Down with The God Squad

By TED GUP

Imagine revising Genesis. In the new version Noah stands on the gangplank to the ark, reviewing the species of the world pair by pair, deciding on a purely economic basis which creatures to save and which to consign to the deepening waters. He turns away the pests, the serpents and other species he deems useless to man or too costly to take along. If such a vision strains the imagination, consider the call by some Bush Administration officials to amend the Endangered Species Act. Their aim is to expand greatly the powers of a committee of political appointees that already can exempt species from the protection of the act when man's economic interests so dictate. The committee is commonly known as the "God Squad," not for its collective wisdom but because the decisions it may render were once left to an even higher authority.

Noah's directive was to preserve all species. Modern man has no such option. Some species are already doomed, the incidental victims of logging, mining, dams and the fragmentation of their habitats. Almost daily we face another agonizing conflict between ecology and economics. In the Pacific Northwest loggers' jobs are pitted against the need to save ancient forests, the habitat of spotted owls. In the Southwest a $582 million water project is delayed because it threatens the squawfish. In Arizona a $200 million observatory was held up on behalf of some 150 rare Mount Graham red squirrels. Are all these species worth saving? And who among us is fit to make such decisions?

The preservation of species is a task involving a volatile mix of biology, politics, economics and morality. For 17 years the Endangered Species Act has provided a "911" distress line for life forms teetering on the edge. But its species-by-species approach does little to avert conflict. Man cannot manage nature through a series of ad hoc rescue attempts, ignoring the underlying causes for the loss of biodiversity. The answer is not to dilute the Endangered Species Act but to better anticipate the consequences of human activity, focusing on entire ecosystems rather than on single species. By the time a creature joins the endangered list it may be too late, the genetic stock impoverished, its habitat destroyed.

Species preservation depends upon political resolve. Costs of conservation can be stunning, appearing all the more so when weighed against the abstract value of a species. Increasingly, biologists intent on saving a species are heard to cite either its usefulness to man or the dangers to man attendant upon its loss. Thus the tropical rain forests are said to hold medicinal, agricultural and scientific wealth. This kind of argument, credible as it may be, reflects scientists' perceptions that only appeals to man's self-interest will generate public support for conservation. But anthropocentric arguments legitimatize the notion that species must justify their right to exist by proving their utility to man. That leaves the vast majority of species defenseless and debases the fundamental reason for preserving them -- their intrinsic worth.

Precisely what makes the Endangered Species Act unique is that it views the % world not through man's eyes but from the high ground of the Creation. It sets no test for survival and respects the meek as it does the mighty. The humpback whale and the black rhinoceros enjoy no greater protection than the noonday snail and the lakeside daisy. Recently an inch-long unpigmented eyeless shrimp found in a sinkhole near Gainesville, Fla., joined the ranks of the imperiled. In shielding the humblest species, the act expresses its highest reverence for diversity, and has evolved into an almost sacred covenant defining the nation's relationship with nature.

In recent months, Agriculture Secretary Clayton Yeutter Jr., Interior Secretary Manuel Lujan and some in Congress have suggested amending the law and letting the God Squad make the toughest calls. That would be the effective demise of the act. The Senate last week defeated a measure that would have empowered the God Squad to settle the dispute over timbering the ancient forests. But the broader question remains. Ruling on a species' fate has eternal consequences. A political appointee's vision dims beyond the next election. Matters of such gravity ought to reflect society's broadest interests. Biologists, environmentalists, theologians, historians and, yes, representatives of industry have a claim to participate in such decisions. Some in this Administration and its predecessor have criticized the Endangered Species Act and shown a willingness to subordinate biological evidence to political expediency. Such was the case with the spotted owl and the Mount Graham squirrel.

Today species are vanishing on a grand scale. There are 1,116 imperiled species on the list, an additional 3,600 candidate species behind them. Some will die out waiting to be listed. These numbers are only a pale reflection of a wider problem. In tropical rain forests, loss of habitat is pushing at least 20,000 species a year into extinction, according to Harvard entomologist Edward O. Wilson. If the U.S. is to influence policy overseas, it will be by dint of example, not rhetoric. Wealthy nations must check their own appetites before asking far greater sacrifices of poorer nations.

A relative newcomer on earth, man knows little about the species with whom he shares the landscape. Fewer than 1.4 million of earth's tens of millions of species have been named, much less examined for their part in making the planet more hospitable. How then do we measure each loss or know when we have severed a vital link with nature? Observes noted paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould: "It would be a very bleak world with cockroaches and dogs and not much else." The final blessing of the Endangered Species Act is that it preserves the elements that stir man's sense of wonder. That benefit alone is too precious for the God Squad to barter away.