush administration is pushing this from several directions. For instance in October Bush announced a recovery credit system, which would allow federal agencies to damage species habitat if nearby private land could be rented from private landowners as replacement habitat for the endangered species. The idea of habitat credit has defenders and critics (naturally). A small program of this type was run at a U.S. Army base at Fort Hood in Texas. The Environmental Defense Fund wrote positively about the Fort Hood program in which they participated, along with a cattle association, in their article last October "Cows, Tanks and Conservation: The Right Mix for Songbird Recovery". EDF predicted that the bird targeted by the Fort Hood program, the black-capped vireo (Vireo atricapilla), would recover in the next decade. The Fish and Wildlife Service has more information on their proposed program. We verified that the public comment period for this proposal, which originally expired November 3rd, has now been extended 60 days.
-------------------------------------------------------
Acronym Required wrote more about the Florida panther recovery program in Panthers Saved?
We wrote about the Environmental Defense Fund's participation with KKR in the
TXU buyout last year in TXU - Greenmail?.
