Proposed Salmon Habitat Designation Follows Cost-Benefit Approach Advocated by NAHB
Proposed federal critical habitat designations for 20 salmon and steelhead trout populations in the Pacific Northwest and California unveiled on Nov. 30 represent a cost-benefit approach to the regulation of threatened and endangered species that has long been advocated by the nation’s home builders.
The proposal comes as a direct result of a successful NAHB lawsuit that forced the NOAA Fisheries in 2002 to withdraw its original designations across all of Oregon and Washington and significant portions of California and Idaho because the agency had failed to conduct an economic impact analysis of those designations on local economies, as required by the Endangered Species Act.
While NAHB staff members are still analyzing the voluminous new proposal, it is clear that the government has implemented the cost-benefit methodology recommended by the association in which the value of specific areas to the protection of salmon is weighed against the economic cost to those areas. This methodology could have national ramifications for future decisions on federal regulations of private property.
This approach gives NOAA Fisheries a strong incentive to exclude from regulation areas that have a lower importance for the protection of a species and where those designations would take a high toll on the local economy — such as cities and their suburbs.