STATEMENT OF ZEKE GRADER

THE PACIFIC COAST FEDERATION

OF FISHERMEN'S ASSOCIATIONS

TO THE SENATE ENVIRONMENT & PUBLIC WORKS COMMITTEE, SUBCOMMITTEE ON FISHERIES, WILDLIFE AND WATER

9 May 2001

Washington, DC

 

The Endangered Species Conservation & Management Act of 1995

 

     Good Morning, Mister Chairman and Subcommittee members, my name is Zeke Grader.  I am the Executive Director for the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations (PCFFA), representing working men and women in the west coast commercial fishing fleet.  We are a federation of many different fishermen=s marketing associations, vessel owners associations and fishermen=s cooperatives with member organizations as well as individual members in ports from San Diego to Alaska.

 

     The fishing men and women and their organizations that make-up our federation are the economic mainstay of many coastal communities and cities.  PCFFA members represent at least half a billion dollars in economic investments which generate tens of thousands of family wage jobs -- not only in coastal communities, but far inland as well.  In other words,  hard working men and women who help put fresh, high-quality seafood on America's table, create a job base for coastal communities, and help support a multitude of federal, state and local community services through our taxes, all from the bounty of the seas.

 

     The commercial fishing industry represents a significant economic sector in this nation,  accounting for well over $50 billion in economic impacts and more than 700,000 jobs.  When combined with another $15 billion per year generated by the marine recreational fishery, the whole offshore fishing industry now accounts for about $65 billion per year to the U.S. economy.[1]  In addition to commercial fishing, the recreational sportfishing industry also contributes a mighty share to the U.S. economy.  Fishing -- whether for sport or commercially -- is big business, with a combined economic input to the national economy in excess of $152 billion and supporting almost 2 million family wage jobs.[2]  

 

     Most of these jobs are to one degree or another dependant upon strong protection of the biological resources upon which they are based.   In other words, our industry would not exist -- nor would $152 billion dollars in annual income and 2 million jobs in this economy that we generate -- without strong environmental protections.  Our industry is a prime example of a basic economic principle:

 

          The fundamental source of all economic wealth is the natural environment.  In the long-run environmental protection does not destroy jobs -- it creates them and maintains them on a sustainable basis for the future.

 

     In other words, the biological wealth of this country is its "natural capital."    Like any economic capital, we can invest it wisely and reap its benefits indefinitely, or we can allow it to dissipate and waste it.  Pushing species to the brink of extinction -- and beyond -- not only wastes future economic opportunities but helps destroy those industries we already have, such as the Pacific salmon fishing industry.  The ESA is the law of final resort that prevents us as a society from negligently wasting our irreplaceable "natural capital" -- and the jobs that this "natural capital" represents, both in the present and in our economy's future.  Ultimately all economic wealth comes from our natural environment.  In the final analysis this is all humanity has, and all it has ever had, from which to obtain its livelihood, and indeed its very existence.

 

     The Endangered Species Act (ESA) dispute is not really a clash between species vs. jobs, nor even between public trust values vs. private  property rights -- fundamentally, the ESA dispute is a clash between short-term profiteering vs. long-term and sustainable economic development.  The ESA merely establishes limits beyond which voracious human consumption should not go.  That limit is the limit of "biological sustainability."  This is also the basis of economic sustainability as well.  As a society, we violate nature's biological limitations at both our biological and our economic peril. 

 

     Each species pushed into extinction is first and foremost a loss to the very fabric of our human food chain.  However it also represents a lost future economic opportunity effecting our entire economy.  The biological diversity of our natural resources represents the foundation upon which many industries of the present are maintained, but also upon which industries of the future will be built and people of the future will be fed.  Wasting our "natural capital" dramatically impoverishes our society by limiting our future industrial and economic growth.[3]

 

     The commercial fishing industry has seen the Endangered Species Act up close and in operation for many years.  Our industry is a highly regulated industry.  We are, for instance, far more strictly regulated under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) than the Northwest timber industry, and for many more species.  While the timber industry has recently suffered through curtailments caused by one or two ESA listings, the fishing industry has long been dealing with the impacts of listings for chinook salmon in both the Columbia and Sacramento Rivers, sockeye salmon in the Columbia, sea turtles in the Gulf, marine mammal species protected under both the ESA and the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA), and various species of seabird protected under both the ESA and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act (MBTA).  On the west coast, we have also learned to cope with ESA listings for coho and sockeye salmon and some runs of chinook as well.  The cumulative effects of this multitude of listings is, frankly, far more restrictive than any past restrictions caused merely by spotted owls or marbled murrelets.

 

     There is, in fact no industry more regulated under the ESA presently, nor more likely to be regulated in the foreseeable future, than the commercial fishing industry. We can therefore speak with some authority, as a regulated industry, on how well the ESA works.  Yet in spite of short-term dislocations created by listings,  we view the protections offered by the ESA as vitally important in protecting and preserving our industry, our jobs and our way of life for the long term. It is species declines and the forces which cause those declines which are the real enemy, not the ESA.  The ESA is only the messenger.

 

     It is, in fact, axiomatic that a species only qualifies for listing under the Endangered Species Act because it faces extinction.  This point seems to have been missed by many who are calling for the elimination or curtailment of ESA protections.   The best way to prevent listings, then, is to prevent the species' decline in the first place.  Limiting or repealing the ESA itself only throws out the primary tool to achieve recovery, in other words shoots the messenger, but does nothing to reverse the underlying declines.  In other words, the ESA is only the warning bell and not the problem itself.  Disconnecting the warning bell is not a viable response to an emergency in the making.

 

72,000 SALMON JOBS AT RISK -- SALMON AS A CASE

IN POINT FOR HOW THE ESA PROTECTS JOBS

 

     Salmon, once the economic mainstay of both the commercial and recreational fishing industry in the west have been reduced by decades of short-sighted human actions to a mere shadow of their former glory, largely as a result of a multitude of cumulative on-shore causes.  The great salmon runs of the east coast are all but gone, more than 98% of those runs now extinct.[4] Salmon in east coast restaurants are almost always inferior Norwegian salmon raised artificially -- which exports to Norway thousands of jobs that should have belonged to American fishermen.  The virtual extinction of the east coast=s once abundant salmon runs, which once extended well down into Georgia in colonial times, and the elimination of an entire segment of the fishing industry in the process, is one of our greatest American tragedies.  The efforts now to bring those enormously valuable biological resources back from the brink through their listing under the ESA, and the modification of other industrial sectors to make that possible, is well worth the effort.

