Frog Costs Family Business $36 million

The FreeEnterprise.com blog is “celebrating” 12 Days of Regulatory Christmas.  Each year there are $1.8 trillion in regulatory costs for businesses.  Today’s story is pretty outrageous.

It’s not easy being green, especially if you’re a dusky gopher frog, an endangered species only 100 members strong. The frog, commonly known as the Mississippi gopher frog, lives exclusively in the Magnolia State–but that didn’t stop regulators from designating 1,500 acres of Louisiana as part of the animal’s habitat.

That designation threatens to destroy the Poitevent family’s lumber business, located in Louisiana’s St. Tammany Parish.  Family spokesman Edward Poitevent estimates that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s land grab will cost the family $36 million. That puts your holiday shopping bills in perspective, doesn’t it?

Even worse, the dusky gopher frog hasn’t been seen in Louisiana in 50 years, and the Poitevent land doesn’t have the longleaf pine tree the frog needs to survive. The species would be starting from zero and would have almost no chance of survival. As Poitevent questioned, “Half of nothing is still nothing, isn’t it?”