900 turn out for session with congressional panel
(Courtesy: San Francisco Chronicle) Stockton, CA: The Endangered Species Act is destroying rural communities and must be amended to “put ‘people back in the equation,” Northern California farmers told a congressional task force.
“This Act has been the untouchable of untouchables for too long, It has been politicized as a campaign rallying point,” said California Farm Bureau President Bob Vice.
“The true goals of the act were “a healthy and’ secure human environment enriched by the presence of wildlife in our open spaces,” Vice said. Representative Richard Pombo, Calif., chairman of the congressional ‘group that hopes to rewrite the act, said he did not intend to repeal it, but would seek changes in the way it marked, * “We want better science. We want to protect property rights. We want to ‘balance social and economic costs,”
Pombo said. His panel will not draft proposed amendments until all seven hearings are concluded next month. “I’d say to environmentalists, [don’t think you’ll disagree with where we end up,” Pombo said.
Representative Gary Condit, DC an if, added that he hoped form would end confrontations between farmers and environmentalists over the act. “I resent the distinction between ‘farmers and environmentalists, Farmers are good environmentalists. Farmers are good conservationist! Condit said.
Nearly 900 people filled a large exhibit hall at the San Joaquin County ‘Fairgrounds last week for the hearing.
One speaker after another during the daylong hearing criticized what M fourth generation rancher Marion Mathes of Maxwell described as “the ‘overzealous and selective application ‘of the Endangered Species Act.
“The federal vice has caught my family in its jaws… micromanaging my family farm,”*she said, complaining that because of “poor science” she has lost water and land to protect species that aren’t endangered.
“The community suffers when agriculture suffers, My family and my community are under stress.”
Siskiyou County Superintendent of Schools Frank Telluric of Yreka said that cutbacks in timber harvests to protect the spotted owl have reduced forest related jobs in his county by 65 percent in the past eight years. “During times of high unemployment, there are additional incidents of child and spousal abuse along with drug and alcohol abuse,” Tallerico said, “The impact is not just dollars and cents, It’s the impact on people and communistic Men and women wearing blue caps printed with the slogan “ESA Reform Now” outnumbered those wearing green “ESA Protects All of Us” buttons by about 5 to 1, and cheered every speaker who criticized the Act.
One of the few speakers to praise the act, cattle rancher Mark Connolly of Tracy, said he was fairly compensated for setting aside 627 acres of his family’s 14,000 acre farm for habitat for the endangered kit fox. “The agriculture community is being used by the developers,” Connolly said. I am sorry to see so many farmers, . . taking the point position for developers and seal estate, Farmers and ranchers, as good stewards of the land, need 10 realize they have much more in common with environmentalists.””
Pombo, whose family has a dairy ranch near Connolly’s ranch, said Connolly’s view is different from most ranchers, “because you’ve already been compensated, and your neighbors haven’t been.”
Article extracted from this publication >> May 5, 1995
