Issues of concern to people who live in the west: property rights, water rights, endangered species, livestock grazing, energy production, wilderness and western agriculture. Plus a few items on western history, western literature and the sport of rodeo... Frank DuBois served as the NM Secretary of Agriculture from 1988 to 2003. DuBois is a former legislative assistant to a U.S. Senator, a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Interior, and is the founder of the DuBois Rodeo Scholarship.
Friday, May 01, 2015
Time to Move on from the Endangered Species Act
The Endangered Species Act (“ESA”) in its current form has been
around since 1973. Supposed environmental legislation from the early
70’s (the ESA, Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, and the EPA itself) was
pushed and passed by the Nixon administration and has been the
foundation for environmental activism ever since. In 1973 there were
137 species listed under the Act and by August, 2014 the number had
grown to 1,560 with over 757 additional species under consideration by
2018. Lately the ESA has been used to limit energy development, or at least
make it more expensive. But it is far more than energy development
that is affected. Agriculture and personal property rights are targets
as well. The overreach by the federal government reaches across the
country. The ESA and the other Acts mentioned above come with impressive
titles, but the results are not very impressive. The federal government
has gained control of more and more private property, and worked with
environmentalists to slow and stop economic development in vast areas of
our country costing taxpayers millions of dollars. And after all of
that, the record of saving “endangered species” is incredibly poor. For a good background on the ESA see “It’s time to Endanger the Endangered Species Act” by Taylor Smith of the Heartland Institute...more
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment