As the federal agency mandated to implement the Endangered Species Act (ESA), the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service would like the opportunity to state unequivocally that the Endangered Species Act does not put human lives at risk, as erroneously asserted in the letter “Rodents rule! (Voice, June 6), by Daniel John Sobieski. Three human lives were lost in the California flood described in the commentary. That these lives were lost because ESA regulations prevented levee repairs is simply untrue.
A year ago when the allegations repeated in the letter were circulated in California following the storm that caused the levee breaks, the state legislature established a flood review team. The team investigated the levee reconstruction delays and determined that the ESA consultations were not a factor in the delays.
Rarely would ESA procedures have the potential to risk human lives. In those rare cases, emergency provisions of the ESA are implemented to ensure that species-protection procedures do not impede needed lifesaving work from moving forward. For example, these emergency provisions allowed post-storm reconstruction of the California levees to proceed immediately. Assessment of the impact to endangered species and mitigation planning followed the reconstruction.
The fact that three people died in the California flood is tragic regardless of the cause. Inaccurately linking those deaths to the Endangered Species Act, however, distorts the truth of how the ESA impacts human lives.
In the Chicago area, dedicated bands of volunteers spend Saturdays in sunny (or rainy) prairies in our parks and preserves, monitoring and nurturing the federally threatened Eastern Prairie Fringed Orchid, sometimes even hand-pollinating the flowers when the moths that naturally pollinate the orchids don’t show up. A federally endangered dragonfly can be glimpsed on summer walks at some of our nature preserves.
And, in the larger picture, some of the species that ESA protects turn out to save human lives, like the rosy periwinkle, source of treatment for childhood leukemia and Hodgkin’s disease.
