Endangered Species federal spending is over one billion per year

From CFACT

By David Wojick

The Endangered Species Act requires a “Report to Congress on Federal and State Endangered and Threatened Species Expenditures.“ It appears that the federal portion alone amounts to well over a billion dollars a year.

Clearly, there is an entire industry here. What the specific spending is for, and who gets it, is a mystery. But there is a lot of fun detail in what each agency spends on each protected species.

First, a caveat. I say “appears” because the latest expenditure report I can find is from fiscal year 2020. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service produces this report, and they have an online collection here.

It ends with the 2020 report. They may have the more recent reports in an online database but their big species data system, called ECOS, says there is no occurrence of the term “expenditure.” It even lists its standard reports here.

The 2020 data is good enough to get the feel of what is going on, so let’s go with that. I will point out some stuff that I find interesting, even surprising. Other people might want to look at other aspects that are relevant to them.

The 314-page report consists mostly of several lists that are very long because an expenditure is listed for each of the over 1,600 protected species.

Table 1 lists every species and the total expenditure across all agencies, except land acquisition is not included. The species are listed alphabetically, by common name, within biological groups like birds, fishes, flowering plants, etc. Surprisingly, there are more plants than animals.

Most interesting is the total federal expenditure for the year of $1,135,610,898 or well over a billion dollars. Endangered Species is a very large program that the public knows very little about.

Note that this huge amount does not include the also huge amount that non-federal landowners collectively pay applying for incidental take permits so they can develop their land.

See my “Endangered Species Act regulatory overkill” here.

Table 2 also lists all the species, but they are ranked by expenditure from most down to least. So, Table 1 is the place to look up a particular species, while Table 2 is the place to see where the big bucks are going. Table 1 includes the Table 2 ranking for each species.

Surprisingly, 27 out of the top 30 funded species are fish. Many are various species of salmon and steelhead, but there are others. The three non-fish are the North Atlantic Right Whale, the Desert Tortoise, and the West Indian Manatee. The little-known Razorback Sucker gets more money than any of these three at $14,425,633.

Table 2 includes a running top-down total. The top 30 species, almost all being fish, collectively get $658,328,316 or over half of the program money. Last place is shared by a birch, a chub, and a snail at $100 each. The Red Wolf just beats them at $200.

Appendix B is equally extensive. It lists expenditures by species for each separate federal agency. The big guns are the Army Corps of Engineers and NOAA (especially the National Marine Fisheries Service) with long lists and around $200 million each.

On a fun note, a lot of the little-known species have interesting or even amusing names. Clams seem to specialize in them, and there are a lot of clams. Examples include the Purple Bankclimber, Turgid Blossom, Appalachian Elktoe, Arkansas Fatmucket, Inflated Heelsplitter, and Cumberland Monkeyface. American tax dollars are going to protect all of these rare clams and more.

The Federal Expenditure Reports need to be restored and made publicly available in compliance with the Endangered Species Act. Congress needs to look closely at the allocation of federal funding among the species. We should only list what we can afford to protect.