State Rep. Bryan Cutler is among legislators in Harrisburg who want to strip the fish and game commissions — or any state agency — from having first crack at trying to keep plants and animals from disappearing in the state.
Cutler, of Peach Bottom, is among 12 Republican co-sponsors of the Endangered Species Coordination Act. It would forbid any state agency from declaring any flora or fauna as endangered or threatened unless the federal government has first taken that step under the Endangered Species Act.
The bill has been referred to the House Committee on Game and Fisheries.
The Pennsylvania Game Commission's current mandate requires it to protect the state's wildlife.
The Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission has a similar mandate for fish, amphibians, reptiles and aquatic organisms. The state Department of Environmental Protection safeguards trees and plants.
House Bill 449 — and two other bills aimed specifically at the fish and boat commissions — are a backlash from two proposed listings that industries opposed.
In 2009, the PFBC sought to list five species of freshwater mussels in the Allegheny River as threatened or endangered. But commercial dredgers for sand and gravel complained their business would be shut down.
Last fall, the PGC, saying 98 percent to 99 percent of three bat species in Pennsylvania had been killed by the deadly white-nose syndrome in the last three years, proposed listing those three species as endangered in an effort to save the last survivors and allow for more research.
But the commercial timber industry opposed the step, saying it could "cripple" logging, with "considerable negative effect of the state's economy."
The PGC held back on the listings.
"I'm not willing to sacrifice literally tens of thousands of jobs to save their little bats," said state Rep. Jeffrey Pyle, of Ford City, prime sponsor of the endangered species bill.
"For as good as they (PGC) are for achieving their mission, they run into problems when it overlaps other priorities, like jobs, coal, gas and lumber.
"We're coming to a head."
Cutler said the bat and mussel incidents "highlight the concerns when agencies act independently."
Requiring state agencies to coordinate their efforts with federal agencies would make sure they both follow the same guidelines and "not short-circuit the process," Cutler said.
But be careful what you wish for, say state wildlife officials.
Officials for both agencies say their efforts are meant to head off federal listing under the Endangered Species Act. Restrictions on industries are likely more restrictive if listed by the feds, they warn.
The efforts on the state level, they maintain, are to stabilize populations before things get too dire and a federal designation is a last resort.
"You don't want to go to federal listing. We're trying to avoid this at all costs," said Chris Urban, PFBC's nongame endangered species coordinator.
Urban noted that even though all five mussels did get listed either by the state or the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the PFBC worked things out with dredgers. Both sides made concessions, and both are satisfied with a working protocol, he said.
John Arway, the PFBC's executive director, called the bill Cutler has signed onto "alarming."
"A lot of people complain that we protect species at the edge of their range," he said, "but you have to protect them or their range shrinks, and then they become nationally rare."
Arway said his agency works with those who could be affected by a state listing. "I can't think of very many cases where we haven't been able to work it out," he said.
He also noted that much of the habitat work in trying to improve the lot of species in trouble often benefits game species. For example, improved habitat for the state-endangered Massasauga rattlesnake in western Pennsylvania helps the woodcock.
Stripping the agencies of their power to try to save vanishing species would be "counterproductive," believes Greg Turner, PGC's endangered animals specialist.
In the case of the bats versus timbering, Turner said misinformation confused matters. Timbering would not be massively restricted, he said. In fact, some type of timbering actually benefits feeding areas for bats in trouble.
Restrictions around caves with bat colonies would only be seasonal, he says.
Another bill recently introduced by state Rep. Tom Caltagirone, of Berks County, would prohibit PFBC from making any new regulations or endangered or threatened listings without first getting input from the Independent Regulatory Review Commission.
A similar bill introduced after the mussels flap in 2009 died in committee.
And state Sen. Don White, of Indiana County, has introduced a similar bill in the Senate that would bring the PGC under the state review commission.
All three bills chill Jeff Schmidt, director of the Pennsylvania chapter of the Sierra Club.
"It seems curious that these folks who are not interested in sound science are willing to allow the people in Washington to decide what species should be protected, but not willing to listen to the scientists here in Pennsylvania," he said.
"We consider that the federal requirements should be the floor below which we don't fall. The folks in D.C. don't know what's going on in the forests and river of Pennsylvania. That's why we have our own scientists."
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