Agreements Encourage Landowners, Endangered Species to Coexist

The environmentalists were out to save a small endangered bird called the red-cockaded woodpecker. Holder, president of the North Carolina Pine Needle Producers Association, an organization of landowners who make their living by raking up fallen pine needles and selling them for gardening purposes, was out to save his livelihood. Holder saw the environmentalists as richer and better-educated than people like him and considered them "a thumbs-on organization that was out to crush me and put me out of business."

That was then. Today, Holder and the Washington-based organization Environmental Defense, along with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, have become allies in a campaign that all sides say will be good both for the woodpeckers and the landowners.

At the heart of this new partnership is a Safe Harbor agreement, which gives landowners the ability to bargain for freedom from government micromanagement in exchange for commitments to ensure habitat preservation for a variety of endangered species.

Safe Harbor agreements were forged in response to some unexpected consequences of the federal Endangered Species Act.

Some of the law's provisions prevent private landowners from doing anything on their land that would damage the habitat of endangered plants, birds or animals. For example, loggers might be barred from cutting old-growth forest, or a farmer might not be allowed to sell a meadow for a housing development if certain plants or animals live there.

But in some cases, the law also discouraged landowners from doing things that would actually help the very animals the Endangered Species Act was supposed to protect.

The red-cockaded woodpeckers of North Carolina prosper in healthy old-growth pine forests, free of brush or intruding hardwoods. Those same kinds of forests, coincidentally, are also good for the pine-needle producers. But landowners who might have wanted to do the kind of brush clearing that would keep their old-growth pine forests healthy were afraid to do so. They knew that if they did, the woodpeckers might come -- and then the Endangered Species Act would kick in and impose restrictions on what they could do with their land.

"It was heart-wrenching," Holder said. "People down here would spend half their lives paying for a piece of land and working that land, and then a bird nests there and suddenly they lose their right to manage that land.

"They want to cut a little timber to send their kids to college or to pay for their retirement, and suddenly they can't do that anymore."

Safe Harbor agreements were devised as a way around that.

These agreements, actually contracts incorporated in a permit from the Fish and Wildlife Service, ensure that if landowners take specific actions to encourage endangered species onto their land -- by creating wetlands or planting certain kinds of trees, for example -- they won't be hit later with new restrictions because of the wildlife that moves in.

That, in turn, allows landowners to develop their land as they wish once the Safe Harbor agreement -- often lasting 20 years or so -- has expired. The agreements also include escape clauses that would let landowners make changes if they run into unexpected circumstances -- a financial emergency, for example.

The Safe Harbor agreements were devised as a way to make sure that people who do good deeds for endangered species "will not be punished for doing them," explained Environmental Defense attorney Michael Bean.

In North Carolina, Safe Harbor agreements were negotiated at a series of meetings that began in the early 1990s among the pine needle producers, the Fish and Wildlife Service and Bean.

"I remember Michael Bean saying there might be some way to find some common ground and work with the landowners," Holder recalled. "I learned through the months that followed that (the environmentalists) were wonderful people to work with and they never, ever did something behind my back. They were always up front with me."

Since the first Safe Harbor agreements were written in 1997, two dozen landowners in the Sand Hills region have signed up. Some of them are small landowners like Holder, who enrolled his 100 acres. Others are owners of horse farms or golf courses, and some are large corporations. In all, 19,000 acres in the Sand Hills region are protected by Safe Harbor agreements. The area now supports about 50 family groups of woodpeckers and has sufficient habitat for twice that many.

Safe Harbor agreements are also being used to help save endangered species in Texas, Hawaii and elsewhere.

One of the newest Safe Harbor programs is now being set up on the Hawaiian island of Molokai. It's intended to provide a new lease on life for the state bird, an endangered goose called the nene (pronounced nay-nay).

Nenes were once common on the island, but they disappeared centuries ago -- victims of overhunting, beginning with whalers who would stop at Molokai to replenish their ships' stores. Loss of habitat and the introduction of non-native predators such as mongooses and feral cats also contributed to the nenes' decline.

The birds have become so scarce that providing attractive habitat simply isn't enough. Instead, nenes from a captive breeding program will be introduced into the wild on the Puu O Hoku Ranch, which occupies several thousand acres at the eastern end of the island. Scientists believe the birds will coexist well with cattle, which naturally keep wild grasses cropped short -- good habitat for the birds. The ranchers will also try to protect the birds through other means, such as controlling the non-native predators.