 

     The destruction of salmon spawning and rearing habitat has also been ongoing and pervasive in the west for many decades -- it is just a few decades behind the east coast but going along the same path leading to extinction.  Every year fewer and fewer salmon survive the silting up of their spawning grounds by inappropriate or poorly planned logging, grazing and road building practices.  Fewer still survive the nightmare ride through hydropower turbines and slack-water reservoirs in the more than 30 major federal and state Columbia River Basin hydropower dams. In the eight federally operated Columbia and Snake River mainstem dams alone, each dam's turbines and hot water reservoirs combined kill up to 15% of the outmigrant fish making their long journey to the sea.[5]  3,000 miles of prime salmon spawning streams in the Sacramento Basin have now been reduced to less than 300, and much of what remains is biologically damaged or suffers from too little cold water during critical spawning times. 

 

     The relatively few wild salmon which remain alive after all these accumulated impacts are then subject to otherwise natural ocean fluctuations (El Ninos) which, combined with all the upstream human-caused assaults, can be the final blow to an already highly stressed salmon ecosystem.  Once the numbers of salmon in a stream drop below a certain threshold, the remaining fish cannot reliably find each other to mate.  Even though many fish remain, the run has then dropped into what is called the Aextinction vortex@ and numbers drop precipitously from that point onward -- only major intervention can then save them.  This is precisely what seems to be happening over much of the west coast and has happened long since for salmon over most of the Atlantic seaboard.

 

     Salmon are the most sensitive to their environment in the egg stage and as juveniles when they are still in freshwater streams just after spawning.  Some species (such as coho salmon) spend a fairly long time in freshwater streams since they must "overwinter" there for up to 18 months before migrating out to sea.  Even once they leave these freshwater streams, salmon must still spend additional time in coastal wetland estuaries and marshes in order to gradually adapt to life in salt water.  They are "anadromous" fish, which means they are hatched in freshwater, then adapt to salt water, then return again to freshwater to spawn.  In the ocean they are relatively large and relatively safe, but in inland streams they are subjected to every environmental problem created by mankind, in addition to natural predation and other natural impacts.  Salmon evolved for drought, for El Ninos,  to avoid predators -- but have not evolved to prevent themselves from being sucked into irrigation pumps, nor from being destroyed by hydropower turbines, nor stranded without water in unscreened irrigation ditches.  They also have not evolved to survive water pollution, oil spills and the many other unfortunate environmental problems created by modern civilization. 

 

      Roughly speaking, we have lost about 80 percent of the productive capacity of salmon streams in the west coast as a direct result of various causes of watershed destruction.  According to a 1991 comprehensive scientific study by the prestigious American Fisheries Society (AFS), at least 106 major populations of salmon and steelhead on the West Coast are already extinct.  Other studies place the number at over 200 separate stock extinctions in the Columbia River Basin alone.  The AFS report also identified 214 additional native naturally-spawning salmonid runs at risk of extinction in the Northwest and Northern California: 101 at high risk of extinction, 58 at moderate risk of extinction, and another 54 of special concern.[6]   In a recent extensive GIS mapping study of present salmon habitat occupied versus historical habitat, based on the AFS data and updates, the data indicated the following distributions across the landscape:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                       

Status of Salmon Species in the Pacific Northwest & California

                               Current Distribution as a Percentage of Historic Habitat

 

 

Species

 

Extinct

 

Endangered

 

Threatened

 

Special Concern

 

Not Known to be Declining

 

Coho

 

55%

 

13%

 

20%

 

5%

 

7%

 

Spring/Summer Chinook

 

63%

 

8%

 

16%

 

7%

 

6%

 

Fall Chinook

 

19%

 

18%

 

7%

 

36%

 

20%

 

Chum salmon

 

37%

 

16%

 

14%

 

11%

 

22%

 

Sockeye

 

59%

 

7%

 

3%

 

16%

 

15%

 

Pink salmon

 

21%

 

5%

 

<1%

 

<1%

 

73%

 

Sea-run Cutthroat

 

6%

 

4%

 

61%

 

29%

 

0%

 

Winter Steelhead

 

29%

 

22%

 

7%

 

18%

 

24%

 

Summer Steelhead

 

45%

 

5%

 

5%

 

27%

 

18%

 

According to GIS mapping, Pacific Northwest salmon are already extinct in 38% of their historic range, between 50-100% of these species are at risk or extinct in 56% of their historic range, and in only 6% of their historic habitat range are fewer than 50% of these salmon species at risk or extinct.[7]  The conclusions of this study (the best and most complete science to date) are chilling --  9 out of 10 known species of Pacific salmon will be extinct in the lower 48 states in the near future unless land use patterns pressing those stocks toward extinction are reversed.[8]

 

     The productive capacity of the salmon resource has always been enormous.  Even as recently as 1988, and in spite of already serious existing depletions in the Columbia and elsewhere,  the Northwest salmon fishing industry (including both commercial and recreational components) still supported an estimated 62,750 family wage jobs in the Northwest and Northern California, and generated $1.25 billion in economic personal income impacts to the region.[9]  An additional estimated job loss from the Columbia River declines alone had already occurred by the 1988 baseline year, amounting to another $250 -- 505 million in annual economic losses as well as the destruction of an additional 13,000 to 25,000 family wage jobs.  These jobs had already been taken out of the economy as a direct result of dam-related salmon declines in the Columbia basin prior to 1988.[10]

 

     Hydropower and irrigation dams are probably the major leading factor in the collapse of the salmon fishery on this coast.  Historically almost one-third of all west coast salmon were produced in the Columbia and Snake river systems, making that river the richest salmon production system in the world. Now, however, in the Columbia and Snake rivers the hydropower system accounts for about 90% of all human-induced salmon mortality, as opposed to only about 5% for all commercial, recreational and tribal fisheries combined. Official figures from the Northwest Power Planning Council indicate that the Columbia River dams kill the equivalent of between 5 million and 11 million adult salmon every year, with several million more killed by a variety of dam related habitat loss factors in the upper watersheds of the region.[11]   Many millions more fish are killed in the Central Valley Project and in the Klamath Basin by loss of in-stream flows.

