House Will Vote on GOOD BILL to Improve the E.S.A.

THIS Wednesday, June 26, votes will be taken in the House of Representatives Resources Committee on a GOOD BILL to improve the Endangered Species Act!!!

Bill number HR 4840 requires "sound science" - solid, valid, legitimate scientific data - to place a species on the endangered species list. This may sound like common sense to most of us. But the leftwing environmentalists are in a tizzy over this bill - they can't stand the idea of actually having their incomplete and fraudulent scientific data reviewed before a species can be claimed as endangered.

HR 4840 was put together by a longtime property rights Champion, Representative Richard Pombo, who is Chairman of the Western Caucus. He is joined in this effort by Representative Greg Walden, who represents the Klamath Falls area in Oregon, and has seen first hand the scams perpetrated using the Endangered Species Act.

Pombo and Walden are proposing many excellent improvements to the ESA, specifically improvements to the process of listing species. They include, quoting directly from HR 4840:

1) Using field tested data. To determine whether a species should be listed, the government "shall give greater weight to any scientific or commercial study or other information that has been field-tested or peer-reviewed."

2) Including background information on species. Petitions to list a species must include the species "current known and historic ranges," "population estimates and trends," and a demonstration that alleged decline in a species is "beyond the normal fluctuations for the species."

3) Inviting data from all sources, including property owners. The government is required to "acknowledge receipt of data regarding the status of a species that collected by an owner of land."

4) Independent scientific review. The bill establishes independent review boards, and has them "review the adequacy of any scientific methodology used" to list a species.

5) Public Access Information received proposing the listing of a species "shall be made available to the public."

Sounds like common sense, right? To you and me maybe. But the greenies are VERY UPSET that their endangered species listing scam - no science, ignore competing data, done in secret - may be overturned and exposed to the light of day! They oppose the Pombo-Walden bill.

FIRST, THANK our Champions - Representatives Richard Pombo and Greg Walden for proposing common sense improvements to the ESA, and for being willing to do battle with the eco-extremists who want to use the ESA to lock up land.

Rpombo @ mail.house.gov is Richard Pombo's address. Greg.walden @mail.house.gov is Greg Walden's address.

SECOND, CONTACT ALL members of the House Resources Committee and tell them to vote YES for HR 4840.

RESOURCES COMMITTEE LIST WITH FAX NUMBERS AND E-MAIL ADDRESSES -- 107th -- Congress (In State Order) (Save this list)

Elton Gallegly (R-CA)-FAX: (202) 225-1100 -- Go to website: www.house.gov/gallegly/

George Radanovich (R-CA)---FAX: (202) 225-3402 Go to website: www.house.gov/radanovich/

Scott McInnis (R-CO)---FAX: (202) 226-0622 Go to website: www.house.gov/mcinnis/

Wayne Gilchrest (R-MD)---FAX: (202) 225-0254 Go to website: www.house.gov/gilchrest/

Thomas Osborne (R-NE)---FAX: (202) 226 1385 Go to website: www.house.gov/osborne/

John Peterson (R-PA)---FAX: (202) 225 5796 Go to website: www.house.gov/johnpeterson/

James Hansen (R-UT) Chairman--FAX: (202) 225-5857 Go to website: www.house.gov/hansen/

William Thornberry (R-TX)---FAX: (202) 225 3486 Go to website: www.house.gov/thornberry/

American Land Rights Association - Land Rights Network PO Box 400 - Battle Ground WA 98604 Phone: 360-687-3087 - Fax: 360-687-2973 - Email: - http://www.landrights.org Legislative Office: 508 First St SE - Washington DC 20003 Phone: 202-210-2357 - Fax: 202-543-7126 - Email: landrightsnet@aol.com

1. Using field tested data. To determine whether a species should be listed, the government "shall give greater weight to any scientific or commercial study or other information that has been field-tested or peer-reviewed."

How many property owners can afford “field testing” their data? The big corporations love this sort of thing because they can afford the personnel, fudge the data, and purchase the buyoff through graft. There is no motive for them not to cheat. This kind of measure kills their smaller competition.

Is “field testing” really the best method? There are plenty of other criteria that work, such as various forms of process validation and audit, that can yield more reliable information at lower cost. Further, the “greater weight” implies a hierarchy of the peerage that is, itself, suspect. The assumption is that the academic credentials of the reviewers render them infallible over the audited information of property owners or even other experts.

