Bush administration officials said Tuesday that they were reviewing proposed changes to the way the 34-year-old Endangered Species Act is enforced, a move that critics say would weaken the law in ways that a Republican majority in Congress was unable to do.
A draft of suggested changes, which was leaked Tuesday, would reduce protection for wildlife habitat and transfer some authority over vulnerable species to states.
Acting under orders from Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne, who has long fought for changes in the law, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director H. Dale Hall said he had asked his senior field staff to evaluate proposals in the draft by policy advisors in the Departments of Interior and Commerce, which oversee almost 1,300 imperiled species.
"What we're attempting to do is to update our implementation of the existing law," said Hall, who said any changes would not need to be approved by Congress and would be signed by Kempthorne or a representative.
"The act is written or not written by Congress, but we have the responsibility to implement the law through regulations and policies. We're trying to bring consistency and clarity. That has been a significant problem from one area of the country to another," Hall said.
Hall made his comments after environmental groups and the online journal Salon.com published a draft version of the proposals Tuesday. He said that the version was "a beginning point" circulated internally to eight senior Fish and Wildlife staff in early February, and that it had changed a great deal since. He refused to make public the current version, saying he wanted his staff to be free from "outside interference" while they evaluated possible changes.
He and a Wildlife Service spokesman said that if any of the ideas were formally proposed, they would be posted online and there would be an opportunity for public comment.
"It's sort of a work in progress," spokesman Chris Tollefson said. "Nothing is proposed at this point; we're still working through this."
Contending that the act penalized property owners and made the cost of public works projects prohibitive, House Republicans in particular have been trying to make changes since 1995.
Last year, the House and Senate failed to agree on changes that proponents said could have helped speed approvals for dams, housing developments, highways and other projects where protected species live. Changes in the act could have a significant effect in California, which has the second-highest number of endangered species in the nation after Hawaii.