 

     Another problem is wetland losses throughout the west coast.  California has already lost 91% of its original wetlands, Oregon has lost 38% and Washington has lost another 31% and the remaining percentages of original wetlands have been severely compromised in their biological functions.[12]  These wetlands are vital in protecting overwintering salmon, helping them survive droughts and (for saltwater wetlands) helping them adapt to ocean conditions.  A main factor in the destruction of the coastal salmon stocks in the Northwest has been the rampant destruction of the area's wetlands.  Loss figures for the most valuable coastal and estuarine wetlands are much greater than the overall state loss averages.

 

     There has been a lot of press recently about court ordered irrigation cutbacks in the Upper Klamath Basin that have been imposed to protect salmon and other fish from extinction, with the farmers blaming the Endangered Species Act for problems that are clearly caused by a drought.  In fact, the Courts under the ESA have only been saying that, especially in a drought year, natural public resources should have enough water to survive.  In short, the the court said that the irrigators cannot take all the water for themselves, drying up the rest of the river system at the expense of everybody else. 

 

     In other words, the ESA requires the protection of the very ecosystem which supports all of these economies, and forbids wasting all of our natural resources (which are owned by the public in general) simply to benefit a few farmers for a few years.   It just makes no sense to keep irrigating croplands as usual in the midst of what has become the Klamath Irrigation Project=s worst drought in its entire 90 year history, particularly when the result will inevitably be a dried up river, dead lakes, the final extinction of several commercially valuable species and the total destruction of a whole downriver fishing economy that also supports thousands of coastal jobs B all this destruction just to keep feeding a bloated federal irrigation project that produces federally subsidized surplus crops for which there is now little or no market.

 

     The relatively large salmon harvest projected this year in Central California is an instructive exception to these decline trends.  The primary cause of those increases has probably been water reforms in the Central Valley, driven by the listing under the ESA several years ago of the devastated native runs of Sacramento winter-run chinook salmon and the delta smelt.  Although some of those reforms are now embodied in the Central Valley Project Improvement Act, the ESA listing predates the CVPIA by several years and forced these reforms to be made.  Greater in-stream smolt survival coupled with fortunate ocean conditions have thus given us a large harvestable run and put a lot of California fishermen back to work while other areas along the west coast where habitat loss and water diversions still continue are still in decline.

 

     In fact, the salmon rebounds in recent years from the California Central Valley is an ESA success story.  ESA driven water reforms in California were long overdue, are starting to have their effect, and are now resulting in abundant and sustainable salmon harvests once again off the shores of California.  The ESA has thus resulted in restoring jobs, communities and a tax base once again to schools and public services in many coastal fishing-dependent rural ports.  There is a long way to go, but none of this could have been done had not the ESA forced society into a better balance  in the protection of our fundamental Anatural capital,@ our priceless natural resources.

 

ESTIMATES OF SALMON JOB LOSSES DUE TO LACK

OF PROTECTION OF SALMON RESOURCES

 

     California=s returning salmon harvests are certainly encouraging, and show us what better resource protection can accomplish.  However, with the one major exception off  California, and a few very minor mostly sportfishing exceptions in Washington and Oregon, most of the entire ocean going salmon fleet was closed down or severely restricted since 1994  because of these declines, particularly of coho salmon which is now ESA listed.   Even with some harvests returning in central California, we estimate that coastwide we have still lost 90% of our industry income from the commercial fishery as compared to the 1976-1993 averages -- which translates to loss of 90% of the jobs created by the commercial salmon industry as a whole.  The recreational salmon fishing industry has also suffered a similar decline of 70% in that same time period, with some areas (such as central Oregon) also suffering years of nearly complete closures.  While there is some mismatch of figures (due to different averaged years) these two figures combined will give us a pretty good estimate of total salmon industry job losses since 1988.  Doing the calculation we get job losses as follows:

 

     15,250 x 90% = 13,725 jobs lost since 1988 in the commercial salmon fishery

 

     47,500 x 70% = 33,250 jobs lost since 1988 in the recreational salmon fishery

                              ======

                               46,975  jobs lost overall since 1988

 

In additional, habitat losses and hydropower mortality in the Columbia and Snake rivers have also resulted in up to 25,000 lost jobs.  Adding these lost jobs to the above figures for losses in the Columbia River which occurred even before 1988 indicates a total west coast job loss within the last two decades of approximately 72,000 family wage jobs.

 

     In other words, roughly 47,000 jobs have been lost in the west coast Pacific salmon fishing industry (including both commercial and recreational) just since 1988, with a total of 72,000 fishing-generated family wage jobs lost -- including losses due to the current operations of the Columbia and Snake river hydropower system -- over the past three decades.

 

     Overfishing is not a likely cause of these declines.  Had overfishing been a major contributing factor in salmon declines (as some have claimed) then past harvest closures should have resulted in substantial rebuilding of populations.  However, there is no evidence that these closures resulted in substantial population increases -- indicating that the limiting factors are in the watersheds, not in ocean or in-river harvest levels.[13]   There are also a number of other indications leading to the same conclusion, including: (a) the most precipitous declines have occurred primarily in the most inshore habitat sensitive species (coho salmon) as opposed to chinook salmon which spend much less time in inland watersheds and whose populations are still relatively robust; (b) precipitous declines have also occurred in species for which there is no sport or commercial harvest (searun cutthroat) but which originate in inland watersheds in which there has been substantial human disturbance (primarily clearcut timber harvesting and increased stream siltation from logging road washouts).

 

     When seasons remain closed, the enormous economic investment already put into the Pacific fishing fleet goes to waste.  Just in the Columbia River gillnet fleet alone an estimated $110 - $129 million dollars in capital assets is invested.[14]  Yet the in-river gillnet fleet is only a relative handful of small boats and its capital investment is certainly only a very small fraction of the overall capital invested in the entire ocean salmon fishing fleet.  This figure does not even include buyer and processor investment.  Additional salmon extinctions essentially mean the bankruptcy of whole fishing-dependent coastal communities and the waste of a tremendous capital investment built up over generations.[15]

 

     Again these extinctions represent lost jobs, lost family income and lost local tax revenues  suffered by  fishing communities as a result of poor environmental protection of west coast salmon.  These losses are being suffered by real people, many of them third or fourth generation fishermen, who suddenly find they cannot feed their families, pay their home and boat mortgages or help maintain their communities.   Better protection of salmon and their habitat (through the ESA and other strong environmental laws) will help restore these 72,000 jobs to the region and rebuild these local economies.

