The Bush administration has succeeded in reshaping the Endangered Species Act in ways that have sharply limited the impact of the 30-year-old law aimed at protecting the nation's most-vulnerable plants and animals, according to environmentalists and some independent analysts.

The Bush initiatives, which have ranged from recalculating the economic costs of protecting critical habitats to limiting the number of species added to the protected list, reflect a policy shift that Interior Secretary Gale Norton calls the "New Environmentalism."

Under this approach, federal officials have focused more on providing incentives to private landowners to protect the habitats of endangered species than on prohibiting human activity on those lands.

While some environmentalists praise the incentive programs, they say these projects are not enough to protect animals and plants on the brink of extinction.

Federal officials have added an average of 9.5 species a year to the endangered list under Bush, compared with 65 a year under President Clinton and 59 a year under President George H.W. Bush. They have designated as "critical habitat" only half the acreage recommended by federal biologists. And they are transferring key decision-making powers from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to agencies with different priorities.

"Instead of taking the Endangered Species Act head on, the administration is working to destroy the effectiveness of it through executive rule changes," said Brian Nowicki, a conservation biologist at the Tucson, Ariz.-based Center for Biological Diversity. (Washington Post via the Seattle Times)