The Endangered Species Act: A Modern Noah's Ark?

by Jaydee Hanson

Then the LORD said to Noah, "Go into the ark.Take with you seven pairs of all clean animals, the male and its mate; and a pair of the animals that are clean, the male and its mate; and seven pairs of the birds of the air also, male and female, to keep their kind alive on the face of the earth". They went into the ark with Noah, two and two of all flesh in which there was the breath of life. (Genesis 7:1-3,15)

Then God said to Noah and his sons with him, "As for me, I am establishing my covenant with you and your descendants after you, and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the domestic animals, and every animal of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark. When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth." (Genesis 9:8-10, 16)

The Endangered Species Act has been referred to as the modern Noah's Ark. Like Noah's Ark, its passage by the U.S. Congress 30 years ago was intended to preserve all living creatures whether they had particular value to humans or not. Like Noah, Congress, in passing the Endangered Species Act, was recognizing human responsibility for other creatures on this planet.

The Act has had many successes in its 30 years of existence, most notably the great expansion of the range of the once endangered bald eagle.

Without the Endangered Species Act (ESA) and the related ban on DDT, the bald eagle would probably be extinct in all parts of the United States except Alaska. Instead, the bald eagle today nests within five miles of the U.S. Capitol building in Washington D.C. and in hundreds of other places. Other less known species have been saved, too. Among them is the Peter's Mountain Mallow, a plant species that had declined to only three known specimens. Through the research required by the Endangered Species Act, much was learned about the plant's life cycle and today the plant still survives.

In 2001, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) General Assembly passed a resolution, "A Call to Halt Mass Extinction." In the resolution, the Assembly issued this call, proclaiming:

The Creator-Sustainer of all life wills its continuance, diversity, beauty and interconnectedness. When human actions and inactions desecrate the natural systems ordained by God, they affront the Creator. When decisions and actions protect and restore creation's integrity, diversity, beauty, and interconnectedness, they affirm God's wisdom and glory and please the Creator.

The Creator-Deliverer calls human communities to work with God to rectify the abuses whereby human impacts upon the earth are leading to a mass extinction of living species. This mass extinction would fundamentally alter and undermine the life and well-being of the human and other creatures that survive. It would rob all future generations of the gifts of wholeness and diversity that God intends.

The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) calls Presbyterians, other citizens, governments, and societal institutions to face the severity of this threat, and to take the steps in practice, policy, and systemic change that will prevent mass extinction and preserve the biodiversity essential to the flourishing of life.

The resolution also "calls upon the United States Congress and the Bush administration, particularly the Environmental Protection Agency, the Forest Service, and the Interior Department*, and also the governments of the states to refrain from or turn back all efforts to abolish or undercut established policies and recent initiatives to protect endangered species, to preserve wetlands, to restore the Florida Everglades, to minimize road buildings in national forests, and to preserve roadless wilderness areas." (Minutes, 2001, pp. 473-474)

Still, there is heated debate about how the Act should function. And even some Christians concerned with other issues, like hunger, disparage the ESA for preserving other living creatures while people go hungry. This is a misunderstanding of Christian piety. As the story of Noah and the ark illustrates - God cares about all living things. We are to care for each other and we are to care for the rest of God's creation. Though we have failed to care for our poor and hungry brothers and sisters is not reason to fail to care for the rest of God's creation.

Indeed, the habitats of endangered species are often close to where people in poverty live. Wetlands near waterways have historically been where people in poverty have been able to acquire land, but they are also where many endangered species live. For example, in the Pacific Northwest, the extinction of many salmon runs through dam construction and excess logging has deprived Native American people of a major food item in their diet.

For Christians, care for our human and our non-human neighbors must be uplifted. In Genesis both human and non-humans have been given the blessing of posterity. We humans have too often denied that blessing to our non-human neighbors. Ecology is not separate from our spirituality; the protection of endangered species can be seen as an activity for Christians, not just secular environmentalists.

ESA at Risk

When the Endangered Species Act was first up for renewal in the 1990s, the then head of the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Resources refused a request by Rep. Dale Kildee (D-MI) that letters from Protestant (including Presbyterians!), Catholic, and Jewish religious persons supportive of the Endangered Species Act be entered into the record of the committee's hearing on the Act. The ensuing outcry helped derail an effort to weaken the Endangered Species Act. In the intervening decade, the ESA has been continued on a year-to-year basis. Now, new efforts are underway to radically change the Act, while not outright repealing it.

As The Washington Post noted in May, "Congress has amended the Endangered Species Act three times since its inception, but its broad outlines remained largely intact. In 1997 Sen. John H. Chafee (R-RI) brokered a bipartisan compromise to restructure the law, but Senate GOP leaders refused to hold a floor vote. Chafee's son Lincoln now chairs the subcommittee charged with overseeing the law and is hoping to build on his late father's legacy." (5/20/05)

The Endangered Species Act has been the subject of debate in both chambers of Congress in recent months. The Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works' Subcommittee on Fisheries, Wildlife, and Water held its second hearing on the Act on July 13, 2005. The hearing focused on "Endangered Species Act and Incentives for Private Landowners." Subcommittee Chairman Lincoln Chafee (R-RI) noted, "This is a topic that deserves special attention, and an area where I believe we may be able to find a great deal of consensus."