 

WHY THE FISHING INDUSTRY NEEDS THE ENDANGERED

SPECIES ACT -- $152 BILLION/YEAR

AND 2.0 MILLION JOBS AT RISK

 

     Most fish species spend only part of their lives in mid‑ocean.  During their juvenile stage, most

live and thrive in the nearshore environment of streams, rivers and estuaries.  Some, like salmon,

reproduce and grow far inland in fresh water streams hundreds of miles from the ocean.  However, salmon are just one example of commercially valuable species that are also dependent on inshore or nearshore habitat quality. 

 

     All around the country, our industry is utterly dependent on species which themselves require healthy watersheds and estuaries for the most critical parts of their life cycle.  Nearshore waters, including rivers, streams and coastal wetlands, are essential nursery areas for fully 75% of the entire US commercial fish and shellfish landings. These sensitive ecosystems are valuable national assets which contribute about $46 billion per year to the US economy in biological value (including natural flood control and filtration of pollutants), as well as providing its healthiest food sources.  Salmon are only one part of this whole economic picture, and only one of many commercially valuable species which need protection.  The bottom line protection of all these species is the Endangered Species Act.

 

     All the nation's $152 billion fisheries have been put at risk as a result of the continuing destruction of fish habitat in the nation's rivers, estuaries and coastal ecosystems.  This destruction has already led to billions of dollars in lost revenue to the nation every year, lost jobs, lost food production, and lost recreational opportunities.  The collapse of the salmon fishery is only a small part of this overall habitat loss problem.

 

     Nor is coastal habitat loss the only problem.  Our entire inland freshwater fish resource is also in serious trouble.  According to studies by the prestigious American Fisheries Society, roughly one-third of 790 known species of freshwater fish in the U.S. are in danger of extinction or of special concern.  In the case of  a whole family of nonanadromous (i.e., resident) salmonids, more than 50% of all known U.S. species in that family are close to extinction.  Within the largest known family of fish (the Cyprinidae), which include 29.2% of all known fish species in the U.S., the number of species classifiable as endangered (7.2%), threatened (9.4%), of special concern (10.8%) or already extinct (3.3%) totals 30.7% of this entire large family of fish species.  Of the 18 states with greater than 10 imperiled fish species, 10 are located in the South and 5 in the West.  The 11 states with the highest number of imperiled fish species are (in descending order) Nevada (43), California (42), Tennessee (40), Alabama (30), Oregon (25), Texas (23), Arizona (22), Virginia and North Carolina (21 each), and Georgia and New Mexico (20 each).[16] 

 

     This country is in the midst of an ecological disaster which is causing tremendous economic losses throughout the nation in this and many other resource dependent industries.  The large number of the nation=s fish and wildlife which qualify for listing under the ESA is just the symptom of this overall ecological disaster.

 

     The Congress and the Administration need to make a serious commitment to the protection of those habitats and ecosystems that determine the future productivity of fish and shellfish resources in the U.S.  If this commitment is made, at least a doubling of anadromous fish and other near shore dependent marine fish and shellfish populations of the "lower 48" states can be expected.  This could produce an additional $27 billion in annual economic output (above and beyond the current level of $152 billion) and more than 450,000 new family wage jobs. [17]

 

     Environmental regulations exist because after decades of neglect and pollution, policy makers finally realized that a healthy environment is the ultimate source of the nation's economic wealth, its food and the well-being of its citizens.  When all other efforts to save these valuable biological resources fail, however, the final safety net is the Endangered Species Act (ESA).  In spite of the problems the ESA has created for individual fishermen, it is also the last hope for the restoration of whole industries (such as salmon fishing) in many areas.  Without a strong ESA, the only available remedy for species recovery is closing down the fishery, even though the real problems lie elsewhere and are caused by rampant destruction of habitat.[18]

 

     This is exactly what has happened to the salmon industry to date ‑‑ as onshore habitat declined, as fewer and fewer fish survived to even reach the ocean, it has been the fishermen who have been cut back over and over again, and who have almost singlehandedly paid the price of inland environmental destruction on a massive scale.  This is because under the Magnuson Act fishery managers can only manage fishermen ‑‑ they have no legal jurisdiction over actions onshore which destroy the biological foundations of the fishery itself.[19]  Only the ESA gives them the authority to modify or curtail such actions.

 

     Thus without a strong ESA, there will never be salmon recovery in the Northwest, and the approximately 72,000 lost salmon jobs -- which the salmon resource could still generate in this region with proper protection of the resource --  would be gone forever.  In short, salmon mean business, and it pays to protect them.  Without the ESA to drive recovery, however, you can kiss the entire Northwest salmon industry -- and many other components of the entire nation's $152 billion/year fishing industry -- goodbye!

 

     The fishing industry represents a significant economic contributor to America=s economy which is dependent upon a healthy environment.  The ESA is not the enemy, it is only the messenger.  Listing a species is like dialing the 911 number when you need an ambulance.  It should be used rarely, but when it is needed it is real handy to have an emergency number to call.  Often this can mean the difference between life and death.

 

 

THE "ENVIRONMENT VS. JOBS" ISSUE IS A FALSE DICHOTOMY --

THE ESA DOES NOT CAUSE SUBSTANTIAL ECONOMIC DISRUPTION

 

     There is absolutely no evidence that the ESA seriously impacts state or regional economies, and every reason to think that it does not.  For instance, a study by the MIT Project on Environmental Politics and Policy, which looked at the statistical relationship between the number of species listed in each state as compared to that state's economic performance  (over the period of 1975-1990) concluded:

 

            "The data clearly shows that the Endangered Species Act has had no measurable economic impact on state economic performance.  Controlling for differences in state area, and extractive industry dependence the study finds that states with the highest numbers of listed species also enjoyed the highest economic growth rates and the largest increases in economic growth rates....  The one and a half decades of state data examined in this paper strongly contradict the assertion that the Endangered Species Act has had harmful effects on state economies.  Protections offered to threatened animals and plants do not impose a measurable economic burden on development activity at the state level.  In fact the evidence points to the converse...."

