Matching green with green.
September 2007
Volume 25 | Number 3
Save s Species, Save on Taxes
By Mitch Tobin
A couple of years ago, I met with some Arizona ranchers to learn how they might help an endangered frog without endangering their livelihoods. In 2002, the state’s livestock industry balked when the federal government listed the Chiricahua leopard frog as threatened. Much of the species’ natural habitat—streams, springs, and marshy wetlands—was either gone or infested with rapacious, non-native predators, leaving the leopard frog dependent on the stock ponds that dot the region’s high-desert grasslands and wooded highlands. About half of the remaining frog populations were found in cattle tanks and water holes built for livestock. Ranchers feared that environmentalists would use the heaviest hammer in their toolbox—the Endangered Species Act (ESA)—to further restrict grazing.
When the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service listed the frog, it acknowledged ranchers’ concerns by crafting a special rule: If a leopard frog was harmed or killed on non-federal lands while livestock were using a water hole or while ranchers were maintaining a stock pond, this “incidental take” would be exempt from prosecution. Local ranchers, seeking even more regulatory certainty, joined with the Nature Conservancy to create a “safe harbor agreement” that would afford ranchers immunity from added restrictions if they improved habitat for frogs (see page 15).
These measures increased ranchers’ comfort level, but many still had deep reservations about the frog and the ESA. As we swayed in rocking chairs and sipped ice tea on his porch that afternoon, rancher Bill McDonald told me the government needed to take the next step. “There still aren’t the incentives we ought to have. People ought to actually be paying people to raise these frogs,” McDonald said. “You’ve got an endangered species in trouble, we’ve got places out here where they do well, and there should be out-and-out incentives, not just elimination of penalties.”
Several years and many bruising ESA battles later, McDonald’s idea of using carrots—not just sticks—to conserve biological diversity is at the heart of a proposal in Congress to improve the ESA’s performance on private land. The federal government isn’t about to send a check to ranchers who nurture tadpoles, but a bipartisan bill introduced earlier this year—the Endangered Species Recovery Act of 2007—would provide $400 million in tax breaks to property owners who conserve valuable habitat, either through an agreement with the federal government or by creating an easement on their land (see page 14).
