Legislators Working to Reshape Endangered Species Act

Pombo issued a report Tuesday that questioned the law's results, saying that less than 1 percent of the protected species have fully recovered, and 63 percent fall into the category of uncertain, declining or possibly extinct.

But many environmental activists say higher expectations are unrealistic, because it often takes three decades or more for a species to recover after it is listed, and many listed species were placed on the lists only in the past 15 years.

"Species that make it onto the list . . . have been declining for a long time, in some cases for as long as a century," said Michael J. Bean, co-director of Environmental Defense's Center for Conservation Incentives. "It's mathematically impossible and biologically impossible to get them back to abundance in a short amount of time."

It took 20 years before scientists could verify that a new nesting population of Kemp's ridley sea turtles was flourishing on the Texas coast, for example. The Aleutian Canada goose reached full recovery and was taken off the list in 2001, more than half a century after conservationists began focusing on the species.

Jamie Rappaport Clark, who headed the Fish and Wildlife Service under Clinton and now serves as executive vice president for the advocacy group Defenders of Wildlife, said the law has "achieved remarkable success" because only 1 percent of species have gone extinct after being listed.

"To call the Endangered Species Act a failure because it's failed to recover species is shortsighted and ill-informed," Clark said. "The act's the alarm, not the cause of the emergency."

It remains unclear whether the two sides will be able to reach agreement. Pombo's Democratic counterpart, Rep. Nick J. Rahall II (W.Va.), said he had the sense that Pombo was working with allies in the Senate "to the exclusion of us," and even Chafee was cautious about the prospects for success.

"Is it possible? That's the big question," Chafee said yesterday. "It's not going to be easy."