Published: Columbia Gorge News, 3/27/2024
As a constituent of WA-04 represented by Dan Newhouse, I received his online newsletter March 1, in which he promotes the blatant lie that “The Endangered Species Act has failed in its mission to recover and delist species and instead has been used as a tool by the federal government to control landowner rights …”
First, it’s important to know that the ESA was passed in 1973 as a bi-partisan legislative law following the urging of Republican President Nixon, who declared the then-current species conservation efforts to be inadequate and called on the 93rd Congress to pass comprehensive endangered species legislation — which it did. The purposes of the ESA are two-fold: To prevent extinction and to recover species to the point where the law’s protections are not needed. It is administered by the respected U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service.
Second, there are many species that have avoided extinction and rebounded with the help of ESA. Examples are our national bird, the bald eagle; whooping crane and peregrine falcon.
A scientific nonprofit organization, Center for Biological Diversity, conducts studies of the effectiveness of the ESA for species listed and found that 85% of bird populations in the continental U.S. increased or stabilized while protected under the ESA. Another study of recovery rates of 110 listed species found that “the ESA has a remarkably successful recovery rate: 90% of species are recovering at the rate specified by their federal recovery plan.”
Rep. Newhouse seems intent on spreading falsehoods and fear to citizens in District 4. He also has indicated opposition to ESA listed salmon species recovery plans recently in agreement by federal, Washington and Oregon states governments and four Native American Tribes with Treaty rights for fishing on the Columbia, including the Yakama. The time to help save the salmon is now with the new comprehensive plan, not the false story of "saving the dams" as Rep. Newhouse claims.