Feds vs. farmers

SLO County ranchers and farmers think they’re the ones who’ll soon be extinct, thanks to the Endangered Species Act

BY TRACY IDELL HAMILTON

The tragedy–and by all accounts, it is a tragedy–taking place in the Klamath River Basin has farmers and ranchers once again convinced that the Endangered Species Act will cause their own extinction.

The Klamath River irrigation project was begun in 1907 to send water into historically arid lands along the California-Oregon border so they could be farmed. Draining much of the river basin’s lakes and marshes created even more rich farmland.

With water, the federal government encouraged hundreds of families west to farm the land and feed the nation. Since then, the diverted water has irrigated more than 200,00 acres of grains, alfalfa, potatoes, sugar beets, and horseradish.

The project also sends irrigation water to at least two of the Calmat River Basin’s six wildlife refuges, keeping them wet enough to protect hundreds of species of flora and fauna every year.

This spring, after the most severe drought in anyone’s memory, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation announced a 90 percent reduction in irrigation water, leaving 19 of 21 water districts and two wildlife refuges with no water at all.

As farmers’ crops dried up, signs blossomed among the withering rows: "Loggers, Ranchers, Farmers, Who’s Next?" "Federally-Created Disaster Area," "No Water, No Barley, No Beer."

Federal officials blame the shut-off on the drought and the fact that their first legal obligation is to make sure the river has enough water for three endangered species: the coho salmon, and two types of suckerfish.

While experts have called the tragedy a disaster waiting to happen, with limited water supplies promised to too many constituencies, farmers, many who’ve been thrown into bankruptcy, or forced to leave their land, see it as another case of animals before people.

Inevitably, critics point to the Endangered Species Act of 1973, which they say is too rigid to allow for the kind of compromise that might have saved hundreds of acres of farmland–and the families who depend on them.

Here in San Luis Obispo County, many farmers and ranchers also believe the act is too onerous, creating disincentives for them to report a threatened or endangered species on their land. They, too, would like to see more compromise–and compensation–for protecting endangered species on their land.

But environmentalists point to unfettered development, especially along California’s coast, as the reason so many species now rely on the little undeveloped land left throughout the state for their protection.

Far from seeing the act as too onerous, many believe government agencies–federal, state and local–are not enforcing the act’s provisions. Just last month, the county’s Grand Jury criticized the Board of Supervisors for not taking into account the cumulative effects of development on the environment when they approve new development projects.

While action has been limited to criticism here so far, in other counties and around the nation a series of lawsuits designed to force these agencies to follow the law continue to crop up. In SLO County, the Sierra Club, through the Environmental Defense Center, has filed an intent to sue State Parks for mismanagement of the Oceano Dunes State Vehicular Recreation Area (see related story, next page).

Federal and state agencies have decried the use of such lawsuits, accusing environmentalists of using the ESA to halt development or intensified use of ag land. They say that already tight budgets have been prioritized to fight the suits, making them unable to list new species, or work on the kinds of voluntary protection programs they believe are more valuable to species protection.

So while landowners fear that the mere presence of an endangered or threatened species on their property will result in loss of either property rights or income, conservationists criticize the federal government for failing to enforce provisions of the act, and government agencies say that they are paralyzed by expensive lawsuits to do the work required of them.

Is it time to revisit the Endangered Species Act?

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Recognizing the importance of biological diversity, the United State Congress passed the Endangered Species Preservation Act in 1966, allowing for the listing of native endangered species and offering a limited means of protecting those species.

Seven years later, the Endangered Species Act of 1973 was passed, strengthening the provisions of its predecessor, and establishing some new rules, including requiring all relevant federal agencies to create programs for the conservation of listed species.

Amendments to the law have been enacted three times. In 1978, "critical habitat" was required to designate a species at the time of its listing. In 1982, determinations of species’ status was required to be made solely on the basis of science, without consideration of economic impacts.

In 1988, monitoring of recovering species was required, emergency listing was allowed with evidence of significant risk, and proposed recovery plans were ordered to undergo public notice and review, with federal agencies mandated to give consideration to those comments.

A comprehensive review of the act has been on the federal agenda since 1992, when authorization expired. Congressional hearings on the issue have been undertaken every year since then, but the act has yet to be re-authorized.

The Clinton Administration made some changes. Former Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt created policies to relieve small landowners of some of their responsibilities, and efforts were made to encourage landowners to report species with something called "safe harbor agreements," under which they would, in return, receive promises that the presence of additional species of a listed population would not restrict their ability to change the use of their land.

Additionally, Habitat Conservation Plans, voluntary agreements between an agency and a landowner, have been encouraged, and a "no surprise rule" has been implemented: a landowner properly carrying out a conservation agreement is assured of no further costs or restrictions on the use of the property, except by mutual consent.

With the Bush Administration have come renewed calls for reviewing the act, but according to a spokeswoman for the Department of the Interior, there are currently no plans to do so. However, current Interior Secretary Gale Norton has called for reviews of the decision to shut off water to farmers around Klamath Falls.

"I think it’s a step in the right direction," Don Russell, president of the Klamath Water Users Association told the Los Angeles Times. "It gives a chance for other scientists to look at that whole issue and determine the validity of the science."

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That incomplete science may be being used to make decisions that affect property owners’ ability to make a living is what angers and frightens many of the farmers and ranchers in this area.

