advocating for endangered species
drafting environmental legislation
preserving wildlife habitat
TESHA – A New Habitat Protection Type
Green Ballot is currently drafting the Threatened and Endangered Species Habitat Act (TESHA), which plugs gaps in the wide holes existing in other wilderness and natural resource protection legislation. Our focus will be on the application of TESHA at the state level. TESHA supplements earlier federal legislation such as laws that created the National Forests, National Parks, National Monuments, National Seashores, etc... Laws that created the National Forests and National Parks were fought out in Congress over a period of decades, and the result of these bitter legislative battles was to create sanctuaries for wildlife and wilderness, but with profound concessions to industries such as fossil fuels, mining, timber, grazing, utilities, and so on, which compromised the wilderness aspects of these parks and forests.
TESHA will help to create wilderness sanctuaries and wildlife habitat areas that provide much greater support to our threatened and endangered species; which can set aside wildlife passage corridors between important habitats such as rivers, lakes, marshes, and forests; which can set aside large acreages just outside the boundaries of existing national parks, national forests, and national monuments; and which can create safeguard areas that are currently unprotected, yet are essential to the long-term stability and preservation of numerous flora and fauna species.
Green Ballot is working with state and federal legislators to create a new formal designation for wildlife habitat preservations located outside of and, in many cases, adjacent to existing national parks and national forests. This designation would make clear that species preservation and wildlife protection is the primary use of TESHA sites. (In the previous century,
the protection of endangered and threatened species was considered by most legislators as an illegitimate or
tertiary reason for the creation of national parks and national forests. Primary rationales included setting
aside forests to ensure the availability of lumber for house building for future generations; and secondary
rationales included scenic and other aesthetic and practical considerations for hunters, fishermen, hikers,
and picnickers using these lands.)
The TESHA designation would limit or eliminate infrastructure development; would regulate the stresses
of light and noise on endangered and threatened species; would limit or eliminate
roads, pipelines, utility lines, dams, nuclear power facilities, and fences that inhibit the passage of wildlife;
but would still allow use by individuals and families for hunting, fishing,
hiking, canoeing, kayaking, some foraging, picnicking, scientific inquiry, enjoying nature, and similar uses.
Creation of this TESHA designation allows us to avoid the bureaucratic baggage and red tape and ecological compromises
associated with existing land designations such as those utilized in Forest Service lands.
The greater the diversity of species, and the greater the complexity of an ecosystem, the more stable that ecosystem is.
Thus, there is a direct benefit to the human species to ensure that we have the greatest diversity possible of other
species on Planet Earth.
Preservation of species such as the wolverine and the manatee is not merely an expression of altruism
or of wilderness values, but is an essential act of self-preservation for the human species.
TESHA is a tool to keep ecosystems intact and to preserve biodiversity before it is lost forever.