In the House of Representatives, the Committee on Resources, chaired by Rep. Richard Pombo (R-CA), has jurisdiction over the Act. Pombo has drafted a bill, that, as noted by The New York Times, redefines the ESA's interpretation of "conservation," and would seriously weaken the Act. "The draft measure, said Jamie Rappaport Clark, the executive vice president of Defenders of Wildlife, 'takes a wrecking ball to the whole Endangered Species Act' by changing its mission, disabling enforcement tools and loosening controls on agencies like the Forest Service and the Army Corps of Engineers."

"The draft legislation, prepared by the Republican staff of the House Resources Committee, also narrows the law's reach, potentially exempting many federal actions that are now subject to review. In addition, it requires that the authority to list subgroups of a species of fish or wildlife as endangered be used 'only sparingly.' The draft would automatically take the Endangered Species Act off the books in 2015."

Many environmental groups oppose Rep. Pombo's draft bill as it is currently written. House Resource Committee spokesperson Brian Kennedy said on July 11 that the committee would release its draft bill by the end of the month. (Congressional Quarterly Weekly, July 11, 2005, p. 1906) Meanwhile, the committee has held hearings on a number of aspects of the bill, including how to pay private landowners to protect habitat and how to exempt water projects from the requirements of the Endangered Species Act.

Excerpts from Rep. Richard Pombo's July 18th interview with E&ETV.

Rep. Pombo: Some of the big issues that I want to deal with ... is on critical habitat; the last two administrations both said that under the current implementation of the act, that critical habitat does little or nothing to recover species, and yet causes a lot of the issues, a lot of the problems that we have. It eats up a lot of the money that's in their budget and it's driven by litigation. I think that's one of the major issues that we need to tackle. Another one is the level of science that is used for making decisions under the Endangered Species Act. Right now it is an extremely low bar that they have to rate everything by. What we would like to do is raise that and hopefully try to deal with science on a higher level so that it's something that we can depend on and count on, because that's what all the decisions are based on ...

[W]e are not doing away with the Endangered Species Act. What we have tried to do is modernize the act so it takes advantage of the technology and what we've learned over the last 30 years in the implementation of the act .... But in terms of the sunset of the act, yeah, I would like to have a sunset clause put into the act so that Congress is forced to come back and reauthorize the act. You know the Endangered Species Act has been unauthorized since 1992. It's been kept alive by the appropriations process for the last 10 plus years. We have not responded to whatever changes there are, whatever updating should have been done to the act, and there's no incentive for the two sides to come to the table and work out what really needs to be done.

If we get a 10-year sunset on the act it would give us whatever changes we pass to the act right now, it would give us 10 years to look at those changes and then reauthorize again. There's nothing that stops Congress from stepping in sooner and doing a reauthorization, but we would at least know that 10 years from now Congress would be required to update the act. Everybody knows the Endangered Species Act is not going to go away. It is a cornerstone of a lot of our nation's environmental laws and is an extremely important law. No one is going to vote to repeal the Endangered Species Act, and they know that. That's just another one of the scare tactics that they like to throw out there.

Presbyterian General Assembly Policy on Endangered Species

2001 Statement PC(USA), pp. 473-475

[The 213th General Assembly (2001) of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)
called for the following actions]:

1. Issue and disseminate by all appropriate means this call to halt mass extinction: (See page 2), and

3. Remind all Presbyterians that the 202nd General Assembly (1990) called upon the church to "engage in the effort to make the 1990s the 'turnaround decade'" (Minutes, 1990, Part I, p. 652) for reversing the trends fatally destructive of the future; and to confess that the church, like society, did not undertake the effort with the seriousness it required; and to issue once again the call for a "turnaround . . . not only for reasons of prudence or survival, but because the endangered planet is God's creation." (Minutes, 1990, Part I, p. 652)

6. Reaffirm, in their relevance to the prevention of species losses, the policies adopted by the 208th General Assembly (1996) in "Hope for a Global Future: Toward Just and Sustainable Human Development," especially those on "Sufficient Production and Consumption" for all, to be achieved in part by a more frugal and less materialistic way of living by those with more than enough; "Population Stability" and reduction, to bring human numbers into balance with natural systems and nonhuman species, by attending to the key factors that lead to fewer births; and "Environmental Sustainability and Food Sufficiency," particularly as pertaining to global warming, economic arrangements for sustainable sufficiency, and community-based sustainable agriculture. (Minutes, 1996, Part I, pp. 527-28, 533-36)

8. Encourage Presbyterian volunteer and financial support of agencies-national and international, governmental and nongovernmental-that work to preserve fragile ecosystems, protect endangered wildlife, and empower impoverished people to meet their needs through community-based development that protects their natural resources and environment.

9. Commend the companies that have pledged to stop purchasing lumber from endangered forests, and to encourage Presbyterians and other purchasers of wood products to make serious efforts to avoid purchasing products made of wood from endangered forests. (Minutes, 2001, Part I, pp. 473-474)