46th legislature - STATE OF NEW MEXICO - first session, 2003

REQUESTING THE UNITED STATES CONGRESS TO REEVALUATE THE WORTH OF THE ENDANGERED SPECIES ACT OF 1973 AND TO RESTORE PERSONAL AND PROPERTY RIGHTS.

WHEREAS, congress enacted the federal Endangered Species Act of 1973 to "halt and reverse the trend toward species extinction whatever the cost", according to the United States supreme court in Tennessee Valley Authority v. Hill; and

WHEREAS, because many people affected by the act perceived its provisions as draconian, congress amended it in 1978 to allow the secretary of the interior to "take into consideration the economic impact, and any other relevant impact, of specifying any particular area as critical habitat" and to provide for an exemption from the act if reasonable and prudent alternatives to a proposed action are available, taking into account "the nature and extent of the benefits" of the action and proposed alternatives; and

WHEREAS, four executive orders have been issued that require the assessment of costs and benefits of different regulatory actions in enforcing the Endangered Species Act of 1973; and

WHEREAS, private property owners have the greatest influence over the survival of endangered species, according to a 1993 nature conservancy study that estimates that seventy-five percent of endangered or threatened species inhabit private land; and

WHEREAS, most costs of the Endangered Species Act of 1973 are borne by private property owners because the act provides for restrictions on property rights and punitive remedies for taking an endangered species, thereby creating an incentive for private property owners to keep endangered species off their property rather than rewarding them for habitat improvements; and

WHEREAS, although national cost-benefit analyses are currently unreliable, one estimate of the recovery costs to the northwest economy for one species in the northwest is thirty-three billion dollars ($33,000,000,000) to forty-six billion dollars ($46,000,000,000), with thirteen thousand to twenty-eight thousand jobs lost, and the United States department of the interior estimates that the potential direct cost to the federal treasury from implementation of recovery plans for all listed species is about four billion six hundred million dollars ($4,600,000,000); and

WHEREAS, the impact of critical habitat designation is not evenly distributed across the states, with, for example, Texas not being required to contribute to New Mexico's cost of recovering the silvery minnow even though Texas will benefit from increased flows in the Rio Grande; and

WHEREAS, affected communities perceive that political considerations play a bigger role than reliable scientific considerations in the designation of individual endangered species and their critical habitats and recovery plans; and

WHEREAS, critics of the Endangered Species Act of 1973 assert that it is misused as a punitive weapon against selected interests and economic endeavors and is not administered so as to honestly recover endangered species or promote biodiversity; and

WHEREAS, the Endangered Species Act of 1973 has been characterized as the most important environmental law in the government's panoply of environmental protection policies, but only eight species of the more than one thousand four hundred species listed as threatened or endangered have been recovered since its enactment in 1973;

NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED BY THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE STATE OF NEW MEXICO that the United States congress be requested to reevaluate the worth to the nation's citizens of the many costly programs generated by the Endangered Species Act of 1973 that have failed to achieve their goals of protecting and preserving the environment and those species the programs were designed to protect, and to restore to the citizens of this country the personal and property rights that are a part of the nation's founding principles; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that copies of this memorial be transmitted to New Mexico's congressional delegation.