The Threatened and Endangered Species Recovery Act of 2005 will:
- Eliminate a controversial habitat protection program
- Redefine science standards
- Compensate small-business owners/landowners who are affected by the law.
- NFIB members support environmental stewardship practices that provide landowners with just, proper and appropriate compensation when federal actions reduce the value of their property. Likewise, they believe that changes to the ESA should place greater emphasis on the economic consequences of species protection.
- Ninety percent of endangered species in the United States have habitat on private land. Regulations, especially those that govern land uses, continue to chip away at the rights of individuals to lawfully use their property. The ESA should be reformed to minimize its negative impact on small property owners.
- Past efforts to recover species resulted in small-business owners finding themselves drowning in regulations that were more likely to “endanger” the viability of the small-business owner than the very species the ESA sought to protect in the first place.
- When a parcel of land is designated as habitat or potential habitat for an endangered species, any human activity that affects that species stops until government officials can assess its impact. This can take years, and can ultimately leave landowners with property that they simply cannot use. The results can be the failure of a family business, the loss of jobs, higher prices for goods and services, and decreased tax revenues -- all of which can cripple a community.
- The legislation recognizes that landowners are partners in the government’s effort to recover species. TESRA makes this partnership a reality, insuring that private-property owners have access to remedies that allow them to assist with recovery activities on their land without enduring the financial hardships placed on small-business owners in the past.
