But, are these examples the exception or the rule? When it comes to science and the Endangered Species Act, unfortunately, they are exceptions. Most of the recovery plans for our listed species lack even the most spare description of the mechanics by which endangered and threatened species perpetuate themselves. By and large, we know vanishingly little about our species at risk and how realistically we might attempt to save them. While that state of affairs is lamentable, it is not unexpected, since after all academic scientists are just now developing the tools necessary to better understand the demography and metapopulation dynamics of species, and to predict with some accuracy their likely fates. Pertinent to this hearing is another suite of species which we may have lost the opportunity to save.
Many species are on insidious or precipitous declines because the agencies empowered to save them have not used available knowledge and, frankly, common sense, to engineer conservation responses to clear and present dangers. The unfortunate Houston toad provides a poignant example. One of the earliest species listed under the 1973 Act, it has continued its unbroken tumble toward disappearance for two and a half decades. A flawed hypothesis about the habitat factors that support the species, a lack of responsive studies in the face of obvious declines, and poorly designed monitoring schemes have combined with land development to push the listed species toward extinction. The Houston toad, it appears, will be lost. Application of science well might have saved it.
The diminutive quino checkerspot butterfly offers a similar and accelerated story. Back when the Houston toad was being conferred protection under the Act, the checkerspot may have been the most abundant butterfly in coastal Southern California. Within a decade development, drought, and exotic plant invasions appeared to have eliminated the species entirely. I petitioned the Fish and Wildlife Service to list the species in 1988; but rather than respond with simple surveys to confirm the butterfly's fate, the agency failed to act. When amateur lepidopterists rediscovered the butterfly six years later, a moratorium on new listings was on. Fully nine years elapsed between petition and listing, and eleven years to a first recovery team meetings. The quino checkerspot butterfly now survives in less than 1% of its former range and is likely doomed. Any science at this point may be too late to save the butterfly.
Against this background we assess science and Habitat Conservation Plans. My guess is that my conclusion that we need more and better science to produce more effective, efficient, and accountable HCPs is shared by my academic colleagues. Where I may part view with some of them, and certainly with many environmental organizations, is on how much more science is necessary and how it can be achieved. I think we can create much better HCPs with not much more science. The technical information necessary to reduce the uncertainties associated with our conservation prescriptions does not need to break the bank. But, the gathering of that information must be focused, strategically directed, and creatively engineered and exercised.
Conservation scientists must remember that HCPs support incidental take permits issued by the resource agencies, they do not call for broad research agendas of the sort supported by the National Science Foundation.
We in the academic scientific community have failed to deliver the realistic, the parsimonious science that is necessary to inform HCPs. The Departments of the Interior and Commerce, in their own turn, have failed to sold such a science, responding in their HCP guidelines that cookbook guidance is not possible since the biological analyses demanded of each HCP for each listed species is unique and cannot be codified. I like that idea--that the work in my field is so special that only a specialist can do it. But that assessment just is not true. Stephen's kangaroo rats, Tecopa pupfish, and indigo snakes share a multitude of biological characteristics that allow for a common theme to their conservation. A problem-solving template based on that premise and using good science to craft reasonable conservation plans is doable and overdue.
Just as soon as we are released from an artificial and utterly unrealistic view of how much novel scientific information is necessary to inform HCPs, we can begin to develop the exportable toolbox of scientific techniques that are necessary to assist our best conservation intentions. We first need to remind ourselves that science in HCPs is not science in a traditional sense at all. In HCPs, we rarely use hypothetico-deductive reasoning and experimental data to differentiate among alternative explanations about how an HCP could or should work. Instead, we normally use the sparest of data, often gathered in uncontrolled circumstances, and subject it to our best professional judgment. Scientific rigor in HCPs is not typically de regueur. And that's alright for the many HCPs of limited spatial extent, and for HCPs with limited impact. When HCP impacts to species are limited, a rigorous science often is unnecessary.
Tougher, of course, is planning where multiple imperiled species distributed across extensive landscapes run head on into economic immediacy--Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt's environmental and economic trainwrecks. In these circumstances, we need the very most creative engagement of available scientific information. We must focus on landscape-level and ecosystem processes; we must draw strong inferences from basic principles--for instance, that bigger, well-linked, and appropriately managed reserves are better than the options, we must use inferential data from disparate sources, from other species and other locations, we must develop management plans that can ameliorate the inevitable mistakes we will make in upfront planning; and we must share the lessons learned from the two hundred HCPs already in action. Little of that is being done today. All of that can be conveyed explicitly in regulations and guidelines, and should be.
I recommend that the National Academy of Sciences cooperate with the Departments of the Interior and Commerce to develop science guidelines for conserving multiple species and natural communities on lands both public and private. Those guidelines must recognize that HCPs have timetables driven by political and economic realities. Those guidelines must recognize that indicator or surrogate species must be identified which might allow simple insights from complex natural systems. And, any near guidelines must allow habitat conservation planners to learn by doing, to manage adaptively using the best current information.
We cannot hold up our HCPs waiting for all the answers to our pressing technical questions the courts may not let us. We can, however, engineer our plans to take advantage of emerging information and scientific breakthroughs. I support adaptive management, even though I am a fan of this administration's '`no surprises" policy (which many contend conflicts with adaptive management). Incorporating both adaptive management principles and "no surprises" assurances in to the language of a reauthorization bill should be a bipartisan goal of this committee.
Parties that bargain in good faith, under Section 10(a) of the Act, should not be held economically responsible when nature proves to be more complicated than we could have expected. We, all of us, share in the benefits from our national heritage when it
is conserved and well managed. The costs of those benefits should be similarly shared. Once prime habitat for the California gnatcatcher is now under the Fish and Wildlife Service parking lot in Carlsbad, California. Yet we expect that nearly all of the burden of conserving that threatened species should fall on the shoulders of neighboring landowners who wish for economic development of their own properties Clearly, science alone cannot solve that dilemma.
I do not suggest that we must pay the private sector to obey the law, but an infusion of federal dollars will inevitably be necessary when reasonable exactions of habitat from private landowners fall short of providing for the needs of species, or when unforeseen circumstances put imperiled species at unexpected additional risks HCPs usually are the results of a crafted deal. They allow a public concerned about threatened and endangered species to take private property without compensating landowners. Lubricating that process with strategically directed dollars will be good for species, good for landowners, and good for the rest of us.
I contend that our habitat conservation plans are not as poorly informed as many environmentally concerned citizens and organizations portray them. I also contend that the costs of making HCPs significantly better informed may not be as great as is feared by many others. Nonetheless, the tension between Fifth Amendment guarantees to landowners, and the statutory authority to conserve species on private land, is not likely to be remedied by a better application of science alone. You all know that very well, indeed.