Habitat conservation policies get a makeover

A special permit must be obtained from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service by private property owners, corporations and state or local governments whose actions might result in the "incidental take of a listed species."

June 6, 2000
Web posted at: 10:59 a.m. EDT (1459 GMT)

By Environmental News Network staff

Under fire from the environmental community, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service on Thursday issued a five-point policy to put more teeth into habitat conservation plans across the country.

Aimed at marrying economic development and species protection, habitatat conservation plans, or HCPs, are a stamp of Clinton's environmental policy. Until Clinton was elected in 1992, only 14 HCPs had been enacted. Now 270 plans cover more than 20 million acres of land in the United States.

But conservationists have long claimed that HCPs still allow landowners to drive to extinction endangered species that inhabit private property.

"The Clinton administration has been handing out these exemptions, known as incidental-take permits, like there's no tomorrow," said Daniel Hall, director of the forest Biodiversity Program for the American Lands Alliance. "Unfortunately, there may not be a tomorrow for many of the affected species."

Congress authorized the HCP process when it amended the Endangered Species Act in 1982.

The plans are essentially legal contracts between the government and landowners to allow the killing or disturbing of endangered species in exchange for negotiated levels of mitigation.

Previously, the Endangered Species Act did not permit such takes of endangered species on non-federal land under any circumstances. Under the 1982 amendment, takes are permitted as long as they are not likely to jeopardize the existence of the species.

"The goal of habitat conservation plans is to avoid the take (of endangered species) as much as possible, and then to minimize what take is occurring," said Rick Sayers a biologist for the Endangered Species Division of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. "For what take is not avoidable, HCPs require that the effects of the take be mitigated."

While the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service maintains that HCPs can be a net benefit to the species, critics contend that they allow continued decline as long as no individual project will result in extinction.

Endangered species, such as spotted owls, are losing more and more habitat.

The new HCP policy, an addendum to the current handbook, provides additional guidance in five areas: establishment of biological goals and objectives, adaptive management, monitoring, public participation and duration of incidental-take permits granted as part of the HCP process.

But conservation groups argue that the "guidance" provided in the HCP handbook is not mandatory and that the Clinton administration's five-point plan does little more than create the appearance of reform.

"There have been no changes to the draft five-point plan that was issued last year," said Trisha White, a spokesperson for Defenders of Wildlife who has worked on improving HCPs. "(They) are simply guidelines. We would like to see these guidelines fortified with legal language."

"The plan fails to provide bottom line standards for biological goals, adaptive management, monitoring, and permit duration," Hall said.

A data base of all HCPs approved in 1999 shows only 13 percent of the plans include an explicit statement on biological goals. Only 20 percent of the HCPs include adaptive management strategies and just 21 percent include monitoring plans.

Hall noted a January 1999 study by the American Institute of Biological Sciences and the National Center for Ecological Analysis which found that 30 percent of HCPs allow 100 percent of endangered species populations in a permit area to be eliminated.

The report concludes that too often data on species is incomplete or missing; assessments of impact to species are inadequate; and plans often rely on unproven management prescriptions.

According to Hall, most forest HCPs in the Pacific Northwest and California "allow substantial loss of habitat for species that depend on older forests."

An HCP granted to the Plum Creek Timber Company in 1996 which permits widespread clear-cutting in the Cascade Mountains, allows the take of 50 pairs of northern spotted owls, grizzly bears, Canada lynx and dozens of other fish, plant and wildlife species, he said.

Such evidence, the American Lands Alliance maintains, makes a compelling case for a major revision of the HCP program.

"The HCP program has been flawed from the beginning until the end," said Keiren Suckling, science and policy director for the Center for Biological Diversity. "This is the second time government agencies have made cosmetic changes to HCPs in a transparent attempt to convince (the environmental community) that they are making an effort."

Conservationists are particularly concerned with the administration's "no surprises" policy, which often exempts landowners from future conservation obligations once an HCP is approved.

'By definition, nature is full of surprises," Suckling said. "To have a law that is based on no surprises is wildly out of sync with nature. The policy flatly contradicts the Endangered Species Act because it locks in current land management, regardless of what future scientific research will reveal. But the act says all decisions must be based on the best scientific research, and that research will change over time."

Copyright 1999, Environmental News Network, All Rights Reserved

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Endangered Species Act
Center for Biological Diversity
The National Wildlife Habitat Evaluation Project
Fish and Wildlife Service
   •Habitat Conservation Plans
American Lands Alliance
   •Habitat Conservation Plans
The January 1999 Study on HCPs

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