April 21, 1995 populations within a state or an ecosystem when the criteria have been met that are presented in a recovery plan or conservation agreement or have been established otherwise by the Secretary in conjunction with the affected state. Down and delisting actions should not be subject to the current process required for listing, delisting and changes in status of a species. 2. Delisting or down listing of a recovered populations should be encouraged if a listed distinct vertebrate population has reached recovery plan goals but another distinct vertebrate population has not. III. INCREASE CERTAINTY AND ASSISTANCE The policy in the Act concerning private and other non federal landowners (owners of real property) should be as follows: The Secretary will thoroughly assess the economic consequences of each implementation step of the Act -- recovery plans, federal agency consultations, HCP's/Conservation Management Agreements (CMA's), etc. The benefits of the ESA are national in scope and the Secretary will explore ways in which those costs will be borne by the society as a whole and not solely by the individual landowner, non federal landowners and federal land users. Incentives and regulatory certainty should be provided to landowners who implement habitat or species conservation efforts. A. Policy Issues' 1. All affected jurisdictional agencies and parties, including non federal landowners, should be given an opportunity through the recovery planning, HCP and critical habitat designation processes to have their concerns, interests and ability to contribute to the success of these processes considered and given close attention in the final plan. 2. Implementation of the Act, in some cases, has created significant economic impacts. Federal assistance should be used to mitigate these economic impacts whenever possible. Priority should be given to those means of promoting the recovery of species that also would assist in reducing social or economic impacts. B. Landowner Assistance * The protection of water in the west is an enormous issue for all the governors. Many governors believe that state water law and interstate compacts must be respected while designing recovery goals and actions. Other governors disagree. They recognize that state water laws may not adequately have considered endangered species and see the need for an overriding level of protection of the public's fish and wildlife resources. April 21, 1995 1. Financial and technical assistance should be provided to states, counties, tribes and municipalities to foster development of flexible conservation plans that allow for reasonable development and use of private property (including water rights). Development and use should be consistent with the conservation plan and should not significantly impact listed species. 2. Incentives should be provided to non-federal landowners to assist in the recovery of listed species and the conservation of candidate species as well as technical and financial support for such activities. Linkage to the conservation provisions of other Acts, such as Conservation Reserve Program(CRP) and Wetlands Reserve Program (WRP) sections of the farm bill, should be enhanced. 3. The Secretary and appropriate state agencies should be specifically authorized to enter into voluntary prelisting agreements and expedited HCP's with cooperating landowners and water users to provide assurances that further conservation measures would not be required of the landowners should a species subsequently be listed. Landowners and water users who have satisfactorily demonstrated that they will protect candidate species or the significant habitat types within the area covered by a prelisting agreement or HCP should be assured that they will not be subjected to additional obligations to protect species if the candidate species or additional specific species not covered by the agreement but dependent upon the same protected habitat type are subsequently listed under the ESA. 4. The federal agencies should develop and employ an inexpensive, expedited HCP process. This expedited HCP process should include a simplified NEPA review process. C. Relief for Landowners and Water Users 1. The responsible state and federal agencies should be authorized to initiate procedures in the recovery planning process whereby landowners and water users whose impacts on a species are insignificant should receive for categorical protection from Section 9's taking provisions and section 7 jeopardy opinions. Those landowners and water users who do not receive categorical exclusion but have demonstrated adequate protection measures to maintain or preserve species or habitat should be eligible for programs developed by the Secretary for incentives to encourage those efforts, including regulatory relief and certainty (through expedited HCP's, etc.) and other means by which the land and water uses proposed by that landowner are allowed to proceed. Should the landowner or water user significantly alter land or water use practices then the relief or exemption can be reconsidered. 2. Regulatory incentives should be provided to landowners who voluntarily agree to manage or enhance habitat for species on their lands by excluding them from restrictions if they later need to bring their land back to its previous condition. D. Non Federal Landowner and Water User Incentives April 21, 1995 Incentive programs for land and habitat stewardship already exist at many jurisdictional levels (federal, state, local). Resource managers need, however, to more effectively match landowners who willingly enhance the habitat for listed species with workable financial incentives programs. Existing programs include but are certainly not limited to: conservation/soil and water quality provisions of the federal Farm Bill (CRP, WRP, Forest Stewardship Incentives Program, etc.); state and local land preservation programs, including associated tax relief, environmental easements administered by government, private or quasi public land trusts; and existing tax credits/incentives such as Minnesota's wetland and prairie tax credit. Cooperation with non-federal land owners and water users is essential to the success of the Act, therefore, early involvement of and regulatory certainty for landowners and water users must be a policy of the Act. The identification of the full range of incentives programs that might be available to assist landowners and water users in good habitat stewardship should be developed. The stewardship incentives found in other federal programs like the Conservation Reserve Program, in laws governing inheritance taxes and in non-government programs should be catalogued, enhanced and coordinated. Additional areas that deserve further investigation include: 1. Inheritance laws -- A revision of the existing laws to discourage the practice of dividing up large ranches/farms to avoid inheritance taxes and thereby fragmenting the habitat. 