 

The author of that study also noted that actual ESA listings are themselves only affecting a very small number of development projects undertaken and that, in economic context, these impacts are very small indeed in comparison to other much more major factors:

 

            "In fact, for every tale about a project, business, or property owner allegedly harmed by the efforts to protect some plant or animal species there are over one thousand stories of virtual 'non-interference.'   In reviewing the record of 18,211 endangered species consultations by the Fish and Wildlife Service/National Marine Fisheries covering the period 1987-1991 the General Accounting Office found that only 11% (2050) resulted in the issuance of formal biological opinions.  The other 89% were handled informally -- that is to say the projects proceeded on schedule and without interference.  Of the 2050 formal opinions issued a mere 181 -- less than 10% -- concluded that the proposed projects were likely to pose a threat to an endangered plant or animal.  And most of these 181 projects were completed, albeit with  some modification in design or construction.  In short, more than 99% of the projects reviewed under the Endangered Species Act eventually proceeded unhindered or with marginal additional time and economic costs.  Given the political and economic screening that occurs in listings cases it is not surprising that no measurable negative economic effects are detectable.... 

 

Furthermore local economic effects must be considered in context.  Hundreds of state and federal policies have far more injurious impacts on local economies than wildlife protection.  For example, the recent series of military base closings have had economic effects hundreds of times greater than all the listings during the 20-year life of the Endangered Species Act.  Even greater economic and social harm resulted from the ill-conceived deregulation of the savings and loan industry during the 1980's.  The number of jobs lost to leveraged buy-outs in the 1980's exceeds by many times the wildest estimates of jobs lost to endangered species; and no social good was accomplished in any of these cases."  [20]

 

     In the case of the fishing industry, as well as many other environment-dependent industries, judicious application of the ESA to protect the biological resources we depend upon can add a substantial number of jobs to the regional economy.  At least 72,000 additional salmon-generated family wage jobs can be restored to the west coast by taking steps under the ESA to restore and recover the great salmon runs which once made this region the envy of the world.  Without the ESA to drive recovery, however, this economic revitalization would likely never happen.

 

 

                             PROBLEMS WITH THE ESA AND THEIR SOLUTIONS

 

     I think all sides of the debate will admit that the Endangered Species Act is not a perfect law.  As a regulated industry ourselves, we certainly know firsthand some of the problems that the current act has created, and are seeking to make the act work better and more efficiently.  However, what should not be in question is the need for the act itself.  The problems with the act are not that it is too strong, but that it is too bureaucratic and too poorly funded to accomplish its purposes efficiently and with the least amount of economic pain. 

 

     As a regulated industry organization which also strongly believes in the importance of the goals of the act, we also believe the ESA needs improvement in a number of ways, including the following:

 

     (1) The ESA Should Promote Species Recovery, Not Mere Maintenance on Indefinite Life Support -- The principal flaw of the ESA is that it establishes a goal far short of actual recovery of species.  The stated goal of the ESA is to prevent extinction and to establish plans for the "conservation and survival" of listed species. This minimal level of conservation does not result, in many cases, in ultimate population recovery.  Under the current conservation standards, more and more species are thus pushed toward, and indefinitely maintained, just short of the line of extinction.  Massive last ditch rescue efforts begun when a species is already hovering over the abyss of extinction is a much more expensive proposition than to simply keep the species well-distributed in several self-reproducing and interbreeding populations from which the species will perpetuate itself naturally and at no cost to humans.  Prevention is always cheaper than cure.

 

     (2) There Should Be Recovery Plan Deadlines -- Recovery plans do not exist for most listed species, even many years later.  How can any species be recovered enough to delist them without a plan?  This is a recipe for keeping species on the ESA list forever, just perpetuating regulatory uncertainty. Regulatory uncertainty is in many instances the cause of more economic dislocation than the species conservation measures themselves would be once implemented. 

 

     At present there are no statutory deadlines for the adoption of recovery plans, thus perpetuating that uncertainty. For an industry such as ours or the timber industry or for farmers, this uncertainty makes it very difficult to develop long range business plans or to obtain business financing.  The law should therefore require the Secretary to prepare within 18 months of listing a final recovery plan that incorporates the Recovery Target document and all implementation plans, and which also contains enforceable deadlines for all action items.

 

     The first step toward a recovery plan is the identification of and designation of >critical habitat.=  This designation puts landowners on clear notice as to what will likely be required of them as a contribution toward recovery, and helps identify and ultimately to resolve ESA disputes.  Designation of critical habitat is a vital step in the ESA recovery process that needs to be retained, as well as fully funded. 

 

     The law should also require the Secretary to ensure to the maximum extent practicable that the combined set of recovery implementation plans will, when implemented, achieve recovery of the species within a reasonable time frame.  The recovery plan should identify and prioritize actions that would have the greatest potential for achieving recovery of listed species.

 

          Recovery plans should also emphasize implementing conservation measures which provide the greatest benefit with the least economic impact first, as well as include nonregulatory incentive-based efforts where appropriate.  Again these are all principles that, as a regulated industry, we strongly support so long as the goal of ultimate and timely recovery is kept central to recovery efforts.

 

     (3)  Assuring Cost Effectiveness and Minimizing Conflicts with Private Landowners -- Most of the conflicts between private landowners and the government with respect to species protection are more perceived than real.  Nevertheless, there is a need to minimize those conflicts to the extent possible as well as providing for conservation measures which achieve the recovery goal as cost effectively as possible.  Some of the measures that should be incorporated into the law to achieve these goals include the following:

 

The law should direct the Secretary to emphasize the role of federal actions and public lands in achieving recovery.  The law should be clearer in specifying that federal agencies have a responsibility to use their existing programs to foster the implementation of recovery plans to the degree they can.

 

If critical habitat occurs on privately held lands, the law should direct the Secretary to identify land for acquisition in the recovery plan (including any land interests less than fee title, such as conservation easements) pursuant to section 5 of the Act, from willing sellers, and should set priorities for acquisition.  This process should be well funded and the administrative  procedures for financing these acquisitions should be simplified.  Many landowners would be more than willing to help with recovery efforts if such financial incentives were more readily available.

 

The law should also direct the recovery  team and the Secretary, in preparing the list of recovery actions,  to consider the cost effectiveness of conservation actions in order to identify ways of reducing costs of recovery without sacrificing species preservation or recovery goals.

 

Landowners should be encouraged to provide habitat protection through a variety of incentive and financing programs, including the following: 

 

            (a) Establish a revolving loan fund for state and local government entities to encourage such entities to develop regional, multi-species Habitat Conservation Plans (HCP's).

