WSP03664

• File Number: 8065
• Description: Section D General Statewide Issues - Endangered Species Act - Fisheries
• State: CO
• Basin: Statewide
• Date: 8/1/1993
• Author: American Bar Associa
• Title: Natural Resources and Environment - Number 8-Volume 1 - Summer 1993 - Endangered Species Protection
• Water Supply Pro - Doc Type: Publication

OO~'~19'

Dr. Tay/or is director
oJ wildlife ecology
for tbe California
Forestry Association
in Sacramento.

6

Biological
Uncertainty
in the
Endangered
Species Act

Robert J. Taylor

For years the political community regarded
the scientific community as an impenetrable but
useful black box that swallowed money and
bright young people and regurgitated truth and
clever gadgets. It has come as a recent disap-
pointment for many to learn that science is of-
ten inauentive to social needs and in some cases
does not even seem to be a reliable window on
the truth. In few fields of the natural sciences
is this of more immediate concern than in the
application of the biological sciences to species
preservation under the Endangered Species Act
(ESA) , 16 D,S,C. g;g; 1532-44 (1988).
Problems with these sciences arc manifest
in two ways. Because many ecological scientists
work in politically sensitive government agen~
cies, their work has historically been influ.
enced by nonscientific bureaucratic and
political pressures. This is not necessarily bad
in principle; applied scientists are supposed to
do research on problems of social concern, and
such problems are usually brought to focus
through the political lens, But when these pres-
sures take the form of research projects meant
not to solve problems but to support preexist.
ing short.term political and bureaucratic goals,
the methodology of science is distorted. That
methodological distortion may persist well be-
yond the project in question and damage the
fabric of science. The long history of political
micromanagement of science in the state and
federal agencies that manage lands and wildlife
means that the quality of research by their staff
biologists is wildly uneven.
The second expression of the problem oc.
curs within the relath'ely insulated ranks of un i-

NR&E/SUMMER 1993

versity ecologislS. A number of questions of basic
importance to the effective administration of
the ESA have been ignored by academic biolo-
gists. To some extent this can be attributed [0
the low level of research funding in basic ecol.
ogy, bllt equally at fault is the fact that the basic
science community has deemed these questions
scientifically uninteresting. Through its control
of the Nalional Science Foundation, the basic
science community has managed to isolate itself
from social problems to the point that it feels
little pressure to justify its work in terms other
than intellectual CUflosity.
These two quite different problems en-
velop an ideal level of political involvement in
the organization of science, a level great enough
to focus the attention of researchers on impor-
tant problems and small enough ro avoid dis.
torting the methodological fabric of the field.
In the scientific fields supporting the ESA (basic
ecology, conservation biology, systematic bi.
ology, wildlife biology) the ideal has seldom
been realized, and this has generated a raft of
social problems, failure to use available scien-
tific expenise, poor and misleading scientific
advice, and ill.defined scientific jargon. The po-
litical and legal communities can playa role in
bringing the endangered species sciences closer
to the ideal slate, wherein scientists happily do
.socially important research without undue po.
Iitical management.
Among the most imponant instances where
the ESA Science/policy interface fails is in the
definitions of a protectable taxonomic unit (a
species) and a species' ,geographic range, and
reconciliation of political boundaries with bi-
ological boundaries.

Identification of Protectable

Taxonomic Units

The Klamath River drains 10 million acres
in nonhern Californ ia and southwestern Ore-
gon. Its basin contains eight native species of
anadromous fish, species that spawn in fresh-
water but spend a portion of their lives in the
ocean. These, in turn, are divisible into a num-
ber of local stocks, The Klamath River chinook
salmon, for example, tends to return from the
sea (0 spawn in the same stream in which it was
hatched. This tendency promotes a degree of
genetic isolation; fish breed with other fish that
have survived the particular rearing conditions
posed by a single stream. Biologists, as a con-
sequence, are tempted to regard each spawning
stream as harboring a genetically distinct pop-
ulation of fish. Compounding this element of
genetic diversity is the fact that chinook salmon
leave the sea and run up the river in two distinct