Many point to the emergency listing of the tiger salamander in Santa Barbara County two years ago as an example of incomplete knowledge giving way to untenable restrictions.

When the species was listed, biologists didn’t know exactly what the salamander behaviors were, such as how far they traveled from vernal pools, or what kinds of habitat they needed to mate, according to Kevin Merrill, vineyard manager with Mesa Vineyard Management. Mesa manages about 10,000 acres of vineyards in Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, and Monterey counties.

The listing virtually halted anything but existing farming practices, said Merrill.

That biologists couldn’t give angry farmers answers about what was going to happen to their land fueled suspicion that the listing was done at the urging of environmentalists intent on stopping "grapescape": the intensification of row crop land to vineyards.

But there is no protecting any species without its habitat, said Babak Naficy, senior attorney for the Environmental Defense Center. The emergency listing was made, he said, because waiting for complete knowledge of the salamander’s behaviors and habitat may have been too late: the conversion of row crops to vineyards is happening at an incredibly rapid rate in northern Santa Barbara County, he said.

"The reason we’re taking drastic action is because we’re down to the very last percentage of a creature’s habitat," Naficy said.

But Merrill argues that many people don’t understand the economic realities of the land. Idling thousands of acres of farmland may protect a species, he said, but there’s still a tax bill. Someone has to pay those taxes. If can’t be done with vineyards, it may well be houses, he warned.

Naficy said he understands those realities, and said perhaps compensation should be increased for those farmers who are actually stopped from making a living.

He gives an example of successful compensation: a foundation has set up a fund for ranchers in western states where the wolf has been reintroduced, a fund that compensates them for any stock killed by the wolves.

But he is adamant that the hammer behind the act remain intact. While some landowners may have progressive ideas about habitat protection, others need the threat or possibility of punishment to do the right thing, he said.

Other environmentalists point out that landowners were never guaranteed profit for their land. Like any business, landowning is a gamble. Almost everyone understands, according to Merrill, that the old ways of doing things are over. What they can’t agree on, however, is how the new ways of doing things should go.

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Leaving zero incentive for landowners to protect the habitat on their land may mean more development in the future, said

Pat Mulnar, president of the San Luis Obispo County’s Cattleman’s Association.

"Look, a lot of these species are here because we’re here, because we haven’t built condos," he said. "People seem to forget that. You can’t penalize us for having an endangered species on our land."

Mulnar says that to his constituency, the Endangered Species Act is completely unbalanced. Everyone knows the story, he said, of the farmer in the Central Valley who was thrown in jail because of a "dead mouse." The recent fights over the salamander down south, and water to the north, just underscores his concern.

A fifth-generation rancher in the county, Mulnar wants to use his tenure to educate people about today’s realities about ranching, the latest practices, the latest restrictions. Farmers and ranchers make up less than 2 percent of the county’s population, he said, and so far have not done a good job at telling their side of the story.

"I want to do all I can to educate people, to find the common ground between cattlemen and environmentalists. It would crush me to have some part in the extinction of a species, but I don’t want to lose my ranch in the process."

Merrill is another agriculturalist trying not only to comply with the act, but to educate others–grape growers, the general public, environmentalists–about ways the government and private property owners might work together to protect species, rather than continue the adversarial relationship that has grown up in the last two decades.

It will be a tough row to hoe, as farmers and ranchers say they cannot trust the government to do what it says it will do. Joy Fitzhugh, legislative analyst with the SLO County Farm Bureau, uses the Klamath Falls fiasco as only the latest example.

"Farmers were promised they would always have water," she said. "The Endangered Species Act is an example of the best intentions run amok."

Like others, Fitzhugh says many endangered species are still around thanks to farmers and ranchers, not despite them. "How about some incentives to keep them?" she asks.

Instead, they point to what they see as logic-defying decisions by California Fish and Game, or U.S. Fish and Wildlife, the state and federal agencies, respectively, charged with enforcing the act.

One example is water, Fitzhugh explains: A farmer or rancher will create a stock pond, or overflow area, on their land. Years or even months later, biologists will find some endangered or threatened species in the water, and will require that the farmer not be allowed to use the water, and create a large buffer zone of now unusable land around it.

"Obviously whatever species that makes a stock pond home is living there with the cows," Mulnar said. Like others, he fears that some environmentalists would just like to see ranch lands taken out of commission and allowed to go back to their "natural" state.

But some ranching practices actually ensure a greater biological diversity than if land is left fallow, a difficult concept for some environmentalists. Mulnar points to the land next to his, land bought by the Nature Conservancy that hasn’t been ranched in seven years.

On the grazed side, native perennial grasses co-exist with non-native Mediterranean annuals. On the fallow side, those annuals have taken over.

Bob Blanchard, who has won awards for his ranching practices on the Pecho Ranch above PG&E’s nuclear power plant, notes that grazing has been occurring on land in this county for hundreds of years.

"What I keep harping on is the relationship between critters and grazers," Blanchard said. "We’re finding that some species are not just tolerant of grazers, but have come to depend on them."

"I’ve taken out non-believers to tour the ranch," he said. "I haven’t had any that aren’t amazed at what I’m showing them. Sure, some people’s minds are slammed shut–and there are stubborn stockmen out there just like there are environmental extremists–but we need to educate the mainstream of both." Æ

Staff writer Tracy Hamilton will explore other aspects of the Endangered Species Act and how it impacts the county in future issues.