Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne and
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Dale Hall
Discuss Proposed Narrow Modifications
to Endangered Species Act Regulations
August 11, 2008 Media Teleconference
Secretary Kempthorne:
Good afternoon everybody, I appreciate you joining me. Some of you might recall that in May of this year when we announced our decision to list the Polar Bear as threatened under the Endangered Species Act I said that I would take action to make sure that we implement the act more efficiently and avoid misusing it to regulate global climate change.
To that end, today I’m announcing a narrow proposal that will provide clarity and certainty to the consultation process under the Endangered Species Act.
The last time that these regulations were changed in a meaningful way was 1986. Ronald Reagan was President, the New York Mets won the World Series, and gas was under a dollar a gallon. Since then the Fish and Wildlife Service has gained a great deal of experience managing endangered species and the Courts provided extensive guidance concerning the consultation process.
What we’re doing today brings this portion of the ESA regulations into the 21st Century. This update is a reflection of current practices. Since 2003 Fish and Wildlife Service has been working with other federal agencies to make sure that consultations are focused on affects that are reasonably certain to occur and where the federal action under consideration are essential to the affects under consideration.
The concepts in the proposed regulations mirror these practices. Our intent is to reduce the number of unnecessary consultations under the ESA. We need to focus our efforts where they will do the most good. It’s important to use our time and resources to protect the most vulnerable species. It is not an efficient use of limited resources to review proposed federal agency actions in which take of a listed species is not anticipated nor is it effective to undertake consultation when the potential effects to a species are unlikely, incapable of being meaningfully evaluated, wholly beneficial or pose only a remote risk of causing jeopardy or destruction of critical habitat.
These suggested changes exclude from consultation those agency actions where adverse impacts to listed species are not anticipated. These regulations are consistent with the services current understanding that it is not possible to draw a link between greenhouse gas emissions and distant observations of impact affecting species.
The Bush Administration has acknowledged climate change as a serious problem, but has stressed that the proper forums to address it are through the Congress and the Bali Action Plan. That plan was approved at the 13th Conference of the parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in December 2007.
The US strongly supports the identification of a long-term global goal for emission reduction to inspire actions at all levels. Since 2001 the US has invested more than $45 billion to research, develop and promote clean and efficient energy technology. These changes that we’re proposing are supported by the US Fish and Wildlife Service Director Dale Hall who has worked closely with our Solicitor David Bernhardt and I would ask Dale for his comments at this time.
Director Hall:
Thank you Secretary. As many of you probably understand, as we went through the polar bear analysis and tried to understand all the different nuances associated with it, many of the discussions centered around a lack of interpretation of some of the terms of the law, some confusion about them and also some of the requirements to do consultations where we in the service really knew that it was unnecessary but required by regulation. Examples include where we’re trying to do positive things for a species or where the species will not really be impacted by having any take associated with it. And yet we still have to go through the process.
So the Secretary asked our legal staff to look into it and help us all understand better what those terms are and how we could work better to have more efficiency, have more clarity about those regulations and more consistency.
We need to have the ability to put our efforts where they’re needed. And there are consultations that take place on a daily basis across the country where we have to expend staff and our energies on actions that we know don’t have a negative effect on the species, but under the current regulations that agency is vulnerable if we don’t complete a consultation.
I believe that this is a very good effort to try and help clarify those terms and I think our legal staff has done a very good job of trying to understand our needs and trying to focus where we need to focus and also in trying to bring those three very important things, efficiency, clarity and consistency.