OPINION/COMMENTARY

A matter of perspective, the Endangered Species Act at 30

I recently received a series of articles that help to point out the need to strengthen and update the Endangered Species Act. According to one source, the ESA is 99.3 percent successful, as only 9 out of a total of 1,330 species listed, since the law was passed in 1973, have gone extinct. This source goes on to claim that the ESA has saved the Bald Eagle, the Chinook Salmon, the Peregrine Falcon, and the American Alligator from extinction. These are great claims, but how accurate are they? While we, as a society, have made great strides in species conservation, several of these success stories are based on activities that began long before the ESA was signed into law in 1973. The American Bald Eagle Act of 1940 made it illegal to hunt the eagle. A ban on use of the pesticide DDT, as well as state and local conservation efforts has contributed to the recovery of both the eagles and Peregrine Falcons. The American Alligator was originally listed, not because it was found to be very rare, but because of concerns about poorly regulated or unregulated harvests that had the potential to reduce the species' numbers. In the case of the Chinook Salmon, much depends on how you define the species; if you include the genetically-identical captive stock with the wild stock, they are not endangered at all. Three bird species, the Palau dove, the Palau fantail, and the Palau owl were removed from the endangered species list, and termed to be "recovered" by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. However, a GAO report stated that "although officially designated as recovered, the three Palau species owe their "recovery" more to the discovery of additional birds than to successful recovery efforts." The original surveys used to list these species were incomplete and flawed. The snail darter was listed on October 9, 1975. It is a classic example of how the ESA has been manipulated, and cost taxpayers millions of dollars. Its designation as an endangered species stopped construction of the Tellico Dam, causing a lawsuit that eventually led to the landmark TVA vs. Hill decision....

===