The motives of the academic peer are suspect. First, almost ALL of their income is derived from government or foundation grants. Those are precisely the people with the most to gain from listing species. Second, as long as there is government oversight, the professorate can look forward to years of grant money to “study the problem.” Meanwhile the property owner is dying. The academic peerage has no accountability for an errant listing, indeed, there is naught but career opportunity. I am going to quote myself, again, because my book deals with this directly (yes Pombo has it; no he hasn’t read it).

Technical decisions are seldom completely deterministic, made instead among countervailing properties that must be weighed. The more complex is the system under consideration, the more likely it is that a large number of technical disciplines apply. Few subjects are more complex, or more interdisciplinary than human interaction with nature on a real project. There are no experts who possess the intellect and experience necessary to weigh ALL practical, technical, and ecological considerations that apply to any situation or circumstance. This fact alone does not bode well for ecosystem manage-ment by remote control.
The breadth of expertise on a public university campus should render their consultative product capable of integrating a wide range of technical disciplines toward solving such complex problems. Unfortunately, the political structure of university Environmental Studies Departments precludes that rational expectation. These departments control the process that produces “experts-in-the-field,” for environmental testimony in court and before legislative hearings, because they control the system by which credentialed expertise is conferred.
The politicization of the sciences is a testament to the degree that govern-ment has assumed so much control over the universities. Investigation of the distribution of Faculty credentials in the Environmental Studies Depart-ment of any large university will reveal a large fraction of social scientists engaged in projects all over the world. It has rendered research suspect and redirected scientific work toward the socializa-tion of commons. While it may have been bad for science, but has been a bonanza for the “study-the-problem” business where universities and government have a virtual monopoly.
Besides a tax-subsidized monopoly in marketing credentialed expertise, state universities have a virtual lock on the supply of student labor. A professor with a grant to fund a study project can recruit graduate students to do work required for them to earn advanced degrees. Professors who distribute the grant money for graduate study can easily exert undue influence on students with grades and potential faculty appointments at stake. The post docs who aren’t offered tenure need jobs and more importantly, they need jobs that provide a return on their investments.
Graduate students need to specialize in order to get advanced degrees, which focuses their expertise upon a narrow topic. Thus, many of our “experts” are people who know an immense amount about very little with less chance that the subject matter will have application to a practical issue. If a problem has multidisciplinary requirements, then a postdoctoral candidate is the wrong kind of expert for real ecological problems. Advance degrees are analytical. There is no similar credential of expertise for a synthetic academic thinker.
We are not training leaders. Is that why we need consensus decision-making?
When a technical team publishes a study report, it must pass peer review to be considered credible. In its essence, peer review is a wonderful thing. Through objective criticism, one learns what is missing, what is unneces-sarily pointed or contentious, where supporting citations or data are needed, etc. The problem with peer review arises when conclusions are presented that are sufficiently controversial to upset the gravy train. It becomes a career-threatening move to break ranks. Such is the case of the coho salmon in Santa Cruz where you will hear a different story from some scientists in private than if they are asked to write it down.
The other constraint in taking controversial positions is that of simple conservatism: the Precautionary Principle of Prospective Punishment. No one wants to be the authority who said, ‘Go ahead, there won’t be a problem,’ only to regret it later. Because it is nearly impossible to affix culpability for a Type II error, it is safer to posture as “protecting the environment” than to risk saying that a particular human enterprise is harmless, or perhaps beneficial.
In order to meet the standards of scholarship, the thesis must properly reflect the evidentiary standards and verbiage of the specialty peerage. The result will be that few outside that group will understand the study well enough to question its conclusions, without technical experts of their own. The real meaning of the data can only be extracted from direct analyses. Research for this book encountered technical papers whose conclusions were diametrically at odds with the supporting data! It is more common than one would think, that the political product of a study, its summary remarks, must be read with circumspection because of the propensity to use that cover to advance the particular agenda of the grantor. The meat is in the hard data.
You don’t get funding by proposing to tell grant managers what they don’t want to hear or by working for the opposition. NGOs and government issue most grants involving environmental issues. The professors who manage these studies maintain their status by publications. The editors control who publishes. Unless the spin pleases the editor, forget it. Without publications, they have no status as experts and can’t raise the grant money to do the studies by which they can market information. Their expertise is directly related to their ability to raise grant funding.
No grants, no credentials. No credentials, no contracts. No contracts, no cheap grad student labor. No labor, no data. No data, no papers. No papers, no spin. No spin, no publishers. No publications, no grants.

