No Pay, No Say

Another badly needed and popular bill, the Teaming with Wildlife Act of 2009, has been introduced by Senators Tim Johnson (D-SD), Debbie Stabenow (D-MI), Jon Tester (D-MT), and John Thune (R-SD). By tapping federal royalties from the mining of energy-related minerals and offshore oil and gas development, it would annually dedicate $350 million to states for the management of at-risk species. This would last for seven years and be administered through the state wildlife grants program (replacement for the Wildlife Conservation and Restoration Program), which has been providing about $75 million a year and at the pleasure of appropriators. (For 2010 the Obama administration was able to get this increased to $90 million.)

The Teaming with Wildlife Act has risen from the rubble of the most tragic blunder in the history of fish and wildlife legislation. In May 2000 the House overwhelmingly passed the Conservation and Reinvestment Act (CARA), which would have annually allocated $350 million for fish and wildlife restoration, $900 million for habitat acquisition, $1 billion for coastal states, $125 million for urban parks and recreation, $100 million for historic preservation, $200 million for restoration of Indian and public lands, $150 million for conservation easements and the recovery of vanishing species, and $200 million for payments to replace lost tax revenue.

CARA was supported by a diverse, 5,000-group coalition. An element of the environmental community wrongly supposed that the bill would somehow encourage offshore oil development and therefore lobbied against it, but most environmental groups, including Audubon, passionately supported it. With sufficient votes in the Senate, CARA looked like a done deal.

Then the Clinton administration got cold feet, and the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) offered a compromise designed to appease vexed appropriators. “CARA Light,” as it was called, supposedly was going to do everything CARA would have done. The appropriators would start at a third of the original appropriation—$450 million—then ratchet up the money each year. With a few exceptions, most notably the National Wildlife Federation (NWF) and the Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies, the environmental community swallowed it hook, line, boat, and motor.

“We thought this compromise was very wrong,” declares Naomi Edelson, then in charge of wildlife funding strategies for the association, now in charge of state wildlife programs for the NWF. “The deal they cut really screwed wildlife. CARA Light originally had nine programs, most of which were no longer funded after year three or four.” Even the $50 million it provided through the Wildlife Conservation and Restoration Program soon dried up (although the NWF and the association eventually got it restored and increased). So furious was Representative John Dingell (D-MI) that he introduced a bill to abolish the CEQ.

If the Teaming with Wildlife Act, which now has the support of about 6,000 organizations and businesses, passes, it will demonstrate that the environmental community has learned something from the CARA debacle and from the successes in Missouri, Arkansas, and Minnesota.

The lessons are as simple as this: First, all Americans (and especially habitat destroyers such as mountaintop removers and oil and gas companies) need to help conservators of fish and wildlife underwrite its management and recovery. And second, fish and wildlife has no future without dedicated funding. Asking state or federal legislators to appropriate adequate funding every year produces what the Girl Scouts could expect if they assigned Lorna Doone delivery to Cookie Monster—crumbs.

WHAT YOU CAN DO

Urge your legislators to support the Teaming with Wildlife Act of 2009 (S. 655) and the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act (S. 1733). To learn more about what states are doing and need to do to attain adequate funding for fish and wildlife, click here.