Center for Native Ecosystems Update Number 9
September 17, 2003

Colorado Governor Owens Launches ESA Attack

Colorado Governor Bill Owens announced plans to seek major reforms of the Endangered Species Act, the Denver Post reported yesterday. As the new chairman of the National Governors Association's natural resources committee, Owens is seeking to increase the difficulty of protecting species under the Act. Owens is also touting Colorado's endangered species program as a national model for avoiding Endangered Species Act protection. Critics of the Governor's plan, including CNE, suggest that Owens' version of recovery usually means dumping large numbers of captive-bred animals into the wild without fixing the problems that led to their declines in the first place. "We can plant as many pure-bred, hatchery-raised greenback cutthroat trout as we want into state rivers and streams, but until we protect and recover the habitat, we will not have recovered the species," CNE Executive Director Jacob Smith told the Post. Even with Colorado's most successful programs, like the lynx recovery program, the jury is still out.

Governor Owens also wants to require the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to adopt recovery plans for endangered species at the time they are listed. Conservation groups contend this is a ploy intended to drive up the cost of listing, further slowing down critical protections and making real recovery of endangered species even less likely. Because intensive research on an endangered species' conservation needs usually doesn't begin until it is listed under the Act, biologists are typically unable to develop a scientifically credible recovery plan until a species has been protected for at least several years.