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Politics of

E tinction
The Unprecedented Republican Attack on Endangered Species and the Endangered Species Act
Jamie Pang and Noah Greenwald
Center for Biological Diversity
July 2015

 Executive Summary
Since 2011 Republicans in Congress have dramatically increased legislative attacks on
endangered wildlife and the Endangered Species Act, the nation’s most important law for
protecting and recovering plants and animals on the brink of extinction.
Our analysis examined legislative and congressional records over the past 20 years and
found a sixfold increase in the number of attacks on the Endangered Species Act and the
wildlife it protects.
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In the past five years, there have been at least 164 legislative attacks on endangered
species, for an average of 33 per year.
In the 15 years prior to 2011 (1996-2010), for comparison, there were only a total of 69
legislative attacks on endangered species, for an average of fewer than five per year.
Since January of this year, there have already been 66 legislative attacks on endangered
species — the most in any of the past 20 years. This dramatic upsurge does not appear to
be slowing, with more attacks likely in the second half of 2015.
Overall 93 percent of legislative attacks on endangered species have been introduced
by Republicans, including all 66 in 2015, raising a major red flag for what will occur
should Republicans gain the presidency or a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate or
the presidency.

Our analysis also finds that five Republican members, collectively, account for nearly 25 percent
of legislative attacks on the Endangered Species Act since 2011 and have received millions of
dollars from special interests opposed to protection of endangered species:
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Rep. Ken Calvert (R-Calif.) with nine attacks;
Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) nine attacks;
Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska) six attacks;
Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) six attacks;
Rep. Rob Bishop (R-Utah) with five attacks.

Rep. Ken Calvert
(R-Calif.)
10 attacks

Sen. Mike Lee
(R-Utah)
10 attacks

Rep. Don Young
(R-Alaska)
six attacks

1

Sen. John Cornyn
(R-Texas)
six attacks

Rep. Rob Bishop
(R-Utah)
five attacks

 Much of the upsurge in legislative attacks since 2011 has focused on individual endangered
species, including 102 attacks targeting at least 228 species, seeking to weaken or remove
Endangered Species Act protections for already-listed species or to block listing for imperiled
species yet to receive protection. In the 15 years before, there were only 16 such attacks
targeting 72 species.
Notably, many of the species-specific attacks in the past five years have focused on animals
that are perceived as threatening the economic profits of powerful special interests, such as
the oil and gas industry or big agriculture, including gray wolf (17 attacks), greater sage
grouse (14 attacks), American burying beetle (13 attacks), lesser prairie chicken (12
attacks), and Delta smelt and Sacramento River salmon (11 attacks).

Gray wolf

Greater
sage grouse

American
burying beetle

Lesser prairie
chicken

Delta smelt

In short, special interests dominated by the oil and gas industry and big agriculture have
ramped up campaign contributions targeted at undermining protections for endangered
species and they are getting results. Republicans in Congress are working overtime to
pass legislation gutting the life-saving protections of the Endangered Species Act. Given
the barrage of attacks, including numerous riders on must-pass spending bills, there is an
increasing likelihood that one or more of these disastrous bills will pass.
By taking life-and-death decisions for species away from expert scientists and placing
them in the hands of politicians with financial interests directly contrary to conservation,
these attacks fundamentally undermine the Endangered Species Act, which more than
any other law was written to be science-driven. This largely Republican-driven upsurge in
attacks on endangered species is occurring despite the fact that an overwhelming majority
of the American public (90 percent) support protections for endangered species and the
Act,1 including a majority of Republicans, revealing that in their zeal to represent moneyed
interests, congressional Republicans are out of step with most Americans.

2

 I. Introduction

African elephant, southern sea otter and American
burying beetle. These stand-alone bills and most of
the riders are unlikely to pass, but have an impact
nonetheless by intimidating the agencies charged with
implementing the Act. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service, for example, has responded to congressional
attacks on listing of individual species by either
withdrawing their listing (e.g. bi-state population of
sage grouse) or downgrading their protection from
“endangered” to “threatened” and passing special rules
that exempt threats to the species and thereby blunt
the impact of protection (northern long-eared bat).
The Services have also proposed new regulations that
restrict the rights of citizens to petition for protection
of species,4 which appear to be a direct response to
some of the congressional criticisms.

