3/2/98

KUFM / KGPR

T. M. Power

The Local Economic Impact of Endangered Species Protection

The political leadership for the anti-environmental movement in the United States is largely found in the congressional delegations from the western states, including Montana’s. They lead the attack on almost any public policy aimed at protecting the environment. Whether it is endangered species, overgrazing public lands, the poisoning of our water by mine wastes, the roading and clearcutting of our forested mountains or almost any other environmental problem, the response is the same: Protecting the environment will undercut our economy, destroy the few jobs that we have, and push us all towards collective poverty. Under the guise of common sense and "wise use," we are urged to rein in the "radicals" who are conducting a "war on the west" that is doing serious damage to our local and regional economies.

Some of those listening to these intentionally frightening economic claims might be interested in what the economic data indicate about the truth of these assertions. Others, of course, find facts to be a bothersome distraction from the comfortable and self-serving dogma they arrived at by other, non-factual, means.

Consider the repeated claims that endangered species listings have strangled the economies of western communities, especially rural communities dependent upon natural resource industries. These claims are usually supported by individual anecdotes telling tales of economic woe for individual landowners and developers which, when investigated, bear little resemblance to what actually happened. But we should be able to test the impact of endangered species listings more systematically than through this story-telling of questionable reliability.

A Utah economists has done exactly that. Endangered species protection is not spread uniformly across the western states nor uniformly across western counties. California, for instance, has 161 listed species while Montana and Wyoming have only about a dozen. Utah and Arizona are in between with about 50 species listed. If one goes western county by western county, looking at the number of endangered species listings and then studying the pattern of economic growth since those listings, one should be able to detect the claimed negative impact on local economic vitality. To do that, of course, one has to also incorporate all of the other variables which might explain local differences in the rate of economic development.

This statistical analysis of 333 non-metropolitan counties in the west revealed no evidence of a negative relationship between listing endangered species and employment growth. Even when one focuses only upon the rural counties within this group, one finds no evidence that the Endangered Species Act is causing job growth in affected counties to slow down. If anything, the statistical analysis indicated that the more endangered species that were listed, the faster the job creation process proceeded.

There are several explanations for this failure to detect the profound negative impacts that the Endangered Species Act is supposed to be having on our local economies. First, despite the anecdotes about bureaucratic nightmares, a U.S. General Accounting Office review of over 18,000 endangered species consultations conducted by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service showed that for almost all of the projects reviewed, 99 percent of them, those developments proceeded unhindered or with marginal additional time and economic costs. In short, we, in general, allow almost all projects to proceed, if mitigation is provided, despite our concern over the impact on endangered species. This certainly has been true of timber roads and sales in Western Montana grizzly habitat.

Another reason for the absence of a measurable negative economic impact from protecting endangered species is that most listed species are not like the spotted owl, grizzly bear, and wolf, all of which require fairly large protected habitats. Most endangered species are much more localized. 50 percent of the endangered species, for instance, occupy just seven percent of the US land area. Some at-risk groups, such as reptiles and amphibians, occupy significantly less than one percent of the US land area. Many endangered species’ habitats also overlap considerably. As a result, protection requires quite local actions which does not block economic activity but simply shifts it to more appropriate locations.

Finally, and most important, protecting endangered species always requires the protection of their habitat. That primarily involves protecting the quality of the natural landscapes that surround us. Since those natural landscapes are part of our local economic base because they are what draw and hold people and businesses here in the west, protecting those landscapes supports local economic vitality rather than threatening it.

It is no wonder, then, that efforts to protect endangered species have not had a measurable negative impact on our local economies and, in many instances, may be actually supporting local economic vitality rather than hindering it.