Endangered species

The Miami Herald

The revisions to the 32-year-old Endangered Species Act approved by the House of Representatives by a 229 to 193 vote last week were a sellout of the very creatures the law is supposed to protect.

If the Senate were to go along with this bill, it would reverse three decades of progressive actions that have restored American bald eagles and condors; and Florida panthers, manatees and Key deer, to name just a few.

The most successful tool for rescuing and restoring healthy populations of endangered species is to preserve their habitat. Yet the House bill would eliminate the current system of designating critical habitat that is determined to be crucial to an animal species' survival.

The House bill also takes aim at science. Currently, the Act's rules call for using "the best available science" and relying on scientists to determine these criteria when deciding if a species is endangered and how to protect it. The House voted instead to give the secretary of the Interior Department, a political appointee, the power to define what scientific evidence can or can't be used to determine species protection.

Fortunately, there is precedent for the Senate to follow if it is to save the Act from this irresponsible revision. In 1978, in reaction to a Supreme Court decision that stopped construction of a dam to protect the snail darter, an endangered fish, the House passed a bill that virtually crippled the Endangered Species Act. The Senate, acknowledging that some complaints were valid, made wise revisions to the law but spurned the House's extreme measures. The Senate must again come to the rescue of the Act, and the many creatures that the law can save.