Senate keeps moratorium on endangered species
March 14, 1996
Web posted at: 12:30 a.m.ESTFrom Correspondent Don Knapp
SAN FRANCISCO, California (CNN) -- The U.S. Senate Wednesday narrowly rejected efforts to reopen the endangered species list.
By a vote of 51-49, the Senate passed a measure sponsored by Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, to continue the halt on listing new species that Congress imposed a year ago.
As a result, the coho salmon, the red-legged frog, and the Florida black bear won't make the list.
They're among some two hundred animals and plants facing extinction. All passed biological requirements for endangered species list protection, but failed the political test.
"We want to have cost benefit analysis, we want to have economic impact analysis," Hutchinson said. "There's no good reason for people in the Northwest to have the entire timber industry shut down because of the spotted owl."
Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nevada, called Wednesday's vote "an assault on good science and good government."
A medical case for re-opening list
While it was mainly economic reasons that prompted the Senate vote, environmentalists, doctors, and patients in San Francisco tried to make a medical case for lifting the moratorium.
Three-fourths of the most frequently prescribed drugs come from natural substances. Vincintin, for example, comes from the periwinkle plant and is used by patients like Jennifer Veenstra, who has Hodgkin's disease.
"It's been brought home to me," Veenstra says. "You derive such big benefits from biodiversity ... It certainly saved my life."
Opponents of the Endangered Species Act say a "reformed" version would be better.
"There's even more protection in Endangered Species Act reform that we're trying to do than is in current law," said Rep. Bill Brewster, D-Oklahoma. "Because it (the reformed version) provides incentives for private property owners to keep the listed plant on their property."
But environmentalists say only by reopening the endangered species list will the world be able to slow extinctions, which they say are occurring at the greatest rate since the demise of the dinosaurs.
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