Environmentalists and Endangered Species

By Marc Lappé

These days our offices are filled with more death than life. Behind me, a tiny begonia struggles for life. Across the way, a brass sculpture of a spotted owl skull sits on a casting of a redwood stump. The owl stares with enormous, darkened eye sockets across the room towards my desk. Ron Garrigues, the owl's sculptor writes that his work has been deeply affected by the "rampant destruction wrought by man's presence on our fragile planet." Where once his art centered on lyric purity of line and form, he has decided since 1990 to work with the stark metaphor of the skull because of his first-hand experience of the depredation of tropical rain forests and old-growth timberlands.

The irony of the skull of an endangered species serving as "art" was driven home to us as we finished a long-awaited piece for the Environmental Protection Agency on the Endangered Species Act. No fewer than 517 animals and 744 plants in the continental United States are currently threatened or endangered with extinction. The habitat for at least 155 of these species is considered "critical" in the words of the Fish and Wildlife Service. Pesticides, products that continue to be registered at a desperate pace, directly or indirectly endanger 20% of these species. Currently, the chemical industry adds 10 new chemicals for every one that it reluctantly abandons after a given product's hyper-toxicity is finally deemed too great to warrant continued registration.

Our work shows that the EPA continues to rely on outdated, acute toxicity measures to plot the likelihood that a given application rate will be "safe." We note that many if not most of the at-risk species are at the brink of extinction precisely because they have already been stressed by environmental and chemical disturbance, disruptions that will only be aided and abetted by an influx of more chemicals. We argue to the EPA that the true risk to an endangered species from exposure to pesticides has to include the more subtle effects derived from its full formulation and breakdown products. These latter pesticide components would appear to be the proper targets of review, not just the "active" ingredients currently assessed. Some of these breakdown products like the 3, 5, 6 trichloro-pyridinol from the widely used Garlon-based pesticide, are likely reproductive toxins,a potential death knell for an already fertility-stressed species. Others, like the almost universally used weed-killing combination of 2, 4 D, dicamba, and Dichloroprop have just been found to impair reproduction, a double-indemnity for the grassland habitat and vernal pool species that are near extinction. As golf courses butt against wetlands, and home developments encroach on the seasonal pools that support tiger salamanders or red-legged frogs, such herbicide mixtures used in conjunction with development risk further degradation of these endangered and threatened species. To simply allow builders to "buy out" a wetland space hundreds of miles away as a trade-off to local habitat destruction appears a poor Hobson's choice.

So what are we to do? Hand-wringing is clearly not the answer. Harvard's E.O. Wilson's suggests that we put aside some 1.4% of the earth's surface that are the ecological "hot spots" for about 40% of the non-fish vertebrates and vascular plants on the earth. And there is a slight reason for hope that Wilson's ideas will take root: last month, the Ivory Coast put aside almost 15% of its land mass to conserve rain forest habitat, following Costa Rica's lead. But the real lynch pin for species survival is twofold: first, reduction of the toxic intrusions to even intact-appearing habitat that threaten species survival; and second, the reduction of human population pressure on the environment. The first can be achieved by drastically scaling back the registration of new pesticides and reviewing the status of high-risk products still on the market. Ideally, any successful registrants would have to prove the absence of reproductive harms from their products before the chemicals would be allowed into commerce near endangered species habitat. The second might best be done by limiting the further intrusion of human activities like logging into still-intact habitat, like the Amazon basin or Central Africa, and ensuring the continuity of biomes by allowing corridors of green belts to connect existing preserves. This latter goal may best be achieved by limiting use in public lands maintained under the Wilderness Preservation Act, a law currently being undermined by the Bush administration.

To achieve either of these linked objectives, we need a new voice in the wilderness of endangered species, one that echoes like Rachel Carson's plea 40 years ago that we stop and listen - the birds have stopped singing. It's time to act.