Black Bear Habitat Designation Ordered

By RICHARD BURGESS

LAFAYETTE – A federal judge has ordered the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to begin a process that could bring more scrutiny to projects affecting the habitat of the threatened Louisiana black bear.

U.S. District Judge Tucker Melancon this week ordered the federal agency to designate so-called "critical habitat" for the bear, an often-contentious move that some fear will bring burdensome government regulations.

The black bear already receives protections under the Endangered Species Act, but a critical-habitat designation would bring another layer of review for projects in the designated area that are carried out on federal land, have federal funding or require a federal permit.

"You can’t issue a permit that would diminish bear habitat It’s held to a higher standard," said Harold Schoeffler, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit seeking to force the critical-habitat designation.

Schoeffler, chairman of the Acadiana chapter of the Sierra Club, worked in the 1990s to push the federal government to list the Louisiana black bear as a threatened species.

He foresees the critical-habitat designation bringing more scrutiny to timber harvesting and oil exploration throughout the bear’s range, which stretches from coastal St. Mary and Iberia parishes up through the Atchafalaya Basin and north into the Tensas River Basin.

The designation of critical habitat for the black bear was backed by the Louisiana Sierra Club but opposed by the Black Bear Conservation Committee, a coalition of landowners, conservationists and government agencies.

BBCC Director Paul Davidson said the designation will have little impact on bear habitat and will only tie up resources that could be used in conservation efforts.

"It will force the service to take extra time. In the end result, it is not going to affect anything," Davidson said. He said that the designation could actually hurt conservation efforts by driving away landowners who are now participating in programs to convert agricultural land to forested bear habitat. "It has the potential to alienate landowners with the fear the government is going to come in and regulate them," Davidson said. Critical habitat often brings to mind the battles between loggers and environmentalists over spotted owl habitat in the Pacific northwest. Critical habitat came into play in most of those cases because the timber harvest was on federal land. Davidson said about 90 percent of the bear’s habitat in Louisiana is on private land, meaning it is less likely that a federal connection will arise to trigger a critical-habitat review. Critical habitat became a heated issue here soon after the Louisiana black bear was listed as threatened in 1992. The wildlife service had proposed to designate more than 3 million acres as critical habitat in 1994. The proposal met stiff opposition from landowners and criticism from Commissioner of Agriculture Bob Odom, then-Gov. Edwin Edwards and former U.S. Rep. Billy Tauzin. The wildlife service took no formal action, but the Endangered Species Act requires that the agency designate critical habitat unless studies show the designation will have no effect on recovery – a "not prudent" finding. Faced with a lawsuit over failure to designate critical habitat, attorneys for the wildlife service responded that the statute of limitations for filing a legal action expired in the 1990s. That legal stance drew a heated response from the judge in a 33-page ruling that quoted French philosopher Voltaire, founding father John Adams and President Theodore Roosevelt, an ardent conservationist. "It is nonsensical that Congress intended that endangered animals be left unprotected simply because the time by which the protection should have been provided passed," Melancon wrote. The wildlife service could appeal Melancon’s ruling. Schoeffler said it is conceivable but unlikely that the wildlife service would come back and make a formal finding that it is now "not prudent" to designate critical habitat, especially considering that the agency had once before proposed critical habitat. Agency spokesman Tom MacKenzie would not comment on the ruling. He said only that the agency feels it has been successful in working with the state and private landowners in bear conservation efforts. Melancon set a one-year deadline for the wildlife service to submit a final critical habitat rule for publication in the federal register. There are no reliable studies of the black bear population in Louisiana. Davidson estimated a population range from 600 to 700. The population is believed to have fallen to about 300 at the time the bear was listed as threatened.