PANEL DISCUSSION: ESA & Climate Change: Collision Course?.
With a new administration in Washington, DC that has taken a different view of environmental regulation, changes in the Endangered Species Act perhaps seem more possible than in prior years.
Is the Endangered Species Act broken?
Should the environment have a water right?
My view is the Endangered Species Act as legislation is not broken.
The ESA is one law.
It is one approach, but we have a practice in California and the West of doing things like de-watering rivers entirely – the second major river in California, for example.
Moderator Doug Wallace asked Bob Wilkinson, “Do you see a place where market structure in water rights that is specifically giving a water right to the environment could be a useful tool – a specific water right that’s not really negotiable as far as making tough decisions and managing for species and ecosystems?”
If ESA is not broken, then how do we use it now to deal with this problem?
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