 

(b) Enable landowners with proposed activities consistent with an approved regional HCP to obtain expedited approvals of those activities.

 

(c) Authorize the Secretary to enter into cooperative management agreements with private landowners, providing financial incentives for conservation measures above and beyond those required by the ESA.  Conservation activities to be funded under this provision would include those called for by an approved recovery plan, but could also be more pro-active in their approach, rather than reactive as so often the case once a species has been listed.

 

The Habitat Conservation Plan (HCP) procedure is a good tool for landowners to restore some certainty into the process as well as to provide for long-term protection measures.  However, the current HCP process is deeply flawed and includes too little public notice and comment.  Furthermore, HCP's can be inconsistent and even work at cross purposes with approved recovery efforts elsewhere.  HCP=s are not even required, under present law, to actually contribute toward the recovery of the species, thus shifting the burden onto the backs of other landowners who get their HCP later or not at all.  The law should clearly require HCP's to be both consistent with and contribute toward species recovery as embodied in approved recovery plans and goals.

 

     Both HCP's and recovery plans may have to occasionally be updated and revised in light of new scientific information or the results of plan monitoring. Current law is vague on how to go about amending an HCP in light of new data -- including data that indicate that the HCP itself is failing.  There should be a periodic review process, either automatically every 5 years or when triggered by new data indicating potential for further declines.  During that review process, existing recovery plans should be kept in full force, but the Secretary should propose modifications to the plan to conform with any new standards.  These proposed modifications should be widely published for public comment and adopted into the recovery plan only when they will promote equal or greater protection and faster recovery in a more cost effective manner.

 

     (4) Protection Should Be Aimed at Endangered Ecosystems, Not Just Individual Species, So That the Need for Future Listings Can Be Greatly Reduced B  A species-by-species approach does not generally work.  Multi-species plans for the protection of endangered ecosystems need to be developed so that those species which are part of such ecosystems do not begin the slide toward extinction to begin with.  The ESA needs to become an "endangered ecosystem" act as well.  Protection measures should be wholesale, not retail, in order to be cost effective.

 

     (5) Funding for Scientific Surveys and Recovery Efforts Should Be Greatly Improved B Generally the listing process is a good one, and it needs to be maintained as fundamentally a scientific decision making process, not a political or economic one.  Far from being missing from the ESA, economic factors come into play at almost every other decision making process, only the listing/delisting process supposedly being truly free of such considerations.  This makes sense: either a species is, or is not, headed for extinction.  How we get to recovery, however, has a clear economic and social dimension, but the scientific fact of population dynamics is an issue that can only be decided on a scientific basis.

 

     Nevertheless, the process would be better informed if there were more scientific data available earlier in the process on the particular species under consideration.  This requires better funding for such things a upfront biological surveys, species status reviews and peer reviews.  In other words, if Congress wants a better job done, it must properly fund the ESA and allow the agencies to do a better job. 

 

     Likewise there needs to be ongoing funding not only for the recovery plan implementation process itself, but for better scientific monitoring so that it is possible to tell whether recovery efforts are in fact succeeding.  Adaptive Management (i.e., learning from past mistakes) is simply not possible without adequately funded and ongoing scientific monitoring. 

 

     (6) Alternative Dispute Resolution for Property Owners  -- In our experience, and in spite of anecdotal media portrayals otherwise, there are really relatively few cases in which there are serious conflicts between the needs of ESA species and the rights of landowners.  However, there are rare instances in which property owners were unfairly treated or in which government agencies made inappropriate decisions.  This is inevitable in any large administrative process, and generally to sorts of disputes that courts are intended to resolve. 

 

     However, there should be a speedy and cost effective way to put these problems to rights.  Some internal dispute resolution mechanism would be very helpful for landowners to minimize unnecessary conflicts and resolve disputes.  Some of these mechanisms already exist but are rarely used.  There is, for instance, an existing Alternative Dispute Resolution process within the U.S. Court of Claims which allows aggrieved landowners to present their case to a Claims Court judge without needing a lawyer and without a lot of paperwork.  This process does not even require a trip to Washington, DC -- it can be done by fax and phone.  At a minimum, the ESA process ought to formally include this type of mechanism as a "safety value" to prevent problems from escalating out of control.

 

     (7) All Known Information about the Existence and Range of Threatened or Endangered Species Should Be Available to the Public from a Centralized Data Source -- The process of making a listing decision is (or should be) purely a scientific judgment call, based on the best scientific and commercial information available.  Though landowners frequently complain about the science, we believe the trustee agencies generally do a good job of gathering and using the best science.  Generally we find that when landowners complain about >junk science= what they are really saying is that the scientists either do not agree with their own biased viewpoints, or that the landowner does not fully understand the science behind the decision.  Also, for many rare species even the best available scientific data can be very spotty and full of data gaps, simply because the species has not been well studied.  It is generally only after a listing, and all the extra attention (and potential funding) that such a listing brings with it, that substantial scientific resources are brought to bear trying to study many of these species.

 

     However, we do not feel that the trustee agencies generally do as good a job of making the scientific data base used in the decision making process as fully available to the public as it should be.  In the past this was because the tools for wide dissemination of voluminous scientific reports and species surveys was seriously deficient and expensive.  In today=s increasingly digital world, there is no excuse for this.  Today, voluminous scientific documents can readily digitally scanned and converted to CD-ROM format and reproduced from that format for a few dollars a copy.  The data bases can also be made available for easy public consumption on the Internet.  All these techniques are being increasingly used by federal agencies, and this trend should be encouraged and funded.  The more data is freely and cheaply available to members of the public the more transparent the process will become and the more trust in the process itself the public will have, even if some disagree with the policy outcomes.

 

     Information depositories should be created (perhaps made available through the National Biological Service and administered through state agencies) so that prospective purchasers of property would be able to ascertain quickly and inexpensively whether or not ESA listed species are known to exist on the property they are considering purchasing.  Similar state-based information services are already available in states like California, through the local permit process.  In theory, it would be possible to have all this information in readily searchable form with a quick computer inquiry for a very minimal fee.  Some of this is being implemented now, as for instance the Ceres information system maintained by the State of California, or the Streamnet system run by the State of Oregon, both of which include extensive GIS databases available on the Internet.

