Rejoinder to Rohlf and O’Connell: Biodiversity as a Regulatory Criterion

The points made by both Rohlf (1991, 1992) and O'Connell (1992) regarding the reauthorization of the U.S. Endangered Species Act (ESA: 16 U.S.C. 15311543) are valid and well-taken in context. Nonetheless, the authors fail to examine a key issue underlying their point of contention: the usefulness of biodiversity per se as a criterion for government regulatory action. While conservation of biological diversity should undoubtedly take precedence over single-species issues as a strategic goal, I question its ultimate usefulness as a tactical device in enforcing governmental conservation action. This is particularly true for the developing countries, where biodiversity issues are often considered manifestations of continued northern colonialist attitudes and double standards pertaining to economic development opportunities for Third World nations. Scientific and philosophical concerns for global biodiversity hold little meaning for government officials concerned with developing national industrial capacity or for rural communities facing possible famine as the result of crop destruction by elephants, locusts, and other problem wildlife. Where governments and local communities are concerned, health issues such as malaria and schistosomiasis provide far more convincing arguments for controlling hydropower development projects in tropical rainforest regions than do scientific and philosophical fears for conservation of global biodiversity (Robert Goodland, personal communication). Biological diversity has been slowly coming of age as a legislative issue in the United States Congress over the past decade (Thomas & Salwasser 1989). The first explicit U.S. federal legislative mandate to fund "biological diversity" programs was passed in the month following the "National Forum on Biodiversity" sponsored by the American Academy of Sciences and the Smithsonian Institution (September 1986; see Wilson 1988), and it targeted the Agency for International Development (Special Foreign Assistance Act 1986). This program was reauthorized under the Foreign Operations Appropriations Act of 1990. The Congressional biodiversity mandate has expanded in recent years to include the U.S. Department of Defense ("Legacy Resource Management Program": Department of Defense Appropriations Act 1991). The executive branch has been much more reluctant to adopt a firm position on biodiversity issues at either the national or the global level. Rohlf (1991, 1992) has recognized the limitations of legislation for coping with biological diversity issues, and this topic merits closer inspection. In order to be amenable to effective governmental regulation, objective criteria for evaluation of compliance with biodiversity mandates must be established. We must therefore address the following issues: (1) How shall biodiversity be defined for the purposes of government regulation? (2) How shall different aspects of biodiversity be classified in terms of regulatory oversight and actions? (3) What metrics and standards shall be used in establishing baselines and determining noncompliance with laws and legal statutes? I predicted in a manuscript (Dudley, unpublished manuscript) submitted to this journal two years ago that summary measures of biodiversity might in future become the primary input provided by conservation biologists within the decision frameworks of proposed major federal actions (sensu Section 1508.18: National Environmental Policy Act Regulations 1978). Those ac-