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Monday, November 23, 1998
New environmental policy offers measure of balance
Not everyone is pleased with a plan governors have approved for managing environmental problems.
By Keith Rogers
Review-Journal
Western governors are buzzing with a new word -- "enlibra" -- touted by Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt to symbolize an environmental management approach shaped by "balance and stewardship."
Leavitt, a Republican and former chairman of the Western Governors' Association, and Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber, a Democrat, took the lead in developing the policy, so-named from the Latin, "in balance." It was adopted by Western governors at the association's June meeting in Alaska and will be discussed at their environmental summit in Phoenix on Dec. 4-5.
Leavitt said the doctrine encourages communities to find common solutions to what environmentalists consider problems. Examples include protection of the Utah prairie dog, endangered fish and birds of the Colorado River and threatened desert tortoise populations in the Southwest.
But according to Gov. Bob Miller's office, the policy is already being practiced in Nevada in dealing with such species as the desert tortoise, the Moapa dace and the Amargosa toad.
In the case of the desert tortoise, a federally protected reptile, Clark County developed a conservation plan to preserve habitat for the species as well as other Mojave Desert animals and plants. The plan allows developers to pay a fee that, through The Nature Conservancy of Nevada, goes to buy grazing permits on public lands that have prime habitat for desert tortoises.
Similarly, developer Del Webb Corp. worked with The Nature Conservancy of Nevada and the Bureau of Land Management to acquire habitat for the endangered Moapa dace, a minnow found only in a system of warm pools adjacent to an existing wildlife refuge 55 miles northeast of Las Vegas.
As for the Amargosa toad -- only found in the wild in Nye County and primarily in the Oasis Valley near Beatty, 115 miles northwest of Las Vegas -- The Nature Conservancy of Nevada, the Beatty Town Board, the BLM, the Nevada Division of Wildlife and property owners cooperated on protecting springs and ponds to prevent the federal government from listing it as an endangered species.
"Nevada may be ahead of the curve on this concept. We're already practicing it, and it seems to be working for us, even though we didn't invent a happy word for it," Miller spokesman Gordon Absher said.
Graham Chisholm, state director of The Nature Conservancy of Nevada, said while his organization is interested in results from environmental policies such as enlibra, his group's focus remains on buying land and conserving it.
"Who knows what it even means? It's fairly general," Chisholm said of enlibra.
According to a background document posted on the Western Governors' Association Web site, www.westgov.org., "People generally agree about the need to protect the environment and its natural resources. Unfortunately groups representing extreme positions have largely shaped environmental management and the environmental debate."
Representatives from some environmental groups, however, have a different view of enlibra.
"The Western governors and their definition of balance or middle ground is very different than environmentalists' definition of balance," said David Hogan, rivers program coordinator for the Tucson, Ariz.-based Southwest Center for Biological Diversity.
The group, a staunch supporter of endangered species protection, withdrew this month from the lower Colorado River Multi-Species Conservation steering committee. The committee rejected a compromise that had been negotiated between water and power agencies and environmentalists to conserve water for endangered wildlife in and along the Colorado River delta and the Gulf of California in Mexico.
"Unfortunately, the Western Governors and other industry groups use programs like this enlibra as lip service for conservation," Hogan said, noting that water and power interests from states along the lower Colorado River have blocked sending even a small amount of water to the delta and gulf to enhance species habitat.
"That's unreasonable and that does not represent a balance of the use of the river water," Hogan said.
"Water for profit is apparently more important than endangered wildlife," he said.
Hogan's group tried last year to persuade a federal judge in Phoenix to make the Bureau of Reclamation lower Lake Mead by 22 feet to save habitat for the Southwestern willow flycatcher, a bird on the brink of extinction.
About one month after the lawsuit was filed, the bureau, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the states of Nevada, Arizona and California struck an agreement to spend $4.5 million to develop a plan to protect not only the Southwestern willow flycatcher, but two endangered fish species -- the razorback sucker and bonytail chub.
Hogan immediately labeled the agreement and its accompanying biological opinion as flawed, saying it was an attempt to make the lawsuit moot.
The lawsuit was later dismissed.
Colleen Dwyer, a spokeswoman for the Bureau of Reclamation's office in Boulder City, said the multispecies protection plan that's being developed requires the bureau to protect 1,400 acres of Southwestern willow flycatcher habitat, a factor, she said, that weighed in the judge's decision.
An environmental group from Leavitt's state, the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, also expressed concerns about enlibra.
"It sounds good, but in practice Gov. Leavitt hasn't implemented it here," said Heidi McIntosh, conservation director for the alliance.
"Earlier this year we had applied for a position on (Utah's) Resource Advisory Committee for Bureau of Land Management Lands. Our representative was well-qualified, but the committee and Gov. Leavitt wouldn't approve him," McIntosh said.
"We want to see him walk the talk," she said.
Leavitt responded Friday to McIntosh's comments, saying he was not surprised and that the issue with the BLM advisory committee "was completely unrelated to enlibra.
"There are groups that will oppose enlibra and I expect the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance will be one of them," Leavitt said.
Leavitt's spokeswoman, Vicki Varela, said governors in Western states are devising practical solutions to environmental problems.
"Part of what we are trying to accomplish is to say, 'All right, aside from all the theoretical debates that people will always have about environmental issues, there are governors in Western states that are coming up with practical solutions.
"So to the extent that every state has already got in progress solutions that rely on these principles, that just strengthens the whole enlibra movement," Varela said.
The enlibra doctrine is based on eight principles, embodied in such slogans as: national standards, neighborhood solutions; collaboration not polarization; and markets before mandates.
Leavitt contends enlibra is not a rejection of the goals and objectives of environmental laws such as the Endangered Species Act or the Clean Water Act. Instead, he said, it will serve to find community solutions for what appears to be nationwide environmental management problems.
"Today there is no symbol for the middle, for the majority of citizens who believe that the environment and its natural resources can be protected while at the same time providing recreational and employment opportunities for citizens," according to Leavitt. "Enlibra will be that symbol for the middle."
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Environmentalists claim the Southwestern willow flycatcher, a bird on the brink of extinction that lives along the lower Colorado River, needs more stewardship than the Western Governors' Association is promoting in a new policy, enlibra, which stands for balance and stewardship.
Photo courtesy of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
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