Paul Conry of the Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources said the owners of the Puu O Hoku Ranch-- like many other landowners -- would have been reluctant to allow the birds to be introduced onto their land without the protection of a Safe Harbor agreement.

The owners don't want to give interviews, Conry said. "They're not doing it for publicity. They just think this is a neat bird. They have a lot of good feelings for the nene and they wanted to see it on their property."

The same kind of appreciation for native birds has also led 15 ranchers in southern Texas to open 60,000 acres for reintroduction of the Attwater's prairie chicken, a grouse that once roamed freely throughout the area but now has become one of the rarest birds in the world.

John Campbell of the Sam Houston Conservation and Development Area Inc., a nonprofit organization that has been working on the project, said Texas landowners have traditionally resisted the kind of government controls the Endangered Species Act can bring.

"We used the 'three-s' method to deal with endangered species," he said, only half joking. " 'Shoot 'em, shovel 'em and shut up.' I'm not saying that actually occurred, but that's just an easy way to describe it."

But now, he said, "Some of the landowners are coming back and saying, 'You know, I remember that these birds used to be on the place, and I'd like to have 'em back.' And that's just been an amazing change for Texans."

Bean, the Environmental Defense lawyer, acknowledged that Safe Harbor won't work for every endangered species.

It works best when there's some common ground between the species would-be protectors and the landowners. In Texas, for example, actions taken to encourage the prairie chicken, like replanting the original prairie grasses, are also expected to improve forage for cattle and help protect water supplies in the area. Most landowners, he said, want to be good stewards of their land, and they welcome wildlife -- if they won't be punished for doing so.

Safe Harbor doesn't necessarily provide permanent habitat protection. But it does buy time for endangered species, Bean pointed out. And landowners in Safe Harbor agreements are required to help the endangered species re-establish themselves -- doing such good deeds as drilling nesting holes in the pines in North Carolina or controlling predators in Hawaii.

Perhaps as important as anything else, Safe Harbor agreements encourage a nonconfrontational approach to environmental protection.

For most of his 22 years as an environmental lawyer, Bean said, most of his time was spent on legislation and litigation. Now, he's trying to put into practice something that the famed environmentalist Aldo Leopold once said: "The only progress that counts is what happens on the back 40."

"In earlier years," Bean said, "I might have counted my progress on the number of regulations I helped some agency to promulgate. Now it's occurred to me that what really counts is what happens on the land."

Some Views on Why Conservation Is Important

Why worry about endangered species? What difference does it make if the red-cockaded woodpecker or the spotted owl or any of the hundreds of other plants, insects, fish, birds or other animals that are headed for extinction survive or not?

Scientists, environmentalists, even poets and religious groups have offered a variety of answers over the years. Here are some comments from some of the people involved in setting up Safe Harbor agreements:

-- Bob Fledderman, environmental manager for Westvaco Corp., a wood pulp and paper company based in South Carolina. The company is involved in efforts to save the red-cockaded woodpecker: "I've always had an idea that any company that runs in this country has to have sort of a social license from the population in order to operate. That's certainly true of people who manage natural resources. We do things out there that people don't always like, like clear-cutting and building roads through forests. We're allowed to do that to the extent that we provide other things that the people like.

"We do a lot of good things -- we provide jobs and we provide wood for homes and furniture. But I also think that we have to go a couple of steps further. We do have to manage our land to provide for biodiversity. The public expects us to do that, and if we don't, we risk losing our social license to be in business."

-- John Campbell, of the Sam Houston Conservation and Development Area Inc., which has been helping to save the Attwater's prairie chicken: "The prairie chicken is an indicator of the quality of our prairie. If we improve that prairie, and if the prairie chicken does make a comeback, that's wonderful, and that's what we want.

"But when we get a good prairie system going and we protect water quality and we get good grazing management, and we do all the things that are needed for the prairie chicken, then the income of the ranchers comes up too. And that will keep the ranchers in place, and managing their properties."

-- Michael Bean, attorney for Environmental Defense, based in Washington, D.C.: "All of these species have been part of the landscape since well before European settlers arrived here -- in most cases, before any settlers arrived here. The loss of a part of our living natural heritage would be a permanent loss of something that has been part of our natural landscape for thousands of years."

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