2. Mitigation credits, trading/mitigation banking -- This idea must be debated more thoroughly to ensure appropriate use and application but it could have limited application in conserving ESA habitats. 3. Federal cost sharing for specific habitat management, restoration and protection, and species recovery work -- This would have to be authorized under a program similar to the forest stewardship. 4. Incentives under other federal laws -- Incentives to public land ranchers under the Taylor Grazing Act might include reduced grazing fees for conservation of a species habitat, priority for range improvement funds to improve a species habitat, extended permit tenure, etc. TESTIMONY BEFORE SUBCOMMITTEE ON DRINKING WATER, FISHERIES AND WILDLIFE OF SENATE ENVIRONMENT & PUBLIC WORKS: ENDANGERED SPECIES ACT by DICK KNOX (R-WINIFRED, MT.) & EMILY SWANSON (D-BOZEMAN, MT.) Mister Chairman, members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify on behalf of the Montana Endangered Species Reauthorization Committee. We are Representative Dick Knox and Representative Emily Swanson, Montana state legislators who for the past eighteen months have co-chaired a committee to find common ground among a wide variety of Montana citizens about how to reform the Endangered Species Act. Dick Knox, a Republican state legislator, ranches with his sons outside Winifred, Montana, in a remote part of the state. Emily Swanson is a Democratic state legislator from a university town, and is a long-time conservationist. Although the two of us vote quite differently on many issues, we respect one another's willingness to find where we can agree on contentious problems. Early in 1994, Representative Knox and Representative Swanson, in response to Congressional activity on the ESA, and with the urging of Senator Baucus, agreed to convene a group of Montanans from all points of view, evenly balanced, to discuss and find where we could agree on necessary changes to the act. We each invited nine people from our side of the issue. We wanted Montanans who represented both sides of the political aisle and who represented economic interests as well as environmental interests. Ranching, farming, timber, mining, wilderness, wildlife and recreation were all represented. We weren't experts or paid staff, just Montanans who live on the land and who have a willingness to accomodate one another's interests and seek agreement, Montanans who want to see the ESA work. Each member of the committee participated on their own time and at their own expense, not representing an organization. The committee included both legislators and citizens, and worked with technical advice from public, private and non-profit experts. With facilitation by the Montana Consensus Council, over eighteen months we came to agreement on a set of guiding principles we think should continue to be incorporated in the act, and a set of suggested improvements which are quite general but give us a framework within which to respond to various pieces of proposed legislation. We believe strongly that our process, based on bringing all parties to a table and seeking consensus, is the best way to find workable solutions to complex and controversial problems. We produced a status report of our work in preparation for responding to legislation proposed by this Congress. The status report is submitted as part of our testimony. Most basically, our committee supports the findings, purposes and policy of the ESA as outlined in Section 2. The intent of the act, keeping species from extinction, is worthwhile. Yet we recognize that the ESA can be improved. There are significant areas of the act which don't work well on the ground. Two areas we quickly agreed on for reform were: the level of state involvement, and the delisting criteria and process. We agreed that more local control over implementation of the act would help, and that delisting needs clearer definition so it can take place for more species and provide a degree of certainty to the act that is now missing. For the purposes of this testimony, we limit our comments to those pertinant to state involvement. We agreed on several recommendations around state involvement. Our recommendations are based on the need to build sound relationships with landowners whose land has habitat critical to threatened or endangered species. With so many species residing on private land, and with listing of a species potentially so restrictive, landowners are fearful of government intrusion. Due to staffing constraints. there are few federal agents on the ground working one-on-one with landowners. We felt that state wildlife agencies, which characteristically have more field staff, have a chance of better personal relationships with local landowners. In Montana, state fish and game field staff frequently have personal relationships and deep personal knowledge of the wildlife, the land and the people living on it. Better on the ground information is available to field staff close to the landowners. We felt, therefore, that states should have: opportunities to provide more meaningful input on listing or delisting determinations opportunities to provide more meaningful input on designating critical habitat greater opportunity to assume the lead, in cooperation with other appropriate entities, in developing and implementing recovery plans. adequate federal funding to assist states in implementing ESA priorities States have great potential for making the act work more efficiently and effectively. Over the long term, it is vital that we turn the act from crisis management to preventive management with more local control. We urge you to adopt legislation which includes these measures. Further, we urge you to proceed toward resolution of these complex issues using as much as possible a process that includes diverse |