Julie A. MacDonald, a deputy assistant secretary of the Interior who oversaw the endangered-species program, resigned last month after the inspector general found that she had ordered scientists to change their findings, and shared internal documents with lobbyists for agricultural and energy interests.
MacDonald, who owns a Sacramento-area ranch with her husband, took a particular interest in California, forcing cutbacks in proposed habitat protection for several listed species, including the Klamath River's bull trout and the Southwestern willow flycatcher, a bird that ranges from New Mexico to Southern California.
Last week, House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Nick J. Rahall II (D-W.Va.) announced he would hold hearings on reports by the Washington Post that, in 2002, Vice President Dick Cheney interjected himself into a dispute over Klamath River water flows.
According to the Post, after Cheney objected to the amount of water withheld to preserve fish, it was diverted to irrigation and an estimated 70,000 salmon died, including a small percentage of coho, a species listed as threatened in the region.
"Vice President Cheney turned the science upside down for political reasons," said Rep. George Miller (D-Martinez). "They had to close the fishing season. Taxpayers shelled out $60 million for businesses and boats."
Arroyo declined to discuss allegations of political intervention, but he defended efforts to ease restrictions overall. Endangered species protection "started as a heavy-handed regulatory program," he said. "If you tally the cost of implementing every recovery program now in place, it would cost billions of dollars -- and the program will never have that much funding."
The agency has reached out to states, private landowners and conservation groups, Arroyo said. "It is more effective to have 20 or 30 entities pursuing conservation of a species than one federal agency alone."
Three-quarters of endangered species are on private property, and property rights advocates say that overly strict rules give landowners an incentive to "shoot, shovel and shut up" -- as the saying goes in the fast-growing West -- rather than submit to restrictions on ranching, farming or subdividing.
Arroyo said the best way to prevent that was to work cooperatively, encouraging landowners to voluntarily conserve wildlife through grants and technical assistance.