W

hen enacted more than 40 years ago, the
Endangered Species Act (“ESA” or “Act”),
16 U.S.C. § 1531 et. seq. enjoyed nearly
unanimous bipartisan support and was championed
by Republicans and Democrats alike. The Act
unanimously passed the Senate on July 24, 1973 and
the House by a 390-12 vote on September 18, 1973.2
When signing the Act into law on December 28, 1973,
President Nixon issued a strong signing statement
that still resonates today, noting that “[t]his important
measure grants the Government both the authority to
make early identification of endangered species and
the means to act quickly and thoroughly to save them
from extinction,” and further that:

To date the Endangered Species Act has been
tremendously successful. Bald eagles, gray whales
and more than two dozen other species have been
fully recovered, and hundreds more are on the road
to recovery.5 Overall the Act has been more than 99
percent successful at preventing extinction of species
under its protection. This success is particularly
remarkable given the growing threats from climate
change, habitat loss and pollution. Yet rather than
provide additional funds to further endangered
species recovery or otherwise bolster the success of
the Act, Republicans are working to undermine the
Act at every turn, even though polls show 9 out of 10
Americans are supportive of the Act and recognize the
importance of preserving our nation’s biodiversity.6

Nothing is more priceless and worthy of
preservation than the rich array of animal life
which our country has been blessed.
— President Richard Nixon, December 28, 1973
Four decades later the culture of collaboration between
our elected officials is long gone, with many captured
by special interests that have direct economic conflicts
with protecting endangered species. Never has the
line between those who support saving species under
the Endangered Species Act and those who want to
dismantle the Act in the name of economic profits
been so clear. Indeed Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), a
staunch champion of protecting endangered species,
recently threatened “hand to hand combat” to block
five Republican bills attacking the ESA (S. 112, S. 292,
S. 293, S. 468, S. 655, S. 736, S. 855 and S. 1036).3 The
bills would, among other things, force consideration of
short-term economics when designating critical habitat,
and cut habitat from the Act’s protections whenever
those impacts were deemed too high; prevent the listing
of the greater sage grouse; weaken protections for the
northern long-eared bat; and increase the burden and
costs of implementing the Act by creating unnecessary
reporting requirements and red tape.

In order to spotlight the broad scope of Republican
attacks on the Act and the extent to which this is being
driven by special-interest campaign contributions,
this study includes a comprehensive survey of every
proposed bill or rider proposed since 1996 that was
intended to weaken protections for endangered species
or the Act itself, and identifies the congressional
sponsors of these bills and the major campaign
contributors to the worst offenders. This survey
clearly shows that legislative attacks on endangered
species have not only dramatically increased since
2011, but that these increases have corresponded
with substantial increases in campaign contributions
from special interests that believe their bottom lines
are threatened by endangered species protections —
notably the oil and gas industry and big agriculture.
Most of these attacks have not passed, but should

In addition to these stand-alone bills, Republicans have
attached numerous riders to must-pass legislation such
as appropriations bills for the departments of defense
or interior, including language to remove federal
protections for the gray wolf, lesser prairie chicken,
3

 Republicans gain a filibuster-proof majority in the
Senate or gain the presidency, endangered species and
the Endangered Species Act will face even greater risks.

Since 2011, however, there have been 164 legislative
attacks on endangered species for an average of 33 per
year. Overall, Republicans sponsored a total of 218 and
Democrats sponsored 16 of these attacks in the 20-year
period, indicating that only one was introduced with
bipartisan support. There are currently 66 legislative
attacks on endangered species pending in Congress, all
introduced by Republicans. This surpasses the number
of attacks in any of the past 20 years, with more
expected through the end of the year.

II. Methods

W

e conducted an extensive search of the
congressional search engine Thomas as well
as the Congressional Record to identify all
stand-alone bills or riders introduced in the past 20
years (1996-2015) that would weaken protections for
individual endangered species or sought to weaken
the Endangered Species Act itself. A rider is a “nongermane amendment to a bill or appropriations bill
that changes the permanent law governing a program
funded by the bill.”7 We did not include legislative
attempts to weaken protections for endangered species
through other federal environmental laws, such as
the National Environmental Policy Act (“NEPA”) or
Marine Protection Mammal Act (“MMPA”), but only
those riders or bills targeted directly at endangered
species or the Act. Notably, if these indirect attacks
had been considered, the number of legislative attacks
aimed at endangered wildlife would be significantly
higher. Because of this our methodology arguably
underestimates the number of Republican-led
legislative attacks on endangered species.

The past five years have also seen a dramatic rise in the
number of species-specific attacks. From 1996 to 2011,
there were only 16 species-specific legislative attacks
targeting at least 72 individual species. But since 2011
there have been 102 such attacks seeking to reduce or
remove protections for at least 228 species. Of the 66
currently pending attacks on endangered species in
Congress, 38 are species-specific, targeting 51 species.
Recent legislative attacks on species have concentrated
on particular species that are perceived as affecting
the bottom line of powerful special interests, notably
the oil and gas industry and big agriculture, including
wolves (17 attack), sage grouse (14 attacks), American
burying beetle (13 attacks), lesser prairie chicken (12
attacks), and Delta smelt and Sacramento River salmon
(11 attacks).

