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Endangered or Eroding?
by
Heather Smith Thomas |
Endangered Species Act, federal and state laws
“Protecting ” Wildlife Are Eroding Private property rights |
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Private
property is one of the basic cornerstones of our country; this is what
makes America different from socialistic and communistic
countries or monarchies in which the crown owns the land and
gives title or use of it to certain favored individuals. Being
able to own land —and to do with our property what we choose- is
a freedom we take for granted. Yet this freedom is being swiftly
eroded by our government, via laws or agencies that have
been created to deal with animal protection. Today we have a
vast array of laws (from state game laws to federal laws
protecting certain animals —such as wild horses) with the
Endangered Species Act being most dangerous.
As ranchers and farmers we can own cattle, horses, sheep and other
livestock, but according to state game laws we cannot own
the wildlife that live on and are sustained by our land. The
state fish and game departments, and more recently the
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, consider themselves owners of
the wild animals for which we provide feed and habitat,
and feel that government ownership is of more importance than
our husbandry. The agencies take this idea so far as to think
they have a right to come onto our land at any time to do with
the wildlife as they please, or to interfere with our water
rights if there are fish in the streams we use for
irrigation. They also deem it illegal for us to try to halt
wildlife depredations on our property; we can ’t shoot the deer
or elk that are destroying a hay or grain crop, and may
not be able to shoot a cougar, wolf or bear that is killing our
livestock. In many states you cannot shoot a cougar or bear
“out of season ” and ever since wolves were introduced, using
the Endangered Species Act as means to do so, there ’s been a
harsh penalty for shooting them.
Federal laws created during the past several decades have eroded our
freedom and our rights; our land is no longer our own. If
an endangered species (plant or animal) is found on your farm or
ranch, you may have to give up your present management.
Anything you might do on your land must take second place to
protecting the habitat of the “endangered ” entity.
DANGER IN THE ENDANGERED SPECIES ACT
The Endangered Species Act (ESA) may seem like a good law to some
people in the environmental-conservation movement, but it opened the
way for opportunistic activists to use it for purposes for which it
was not intended —for more government power and dictatorship,
with control over private citizens and their property rights. It
has become a handy tool for preservationists and pseudo-
environmentalists to help lock up our natural resources (on both
public and private land) and halt logging, mining, grazing
and traditional use of private property.
We are all familiar with examples like the spotted owl, which was used
to halt most of the western timber industry (environmental
groups now admit that if it hadn’t been the spotted owl they
would have used something else) and the Bruneau snail that
was used to halt grazing and use of irrigation water. The scary
thing is that major decisions regarding our future livelihoods
and our property rights are being based on bogus science and in
some cases pure deception regarding the “endangered ”
species and its habitat.
The wolf issue is a case in point. The wolf was listed as
endangered, and introduced into Yellowstone Park and
central Idaho, even though wolves were and are thriving in
Alaska, Canada and Minnesota —definitely not an endangered
species. The wolf did not need federal protection from ranchers
who might kill one to protect livestock. Large penalties for
killing a wolf put our government at odds with ranchers,
hunters, and the general public in rural areas of the West where
these animals have now increased in range and numbers and
are beginning to pose a threat to human safety.
One of the simple tests of whether or not a law is a good one is how
many citizens obey or break it. Wolf introduction, and the
penalties for killing one, have put hardship on stockmen,
created tension between citizens and law officers, and extra
pressure on law enforcement personnel. The ESA is a very
dangerous law, since it can be easily used to “protect ” animals
like wolves, snails and sucker fish, causing hardship and loss
of property, thus creating an adversarial relationship between
normally law abiding citizens and the government.
The ESA is being used by people with intent to stop resource use,
cripple our free enterprise system and decimate our private
property rights. Laws like the ESA have no accountability, no
“conscience ” as to how they affect people, no regard for the
repercussions on down the road. Once these laws are set in
motion it is hard to change them, and their harmful effects keep
growing like some kind of cancer. We are moving toward a police state
like Nazi Germany and communist Russia. These comparisons can no
longer be regarded as a jest nor attributed to fanatics.
The direction our country is taking, in thwarting our
traditional freedoms and the sanctity of private property
is very frightening. Our original form of government —the most
envied in the world —was based on many tenets we tend to
take for granted, including human equality and freedom, the
right to own property, and government accountability.
Checks and balances (3 branches that watchdog over one another)
were created to ensure that government would not become a
tyrant. If government becomes a burden or oppressive, it is the
responsibility of the people to rebel. If a lawmaker is not
doing a proper job, he ’s not re-elected. If a law isn ’t
doing what it was intended, it should be repealed.
But laws like the ESA that supercede all other laws and rights (like
private property or the right to protect your animals or
your family —you can shoot a human in self defense but not a
grizzly bear or wolf) are dangerous. Many of these laws are
administered by agencies, by bureaucrats and their staffs that
can ’t be un-elected. We are fast becoming a police state where
agencies and their employees have too much power, a power not
given to them by the people. The issue at stake is not that of
protecting animals or endangered species, or whether a rancher
is allowed to shoot a wolf. The bigger issue is whether we can
continue to be Americans-whether or not we will still have the
basic freedoms we have cherished for more than 200 years.
TRAGEDY IN KLAMATH BASIN
One of the most widely publicized battles between landowners and
government involved the “fish ” issue in which irrigation water
to 1500 farms in Oregon and California ’s Klamath Basin was
cut off because of “endangered ” sucker fish. As that drama
unfolded, the true nature of the battle emerged; the fish were
just a ploy to get people off their land —to take over the
private property and give it to the government.
