01:00 AM EDT on Wednesday, September 14, 2005

I'M AN ARDENT environmentalist. I have been my whole life. More than most, my livelihood depends on preserving clean water. For the past 20 years, I have run a small oyster farm in Narragansett.

Until a few months ago, I would have been one of those constituents calling on Rhode Island's Sen. Lincoln Chafee, chairman of the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Fisheries, Wildlife and Water, to resist any efforts to update the Endangered Species Act. But now I have seen firsthand how woefully inadequate the 32-year-old law is -- how badly it needs modernizing.

My epiphany began last January, when an environmental consultant in Maryland petitioned the National Marine Fisheries Service to list the American oyster as threatened or endangered, under the Endangered Species Act, because of alarming declines in the Chesapeake Bay. Despite the 100 billion or more oysters in U.S. waters, the Fisheries Service is taking the petition seriously. I have had to take several weeks out of my life to fight this misguided petition, testifying to Congress and presenting data to the Fisheries Service documenting the healthy status of the species.

Listing the oyster as endangered will run counter to scientific evidence and common sense. It will also destroy an entire industry -- killing thousands of jobs and creating economic hardship -- and do more damage than good to both the species and the environment.

The American oyster (Crassotrea virginica) has been in decline in the Mid-Atlantic region for over a century, primarily because of fisheries' mismanagement and various oyster diseases. However, the same species is thriving elsewhere up and down the East Coast, and along the Gulf Coast. In fact, U.S. shellfish farmers produce over a half-billion American oysters every year -- nearly twice the wild harvest. Unfortunately, the way the Endangered Species Act is written, any listing will have to encompass the species throughout its range, from Maine to Texas.

I would submit that any species being produced in such number is not threatened or endangered -- it's a crop.

Not only is the American oyster a crop; it is one with many environmental benefits. Oysters are filter feeders, which remove tons of nitrogen and phosphate from the coastal waters and enhance water clarity, allowing for improved light penetration -- which encourages the growth of eelgrass. Each cultured oyster also releases millions of larvae -- enhancing the wild-oyster population.

Listing the species as endangered or threatened will force severe restrictions on the wild harvest, and will probably eliminate commercial aquaculture of the American oyster. The market for oysters will be devastated, because consumers will be reluctant to eat an animal that they have been told is endangered.

The law mandates that states implement restrictions on all activities in essential oyster habitat, meaning that anchoring and fishing are likely to be prohibited in many areas. Thus, the Endangered Species Act will eliminate those who have invested to ensure a stable oyster supply: America's oyster farmers.

How is it that the Endangered Species Act could be so badly misused?

There are several answers. All start with the fact that -- unlike other environmental laws, such as the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act, which are updated every few years -- the Endangered Species Act has not been significantly revised in three decades.

Today, no peer-reviewed scientific inquiry is required when a petition is submitted to list a species as threatened or endangered. Anyone can file such a petition, and as a result many decisions on listings are made by courts, rather than scientists.

Most shockingly, no recovery plan for a species is required when the species is listed. As a result, only 10 of the roughly 1,300 species that have been listed as threatened or endangered over the last 32 years have recovered enough to be taken off the list. Over the same period, 35 have become extinct.

Meanwhile, our government is wasting time and money studying a petition to list the thriving American oyster as endangered -- when it could be using those resources to address specific problems affecting the oyster population in the Chesapeake Bay.

All of this has convinced me that we can and must do a better job of protecting our species. Modernizing the Endangered Species Act is the place to begin.

Sadly, Congress will not act fast enough to save the oyster industry from this frivolous petition. Still, the Endangered Species Act should be revised before more damage is done.

Robert Rheault, president of Moonstone Oysters, in Narragansett, is also president of the East Coast Shellfish Growers Association. He has a Ph.D. in biological oceanography.