Points to Ponder

• Over the last couple of decades, we have had many propositions that were not designed to be catastrophic for communities that are dependant upon the use or management of the surrounding environment.  Yet, many propositions have been devastating because of ongoing abuse of litigation in our court system. 
  
  
• Since the USFWS has not been able to acquire enough data to analyze all of the impacts (on private property, real estate development, mining operations or grazing), it’s impossible to be certain of the total impacts … but it’s obvious that the impacts will be far greater than estimated.
  
  
• However, the costs that were identified with existing data add up to a multi-billion dollar hit on rural America. 
  
  
• The USFWS admits in the Federal Register that critical habitat designations have simply opened the door to endless litigation in our court system, and have hurt the possibility of constructive management for species by handicapping the amount of human and monetary resources available to actually implement effective species recovery.
  
  
• Therefore, according to the USFWS's own admissions, in return for this multi-billion dollar economic disaster, affecting our rural communities and schools – we hurt the very species the recovery process is supposed to be protecting.
  
  
• Historically, when the USFWS has given the public estimates of economic impact, the figures have not proven to be accurate.  On the contrary, in the past our REAL impacts (spotted owl, grizzly bear, bull trout, etc.) have been exponentially higher than forecast.  If the USFWS is forced by the court to take this misguided step, and this history of low-balling the impacts holds true for this species, the damage to what is left of our natural resource multiple use management will be astronomical. 
  
  
• At the end of a year in which we have burned over 9,000,000 acres with catastrophic fire, it seems ironic that one of the tools for forest fuel reduction – that of pre-commercial thinning – is going to be severely restricted by lynx habitat designation. Managing our forests using only the tool of catastrophic fire does not benefit the lynx or its habitat.
  
  
• In Montana, the State Lands will take a $44 million hit in this proposal and the U of M’s experimental forest will see an impact of over $6 million.  These lands are managed to assist in paying for the state school systems.  So, this proposal not only severely impacts private tax paying citizens and further erodes our rural economic base, it also deals a double blow to the schools by crippling the management of the School Trust Lands.
  
  
• Landowners should be provided incentives, not punishment, if their property has potential endangered species habitat.
   
• There is currently an ESA improvement bill that has passed the House of Representatives and is currently in the Senate addressing the ill effects of Critical Habitat designation.