 

     Most land use conflicts result when landowners have invested substantial money and resources in a development project and feel that they have no choice except to proceed in order to recoup their investment.  If a prospective landowner know before close of escrow whether or not there might be conflicts between development plans and fish and wildlife protection obligations, he or she could plan accordingly, propose mitigation measures with acceptance a condition of close of escrow, and in general take a number of  proactive steps to minimize or eliminate any potential future conflicts.  The more savvy real estate developers are doing that now.  Biological impact reviews of development plans by state fish and wildlife or local agencies is also now routinely done in many states as part of the permit process, and this additional data base would fit neatly into that process.

 

     (8) Citizen Enforcement Is Crucial B The Federal government cannot be, nor should it be, everywhere all the time.  The role and value of citizen enforcement of such statutes as the ESA and the Clean Water Act are well established.  We strongly object to recent attempts by the Bush Administration to eliminate well established court avenues for resolving ESA disputes or to make government compliance with such court orders essentially voluntary.  This is a recipe for lawless disregard by our own government for its own laws.  The end result will be far more litigation, and not less, including against the very agencies who become scofflaws as a result of such a policy.

 

     (9) From Beginning to End, the Whole ESA Process Has to be Better Funded by Congress B The total funding for all ESA research and recovery efforts now amounts to approximately 50 cents per US citizen per year.  Given the level of problems the ESA needs to address, and given the potential economic return on this investment, and especially given the economic dislocation that could potentially result for more of the >train wreck= policies of the past, Congress=s current levels of funding for species identification and recovery borders on the ridiculous.  50 cents per year is too little to invest in our biological future.

 

**********************

 

      In summary, I ask you to remember that fishing is America's oldest industry as well as one of its most economically important resources.  Protecting fish means protecting jobs, protecting food production, protecting commerce and protecting recreational opportunities.  Without a fully funded and operational ESA, it would be commercial and sport fishermen who will find themselves endangered.  Where the fish go, so go the billions of dollars they produce and the jobs and communities they support.  Thank you for this opportunity to testify.

 

 

                                                                                                                                         esa-5-01zg.wpd

 


[1] Economic figures from Our Living Oceans, Report on the Status of U.S. Living Marine Resources, 1992.  NOAA Tech. Mem., NMFS-F/SPO-2. National Marine Fisheries Service, NOAA, U.S. Dept. of Commerce, Washington, DC.  See also Analysis of the potential economic benefits from rebuilding U.S. fisheries (1992).  National Marine Fisheries Service, NOAA.

[2] From Fisheries, Wetlands and Jobs: The Value of Wetlands to America's Fisheries, a report by William M. Kier Associates (March, 1998) for the Campaign to Save California Wetlands, available on the Internet at:  http://www.cwn.org/docs/reports/kier/kiertitle.htm.  See also Maharj and Carpenter (1997), The 1996 Economic Impact of Sport Fishing in the United States, by the American Sportfishing Institute, Washington, DC.

[3] The $152 billion/year fishing industry is but one example of this principle.  Fully 40% of the known medically valuable pharmaceuticals, for instance, are derived from natural sources.  This represents an industrial economy also in the hundreds of billions of dollars worldwide, as well as many millions of lives saved.  Yet only about 1% of all the plant species now known have been adequately surveyed for their pharmaceutical value, and only a small fraction of all plant species have even been cataloged categorized.  Many will likely become extinct before that can be accomplished.  The booming biotechnology industry is also another example.  Their stock in trade is genes.  These genes, however, can only come from known natural sources -- even the simplest gene is millions of times too complex to synthesize in the laboratory by any known technology.  Unknown plant species may contain genes for disease resistance worth billions to a failing crop industry, or worth billions more for any of a number of other unknown and as yet undiscovered industrial processes.  Once extinct, however, the potential uses of the organism will never be known.  Every species driven to extinction gives us fewer economic options.

[4] The last remaining wild salmon runs in the eastern coast of the U.S. are in a handful of rivers New England.  These have recently been listed for protection under the ESA.  There are in fact more dams in New England than there are individual adult wild salmon returning to your rivers -- about 2,500 wild salmon still return to New England, while there are about 3,000 medium and small dams in the same area, many of them obsolete.  However, as we have recently seen by the example of the removal of Maine=s Edwards Dam, once these dams are removed, the fish runs can be restored.  PCFFA has recently spearheaded the removal of several dams in the California Central Valley with the same result B provide them decent habitat and the salmon will return.

[5] Both the impacts from upper watershed activities ( improper logging, overgrazing, road washouts, etc.) and the impacts from the hydropower turbines are largely avoidable. Many of these practices are obsolete and unnecessary, and profits in these industries will not greatly suffer from curtailing or mitigating these problems.  The externalized damage caused by these poor management practices is, in many cases, more of a harm to society (and to the very industry itself) than any conceivable short-term benefits.  As an industry ourselves, we are very sympathetic to the current plight of timber works (many of whom are also fishermen) -- however, it is clear that short-sighted logging, grazing and hydropower practices conducted without any regard to stream protection has been disastrous for our industry and for the economies of many coastal communities.  Most of the federal hydropower dams were built without downstream salmon passage, and some (such as the Grand Coulee Dam) without any upstream passage whatsoever.  Salmon are now totally extinct above Grand Coulee Dam, and this extinction was designed into the system.  The fishing industry is federally regulated on the basis of biological sustainability (Magnuson Act).  It is time that these other industries were as well.  The current dislocations in these industries are fundamentally caused by past unrestricted overuse of their resource which now has to be balanced out and made more sustainable.  The historical rate of timber harvesting over the last few decades has been many times what is biologically sustainable without doing major environmental damage to other industries.  The fundamental problem with the timber supply is that after decades of overcutting old growth timber, the timber industry is simply out of big trees.

[6] Nehlsen, et. al., 1991.   "Pacific Salmon at the Crossroads: Stocks at Risk from California, Oregon, Idaho, and California,"  Fisheries 16:2(4-21).

[7] From GIS survey maps prepared by scientists on contract to The Wilderness Society, and published in The Wilderness Society's report The Living Landscape: Pacific Salmon and Federal Lands (Volume 2).  Published by the Bolle Center for Forest Ecosystem Management (October 1993).  The report and data were peer reviewed.

[8]  The one exception was pink salmon, which now only occurs in the extreme upper portion of the Puget Sound area in limited populations.  These are also (incidentally) the areas least affected by development since much of that area is in Olympic National Park -- emphasizing the direct correlation between salmon production and intact watershed ecosystems.

