09/12/06 Keeping tabs on the endangered

Keeping tabs on the endangered. I'm Greg Martin with today's Line On Agriculture. A newly-released General Accountability Office (GAO) report says that species recovery under the Endangered Species Act would be improved with changes. The GAO's report to Congress, at the request of Congress takes a look at 31 species according to Trish McClure, an Assistant Director with the GAO's Natural Resources Environment Team. MCCLURE: We were asked by this collection of requesters to look into the recovery program for endangered species because as you might be aware there is concern on both sides of the fence that we are not making as much progress as perhaps people think we should be recovering species. And other people think we're doing a good job and the Endangered Species Act is working. So we've done various jobs, issued various reports in the past on issues related to the endangered species act and different program element implementation and this one was specifically looking at recovery of species. This report is actually the second in a series of reports to be released by the GAO. MCCLURE: In the first report we looked at the actual recovery plan contents. According to the law there are supposed to be different pieces of information included in each recovery plan so we looked at a random sample of 107 recovery plans and reported on the extent to which they included those required elements. 19 of the species that include not only mammals but also birds, insects, crustaceans and plants have recently been de-listed. The remaining 12 species are much farther away from being de-listed and for some, recovery is uncertain. While the GAO doesn't actively participate in the recovery efforts, according to McClure they do make recommendations. MCCLURE: We recommend that the secretaries of the interior and commerce direct the services, this is the Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fishery Service, to report estimates of the time and cost needed to recover species in a single location and what we mean by that is in a single report that is easily accessible by Congress and the public. To accomplish this task they should implement their current recovery plan guidance when drafting or revising recovery plans so the plans routinely estimate the overall time and cost to recover a species. To view the complete report online, go the GAO's website at www.gao.gov. That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.