For each bill or rider, we identified the primary
sponsor(s) as a means of identifying those who are the
primary drivers of anti-endangered species legislation.
We further tabulated whether sponsors were
Democrats or Republicans. For the five congressional
representatives that sponsored the most legislative
attacks on endangered species, we obtained data on the
financial contributions they received from the oil and
gas industry and big agriculture. We also provide data
on the overall contributions to Congress from these
industries compared to the trend in legislative attacks
on endangered species.

The use of riders on must-pass budget and spending
legislation to undermine protections for endangered
species has also skyrocketed: 54 of the 164 attacks
since 2011 (33 percent) have been riders compared
to just two between 1996 and 2010. These riders have
no relevance to the spending priorities of Congress,
but are nonetheless added through secretive closeddoor processes as a means to pass controversial
provisions that would otherwise not pass as standalone bills. There is no public hearing, debate or citizen
involvement. Congress is currently considering 31
riders attacking protections for endangered species,
including riders that would remove protections for
wolves in the rest of their range, block protections
for sage grouse, and remove protections for the lesser
prairie chicken and American burying beetle, as well as
many other imperiled species.

III.  Republicans in Congress have Dramatically
Increased Legislative Attacks on Endangered Species
and the Act

S

ince 2011 there has been a dramatic increase in
legislative attacks on endangered species largely
driven by Republican legislators. Between 1996
and 2010, there were a total of 69 legislative attacks
on endangered species for an average of five per year.8

The increase in species-specific attacks often as riders
likely in part reflects the fact that in 2011 a rider on a
must-pass appropriations bill funding the Department
of Defense removed protections for gray wolves in
4

 Montana and Idaho.9 The rider, introduced by Sen. Jon
Tester (D-Mont.) and Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho),
signified the first major congressional intervention
to remove federal protections for a listed species. It
appears to have opened the floodgates to this alarming
trend.

part responding to these attacks, the Fish and Wildlife
Service withdrew proposed protections for bistate sage grouse and weakened protections for the
northern long-eared bat by downgrading the bat from
endangered to threatened status and implementing
a special rule that exempts many threats, such as
logging, mining and oil and gas drilling, that otherwise
would be prohibited under the Act.13 Other species
have lost protection or had protections weakened in
response to congressional attacks, and more are likely
to face a similar fate, even if no more bills are passed.
This places our nation’s most-imperiled wildlife at
serious risk.

The vast majority of legislative attacks have not
passed, but two other significant riders besides the one
delisting wolves in Montana and Idaho also passed in
2014. One allowed for trophy hunting and importation
of three African animals — scimitar-horned oryx,
addax and Dama gazelle10 — and another prohibited
the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service from expending
any resources to list the greater sage grouse, the bistate population of greater sage grouse in California,
and Nevada or the Gunnison sage grouse.11 Thus far,
only a handful of harmful provisions have passed into
law.12 The real concern now is that, with so many
legislative attacks currently pending in Congress, more
bills designed to weaken, block or remove protections
for endangered species will slip through as part of
backroom political trading. This will not only further
endanger particular species, but ultimately threatens to
undermine the Endangered Species Act itself.

A total of 107 Republicans and 12 Democrats have
introduced legislative attacks on endangered species
since 1996, including 57 who have introduced
more than one attack. Since 2011 five senators and
representatives stand out for introducing multiple
legislative attacks on endangered species, including
Rep. Ken Calvert (R-Calif.) and Sen. Mike Lee
(R-Utah) with nine attacks each, Rep. Don Young
(R-Alaska) and Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) with six
attacks each and Rep. Rob Bishop (R-Utah) with five
attacks (Table 1). Collectively, these five members of
Congress were responsible for nearly a quarter of the
legislative attacks on endangered species since 2011.
According to the Center for Responsive Politics, all of
these members have received hundreds of thousands
to millions of dollars from the oil and gas industry
and big agriculture during their careers in Congress
(Table 1).

Even the bills that don’t pass have a chilling effect
on the two agencies charged with implementing the
Act, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National
Marine Fisheries Service (“Services”). The current slate
of legislative attacks include riders to prohibit new
protections for sage grouse, weaken protections for
northern long-eared bats and lesser prairie chickens
and remove existing protections for gray wolves and
American burying beetles, as well as stand-alone
bills to limit citizen enforcement of the Endangered
Species Act or otherwise make implementation of the
Act more cumbersome and less effective. Likely in

Table 1. The five members of Congress who
introduced the most legislative attacks on
endangered species since 2011, the species attacked
and the amount of campaign contributions they’ve
received from big agriculture and the oil and gas
industry in their careers.