Got it?

Peter Moyle may have given the Klamath farmers a stay of execution, but what really happened is that they are studying a means to create an ironclad case that reflects the interests OF THE SCIENTISTS WHO WRITE THE REPORT. If you had read as much of Moyle’s writings as I have, you would not be as exultant as were the farmers.

This isn’t so bad in principle, the problem is who makes that determination and what motive is there to temper subjective interpretations of the data. There is still no accountability for error in making an errant listing. There is still no real recourse on the part of the injured party. Why aren’t they addressing that instead?

3) Inviting data from all sources, including property owners. The government is required to "acknowledge receipt of data regarding the status of a species that collected by an owner of land."

Yes, but given the bias built into item 1) what recourse does this offer the owner? Owners have always been able to submit data and have. They have inserted it into the public record only to have it disappear or be ignored. Consider who makes the final judgment, an administrator who gets to manage the remedial programs if the listing is allowed again with no accountability for overzealous listings.

4) Independent scientific review. The bill establishes independent review boards, and has them "review the adequacy of any scientific methodology used" to list a species.

Who is independent these days? I can show you a host of cases where the consultants the landowners hired were working in cahoots with the agencies because more regulation means more consulting work to deal with all the rules. It doesn’t work. The problem is structural.

5) Public Access Information received proposing the listing of a species "shall be made available to the public."

What the hell does that mean when “public disclosure” of these days consists of an inch-long ad buried in the back of the local paper the day before a meeting scheduled for the mid afternoon. The agency people think it’s a joke and get a large charge when they slip one by. With that little notice the owner is to show up with all the data ready?

Yeah right.

So this is fixing it? If it passes the beast goes unchallenged while we are waiting to see how it worked? No way. It is better to let the system take itself down and the RICOnuts beg to get rid of it themselves. There is a way to make that heppen.

Here is an article that was put together for the Grange News.

For 129 years the Grange in California has been a leader in advocating both public works and governmental regulatory reform. We led the fight for railroad reform, we pushed the construction of Shasta and Folsom Dams and the Central Valley Water Project. Today we actively promote respect for property rights, including reforms in the regulatory process created to deal with environmental and species protection.

Today’s battle on environmental protections is not so much about what to do but how. Environmental groups push preservation, advocating forced set-asides of private land for species habitat. We need only look at the forest fires the West has suffered over the past few years for proof that this does not work. Constitutionalists and Property Rights advocates are seeking conservation with stringent rules on how regulations are created and enforced, but this position has its pitfalls, too. Passage of these regulatory reforms might be simply changing one form of governmental control for another, thus casting the ESA in stone, further jamming our courts, and in reality doing little to solve the problem?

I believe that it is time the Grange should once again come to the forefront in seeking an honest solution to the problem of balancing competing uses of private property. There is such a solution:

In his book Natural Process, Mark Vande Pol makes the following observation:

“It is paradoxical that the very scientists, who advocate biology education, based exclusively upon the theory of natural selection, should also advocate the exclusive use of bureaucratic political hierarchy to manage competitive ecosystems.

“It’s high time to break up the civic monopoly in environmental management with the introduction of a viable competitor: the free market itself.”

Mark’s proposed civil verification system provides certified environmental management based upon validated data backed with an insured guarantee. The implementation strategy uses existing environmental laws to take the management contract (and budget) away from corrupt and incompetent government agencies. Property owners would make the decisions about how to restore or maintain species habitat in the most productive and efficient manner, while balancing the demands of other economic operations.

If we continue to push for ESA reform, we will be validating government science as the ultimate source of technical truth and cast the ESA in stone as “fixed.” That will leave us no way to fight environmentally destructive and unconstitutional takings because government will control ALL the data.

The Grange should take the lead by advocating the free market solution. Successful results would render the ESA and farm subsidies obsolete. The system preserves property rights and improves environmental management. We could have our cake and eat it too.

You may learn more about this system, contact Mr. Vande Pol or purchase his book at www.naturalprocess.net.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.