Going Broke? Costs of the Endangered Species Act as Revealed in Endangered Species Recovery Plans National Wilderness Institute 1994 March 23, 1994 Prepared by: Robert Gordon Editing & Graphics: Jim Lacy Laura Young EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The Endangered Species Act was designed to identify plants and animals endangered with extinction, add them to a list of federally regulated species, and then improve their condition to the point at which they could be removed from the list. After a plant or animal is added to the list, the US Fish & Wildlife Service (FWS) or the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) typically produces a plan incorporating the steps that need to be taken to improve the status of a particular plant or animal, a "recovery plan.” A plant or animal has reached the Act's ultimate goal of "recovery" once it has improved to the point where it can be "delisted." Between its listing and delisting, the level of protection afforded to a species may change. A species originally listed as “Endangered" whose status has improved to "Threatened" has gone through a "downlisting." This study reviews the cost estimates of 306 recovery plans written between passage of the Act and 1993. These plans include 8 Amphibians, 72 Birds, 57 Fish, 58 Invertebrates, 35 Mammals, 135 Plants and 23 Reptiles covering 388 of the 853 currently listed endangered and threatened species. In most cases, recovery plans include cost estimates for some of their planned actions. In Section 2, these estimated costs are the basis for a list which ranks reviewed recovery plans by cost with all values expressed in constant 1994 dollars. A brief summary of the review: (For purposes of comparison, the Fish and Wildlife Service has requested $81,411,000 for endangered species in FY 1995.) The reader is cautioned, however, that these figures do not reflect the actual cost of the Endangered Species Act. Many costs are not revealed in the recovery plan cost estimates. Additional costs include: Actions called for in recovery plans for which costs are not estimated Costs of maintaining at present levels, downlisting or delisting for those species which have plans with interim goals such as 'stabilization' Costs of recovery for 466 species already listed but not covered by one of the plans reviewed in this study Costs of recovery and other associated costs as mentioned above for some fraction of the current 3,996 official candidate species which will be added to the Endangered Species List Listing and delisting of candidates or delisting species already on the list Expenditures on any species in this study prior to the approval of its recovery plan Costs of reduced or terminated business activities and jobs lost as a result of conflict Increased costs of providing services by federal, state, county or city governments which result from conflict Losses of tax revenue from reduced or terminated business income, personal income or property devaluation resulting from conflict Derivative costs of public assistance provided to individuals who have lost jobs as a result of conflict Section 3 provides a comparison between estimated plan costs and actual government expenditures over a three year period. Section 4 provides a count of those plans that reveal existing or potential conflicts with different activities, businesses, etc. which could result in higher total costs of implementation. Section 5 provides examples of the types of costs described on the previous page that are generally not reflected in recovery plan estimates. During the course of reviewing the recovery plans in this study, several other important findings were made including: • Plans often reveal that there is little information about plants or animals considered endangered or threatened •Plans often call for additional laws and regulations • Plans, in conflict with the definition of 'conservation' in the Act, often state that recovery is unlikely or impossible • Plans often have criteria for 'delisting' or 'downlisting' which appear unattainable • Plans routinely call for habitat purchase; often because the land on which a species exists is privately owned Section 6 provides examples of these findings. Notes taken from selected recovery plans demonstrate in Section 7 that the cost estimates of recovery plans are often incomplete, and these notes illustrate some of the findings listed above or are of interest for other reasons. Section 8 offers some brief suggestions for improvement of current endangered species policy. Section 9 provides the outline for a guesstimate of the cost of implementing the Endangered Species Act, and Section 10 contains comments on the methodology used in calculating the costs in recovery plans. Finally, the Appendices contain samples of implementation schedules from several recovery plans and a recovery plan action diagram. CONCLUSION The federal endangered species program is out of control. Expenditures identified in recovery plans grossly understate the actual costs of recovery because many tasks called for in the plans do not include cost estimates and none of the costs imposed on the private sector are included. The government has no idea of the true cost of the endangered species program. Cost estimates in the recovery plans do not correspond to actual expenditures identified in ESA expenditure reports given to Congress. Though unmeasured, the costs of implementing the Act as currently written are in the multi-billions, yet in over twenty years not a single endangered species has legitimately been recovered and delisted as a result of the Endangered Species Act. Rational, balanced decisions on how to allocate resources available for endangered species cannot be made under the law as presently written. This study is only a first step toward gaining a full understanding of the costs of the Endangered Species Act. All figures used in this report are taken from government estimates of the cost of implementing official recovery plans. |