5

 Figure 1. Legislative attacks
(1996-2015) on endangered
species compared with
campaign contributions
from two industries that
have opposed protection
of endangered species: big
agriculture and the oil and
gas industry.
More broadly, the dramatic upsurge in attacks on
endangered species since 2011 corresponds with an
overall increase in campaign contributions beginning
in 2008 related to both the presidential campaign
and the 2010 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Citizens
United.14 This correspondence is particularly apparent
when comparing the upsurge in legislative attacks on
endangered species to the total big agriculture and
oil and gas industry contributions to Congress from
2004 to 2014. Over that period contributions from
big agriculture jumped from just under $27 million to
more than $40 million; contributions from the oil and
gas industry increased from roughly $10.5 million to
more than $25 million (Figure 1).15 These campaign
contributions have disproportionately favored some of
the most aggressive critics of the Endangered Species
Act, including the five Republican members discussed
above.

gas industry and big agriculture as a threat to their
economic profits. The attacks are having the desired
effect in most cases not by passage of legislation, but
by exerting political pressure on the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service, which has responded by weakening or
removing protection for a number of species, including
gray wolves, lesser prairie chickens, sage grouse and
northern long-eared bats. These special interest-driven
attacks are fundamentally undermining the purpose of
the Act to prevent the extinction of species by making
protection decisions based on the best available
science.
The Endangered Species Act was passed in 1973 with
nearly unanimous public and bipartisan congressional
support. A large majority of the American public
continues to support the Act and the protection
of endangered species, but support in Congress,
particularly among Republicans, has turned to outright
opposition and hostility. This hostility corresponds
with a tremendous increase in the amount of, and
dependence upon, campaign contributions from
interests directly opposed to protection of vulnerable
wildlife. Our findings indicate that the opponents of
protection of endangered species are clearly out of step
with the American public and demonstrate the clear
need to maintain both the integrity of the Act and limit
the influence of money in politics.

Conclusion

T

he Endangered Species Act is under attack
from special interests and their supporters
in Congress as never before, including: a sixfold increase in legislative attacks in the past five
years compared to the previous 15; increased use of
riders on unrelated, must-pass appropriations bills;
and increased targeting of individual species that
are perceived by special interests like the oil and

6

 Endnotes
Tulchin Research, Poll Finds Overwhelming, Broad-Based Support for the Endangered Species Act
Among Voters Nationwide (July 6, 2015), available at http://earthjustice.org/sites/default/files/files/
PollingMemoNationalESASurvey.pdf
2
S. 1983 Bill Summary and Status: 93rd Congress (1973-1974), available at http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/
z?d093:SN01983:@@@S.
3
B. Boxer, Minority Member Opening Statements: FY 2016 Budget Request for FWS and Legislative Hearing (May
6, 2015), available at http://www.epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Hearings.Statement&Statement
_ID=411eec6e-36b3-4849-9bfe-3402f18d439f.
4
See 98 Fed. Reg. 29286 (“Revisions to the Regulations for Petitions”).
5
See http://www.esasuccess.org,
6
Tulchin Research, Poll Finds Overwhelming, Broad-Based Support for the Endangered Species Act
Among Voters Nationwide (July 6, 2015), available at http://earthjustice.org/sites/default/files/files/
PollingMemoNationalESASurvey.pdf.
7
Senate Glossary, available at Glossary, available at ttp://www.senate.gov/reference/glossary_term/rider.htm
http://www.senate.gov/reference/glossary_term/rider.htm.
8
The Center is carefully tracking the anti-ESA legislative attacks as they get introduced by the 114th Congress.
Data will be regularly updated. Accord Center for Biological Diversity, Attacks on the Endangered Species Act,
available at http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/campaigns/esa_attacks/table.
9
H.R. 1473 (Sec. 1713): Department of Defense Full-Year Continuing Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 2011,
available at https://www.congress.gov/bill/112th-congress/house-bill/1473.
10
H.R. H.R.3547 (Sect. 127): Consolidated Appropriations Act for FY 2014, available at https://www.congress.
gov/bill/113th-congress/house-bill/3547.
11
H.R. 83 (Sect. 117); H.R.3547 (Sect. 127).
12
See Id. at http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/campaigns/esa_attacks/table.
13
Accord 80 Fed. Reg. 17974 (April 2, 2015).
14
Citizens United v. FEC, 130 S. Ct. 876 (U.S. 2010).
15
These numbers were taken by averaging the total financial contributions for the election cycles of 2004 and
2006 for the oil and gas, and agricultural industries. The same method of calculation was done for the election
cycles of 2008 and 2010. See Center for Responsive Politics: Long Term Trends.
1