[9] Figures taken from The Economic Imperative of Protecting Riverine Habitat in the Pacific Northwest (Report 5, January 1992) published by the Pacific Rivers Council, based on official federal statistics from the Pacific Fishery Management Council.  The fishery related job breakdown by state, according to that report, was:

 

         State

 

Commercial

 

 Recreational

 

   Total

 

Oregon

 

    4,450

 

     9,500

 

  13,950

 

Washington

 

    6,800

 

   14,250

 

  21,050

 

N. California

 

    4,000

 

   19,000

 

  23,000

 

Idaho

 

Negligible

 

     4,750

 

    4,750

 

Pacific Northwest           Total

 

  15,250

 

   47,500

 

  62,750

 

Commercial fishery jobs are heavily concentrated in coastal areas.  Recreational fishery jobs, while a larger number, are more diverse and are distributed more diffusely throughout  inland communities.

[10] From a report titled The Costs of Doing Nothing: The Economic Burden of Salmon Declines in the Columbia River Basin.  Institute for Fisheries Resources (October, 1996), based on figures from peer reviewed reports by the Northwest Power Planning Council.  Completion of the last main-stem federal hydropower dams was in the late '70's, and none were built with adequate fish passage.  That study concluded that salmon losses in the Columbia Basin to date have amounted to the removal from the regional economy of between 13,000 and 25,000 jobs annually at a cost to the economy of between $250 to 505 million dollars annually, which translates to the loss of natural capital assets conservatively estimated as up to $13 billion.

[11] Northwest Power Planning Council publication Strategy for Salmon, Vol 2, page 17 and Appendices D & E.

[12] Facts on wetland losses by state from a report by the US Dept. of Interior entitled Wetland Losses in the United States 1780's to 1980's by Thomas Dahl.  California has lost a higher percentage of its wetlands than any other state.  If only coastal or estuarine wetlands is included in these figures, each state's wetlands losses would be much greater.

[13] Dr. Chris Frissell, who did much of the GIS mapping for The Wilderness Society report cited above, took an independent look at whether harvest reductions were a significant factor in population dynamics for coho salmon.  If overfishing were a significant cause of population declines, then harvest reductions should be effective in rebuilding depleted stocks.  He concluded in his analysis as follows:

 

               "Overfishing is often cited as a principle factor causing decline of salmon runs.  However, there are few historical or recent records to indicate that curtailment of fishing has lead to increased spawning abundance of coho salmon. For example, curtailment of fishing seasons has been thought to have reduced harvest-related mortality rates on Oregon coastal coho substantially during the past decade.  However, there has been no evidence of increased spawner escapement during this period, suggesting that fishing curtailment is at best merely keeping pace with rapid habitat deterioration and declining productivity of coho populations."

 

(Pacific Rivers Council petition for the coastwide listing of coho salmon, dated 10/19/93).

[14] Figures from Dr. Hans Radtke, Ph.D., fisheries resource economist.

[15]      There is also a cascading effect of these salmon declines which impact Alaska=s economy as well.  Fishing is the leading industry in Alaska, greatly exceeding timber production as a source of economic support for its communities.  Much of that fishing industry is now threatened because of international disputes with Canada over the collapse of the Pacific Salmon Treaty (PST).  That treaty collapsed a few years ago primarily because of salmon losses in the lower 48 states (particularly the losses from the Columbia).  Oregon and Washington salmon tend to migrate north toward colder water.  Under the PST as presently written, Canadian-origin fish caught in Alaskan waters are supposed to be replaced by U.S.-origin fish swimming north into Canadian waters from the lower 48. However due to widespread salmon declines in the lower 48 states those replacement fish are much fewer in number than the fish Canada is losing to the Alaskan fleet.  Thus the Canadians have demanded cutbacks in the Alaskan catch to balance out their own losses.  The Canadians are quite capable of enforcing these cutbacks through mandatory transit fees (already imposed for a short time last year) or even gunboat boardings on the high seas (as in the east coast=s ATurbot War@ between Canada and the European Union just a few years ago).  To date the only thing that has driven salmon recovery efforts in the lower 48 is the threat or reality of ESA listings.  Without a strong ESA-driven recovery of these depleted lower 48 stocks there is no hope of Alaska long avoiding another Afish war@ with Canada with no end in sight.  Were the ESA itself to disappear, this international problem would still force shutdowns of much of the salmon harvest in Alaska within the next few years.  These shutdowns would be required not by the laws of Congress but by the laws of nature.

[16] American Fisheries Society, AStatus of Freshwater Fishes of the United States: Overview of an Imperiled Fauna.@  Fisheries, Vol. 19, No. 1 (January, 1994).

[17] Figures from Marine Fishery Habitat Protection - A Report to the US Congress and the Secretary of Commerce (March 1, 1994), copublished by the Institute for Fisheries Resources, East Coast Fisheries Foundation and PCFFA, with extensive citations.  Copy available from PCFFA upon request.

[18]  Nowhere in the nation is the link between inland environmental protection and fish production more obvious than in the Gulf states, where National Marine Fisheries Service scientists estimate that 98% of the Gulf commercial seafood harvest comes from inshore, wetlands dependent fish and shellfish.  Louisiana's marshes alone produce an annual commercial fish and shellfish harvest of 1.2 billion pounds worth $244 million in 1991.   Gulf shrimp clearly head the list of the region's wetlands dependent species.  Without strong wetlands protection this extremely valuable commercial fishing industry resource would eventually no longer exist in those states.  The shrimp industry is learning to cope with TED=s and other devices to minimize unwanted bycatch problems.  A far greater threat to that industry comes from estuary and wetlands habitat loss.  The ESA is a tool which (in the last resort) can be used to halt and reverse these losses and protect that industry.

[19] Only recently has this begun to change, with the >Essential Fish Habitat= provisions of the Magnuson-Stevens Sustainable Fisheries Act, but this authority is still only a weak consultation process that allows fisheries management councils merely to comment on proposed federal actions that would destroy fisheries habitat, not to stop them.  There is no enforcement authority in these provisions.

[20] Stephen M. Moyer (March 1995).  Endangered Species Listings and State Economic Performance.  Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Project on Environmental Politics and Policy.  Facts on actions cited from US General Accounting Office (1992) Endangered Species Act: Types and Numbers of Implementing Actions (GAO/RECD-92-131BR).