The saga began in 1988,when two species of sucker fish in that area
were listed as endangered, under the ESA. For a few years
the Bureau of Reclamation (which controls irrigation in that
region) worked with the US Fish and Wildlife Service and
tried to balance the needs of the fish and the farmers, and
created programs to promote water conservation and rigid control
over water flows. This was not well received by the
farmers, but it was workable. Then came a drought in 1991 and US
Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) stated that the Bureau
of Reclamation must do more to help the fish. This was the
perfect cue for environmental groups to step in and flex
their muscles, since their strategy is to sue or lobby the
government into pushing rural people off their land.
The water shortage in Klamath basin was their chance to put the
squeeze on farmers. The USFWS directive to the Bureau of
Reclamation was an opportunity for the Oregon Natural Resources
Council (ONRC,which has been viewed as the pit bull of
Oregon ’s environmental groups) to sue the Bureau of Reclamation
for failure to protect the fish. The lawsuits weren't
successful at first because USFWS kept revising its opinions
about what the fish needed and there was also the matter of
private property rights —and the state water laws of 1907 that
recognized the farmer ’s undeniable right to use the water for
irrigation.
But the ONRC finally found a federal judge sympathetic to their cause,
and in 1889.The creek is a non-navigable stream that flows into the
Methow River, and Ceveling’s family has caught and used the
fish for more than 100 years.
Creveling was cited by the Department of Fish and Wildlife in
2003 for failure to secure a permit for working in the creek,
failure to provide adequate fish return, and failing to use an
adequate fish screen on his irrigation diversion. The state
impounded the diversion and removed 125 fish from the
ditch. The charges against Creveling were dropped, however, when
the judge in Okanogan District Court ruled that since the
ditch had been operated in the same manner for more than 100
years (and the state had been aware of this), the statute
of limitations had run out on the alleged infractions. The state
appealed the decision to the Superior Court, which upheld the
lower court decision.
But Creveling is suing the state for impacting his irrigation water
and taking the fish, asking for $700 million to pay for
damages from having his ditch turned off in 2003 and 2004 and
asking $1.4 billion for the fish (a value based on estimates
that have been quoted in news reports and other articles that
state endangered fish are worth between $3 and $5 million
apiece). Creveling claims that he owns all the water in
Cold Creek at low flow, and that the state does not own the
water in the creek. He bases his suit on English case law, the
U.S. Constitution, mining acts, local custom, and a 106
year old ruling by the Washington State Supreme Court. He states
that the fish are his and that the state had no right to
remove them.
Creveling cites a case involving the Little Spokane River (Griffith vs
Holman) which was decided in 1900 by the Washington State
Supreme Court, in which the justices found the right of a
fishery to the riparian owner is absolute, so long as it isn ’t
injurious to the enjoyment of others along the same stream. That
court affirmed the “exclusive rights of fishery ” as belonging
to the landowners along non-navigable streams, and Creveling
said that the landowners along the irrigation canal have
been harvesting fish from that ditch for more than 100 years. So
when the state sued Creveling for failure to use a fish
screen and maintain a fishway (and took his fish) he sued them.
The district court and state court would not consider his demand
for damages, and the Washington State Supreme Court would not
consider the case, so Creveling filed to move the suit into
federal court.
On March 4,2005 a U.S. District Judge ruled that his complaint was not
frivolous and allowed him to serve the State of Washington
with his complaint. Creveling the spring of 2001 that judge
ordered the Department of Interior to shut off the water
to the farmers, essentially eliminating the farmers ’ ability to
make a living. By that fall, the average value of farm property
in Klamath Basin had dropped from $2500 per acre to about
$35 per acre. Since most of the farmers had no other source of
income, the environmentalists had the upper hand in their
push to destroy the agricultural economy and force people to
leave the area; the farming communities in Klamath Basin
lost more than $250 million that year. Local businesses
dependent upon the farmers were also affected, and the decreased
land values caused property taxes to plummet, which
impacted the abilities of these communities to fund their roads
and other necessary projects.
The clincher as to the true intent of environmental groups came
in July,2001 when they submitted a proposal for government
buy-out to move the farmers off their land. If you assess the
tactics and causes of the environmental movement, you soon
discover that the goal of many groups, from the Sierra Club to
the Oregon Natural Resources Council (ONRC) is not to protect
nature but to gain control over land and remove people from
their property —to make the West into a “wild ” playground
for a few elitists. This campaign is akin to “rural cleansing ”
and takes the form of using any means imaginable to turn all the
land outside the cities into one big national park. The
strategy includes everything from using the ESA to shut down
farming and grazing operations to purchasing conservation
easements so that the land can never be developed, and in most
cases these parcels are eventually sold to the government. In
the West, however, there ’s no shortage of government land;
private property is definitely a small percentage. The West
is 58 percent federal land, with state and local government
lands making the total percent of public land even higher. Some
counties are more than 90 percent federal land, leaving very
little privately owned land as a tax base for rural communities.
Private property will continue to disappear, however, if the
environmental groups have their way.
FISH FIGHT
In 2003 the Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife came
onto David Creveling’s ranch near Twisp, Washington (in Methow
Valley, in Okanogan County) and took 125 steelhead,
salmon, trout and other fish from one of his irrigation ditches.
The ranch has been in Creveling ’s family for several
generations, irrigated with water from Cold Creek via a
series of canals and ditches first dug in is hoping for a jury
trial, and other farmers and ranchers in that region are
watching the case with interest. This is just one of many
increasing incidents involving use of the Endangered Species Act
(in this case using government agency authority in the Salmon
recovery program) as a means to impact or intrude into private
property rights. |
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