The Endangered Species Act of 1973 (ESA) makes a strong, unequivocal statement of national policy on species protection [ʃ1531(b)]: “to provide a means whereby the ecosystems upon which endangered species and threatened species depend may be conserved, to provide a program for the conservation of such endangered species and threatened species and to take steps. . . to achieve the purposes of the treaties and conventions set forth.”

In writing the ESA, the authors planned to “make a bold collective statement of moral and legal conviction regarding endangered species” (Kohm 1991: 15). The House worked on fourteen different versions; the...

After two decades of change through congressional amendments and judicial decisions, the Endangered Species Act of 1973 has remained unauthorized since October 1992. This is the longest it has languished since its enactment. The 104th Congress (1994-96) attempted to reduce the muscle of the law dramatically and to make it friendlier to private property owners, even though there was no evident mandate from the voters 1994 to do so. That Congress failed to pass such legislation, and it took the 105th Congress (1997—98) the entire first session to introduce two reauthorizing bills, one in each house. The House bill...

The word biodiversity, the shortened form of biological diversity, was introduced by Dr. Thomas Lovejoy at the first Forum on Biodiversity in September 1986. Biodiversity is a descriptive word and one that is relatively easy to learn: “Probably few words have entered the vocabulary of science and attained widespread acceptance with such ease and speed” Shetler 1991:37). The challenge is to assure that it becomes a common house-hold term, as well understood as, for example, cost of living index.

Put simply, biodiversity refers to the variety of life forms, the variety of ecological roles, and the diverse genetic composition of...

Now that the stage is set, it is time to meet the characters of the endangered species drama. The protagonists—the people fighting for a strengthened ESA—are led by environmental and conservation organizations that represent millions of individuals who want species protected. The antagonists, discussed in the next chapter, do not want see species disappear, but they fight resolutely for the right of property owners to do with their lands as they wish. For many years the sides have been polarized; only recently have signs of a thaw in their relationships begun to appear.

The strength of the environmental...

Private property rights advocates lead the movement to stop ESA intrusion into the plans and decisions of private landowners. Societal reaction to the Endangered Species Act and other environmental protection statutes that demand behavioral changes ranges from indignant protest to outright disobedience of the law. The Endangered Species Act, however, does not treat private and public property equitably, so there is a basis for strong reaction. The takings compensation movement is one response by private property owners to ESA intrusion; another fear response occurs when an owner clears the land—quickly, before the law can be enforced—of any vegetation...

The political environment has not been friendly to the ESA since it lapsed in October 1992. The Democratic 102nd Congress (1991-92), aware of political forces desiring to weaken the law, avoided bringing reauthorization to the floor. Authorizations for environmental laws have often lapsed for lengthy periods; the ESA survived one earlier long interval between reauthorizations in the 1980s. Congress continued to appropriate funds to implement the statute but evaded major changes to the law by not bringing reauthorization to a vote. Also, the act lapsed near the beginning of a presidential election year, providing another excuse to delay action. There...

Presidential politics have significantly influenced the implementation of the Endangered Species Act. Presidential attitudes toward the ESA have varied from one administration to the next and have often confounded the bureaucracy’s efforts to implement the act effectively. For most of its years in force, the ESA has been either in disfavor with or ignored by the president. Except for Richard M. Nixon, the anti-ESA presidents were Republican. However, the Democrats who have occupied the office since 1973 cannot be deemed actively pro-ESA.

Nixon urged Congress to pass the ESA and he signed it into law. The law drew little political...

The first Fish and Wildlife Service director to have Endangered Species Act enforcement responsibilities was Lynn Greenwalt. He summarized the challenge he and his successors have faced: balancing the statute’s power to disrupt human plans in order to save species with the omnipresent fear that its power might speed its revocation. This is one of the bureaucratic difficulties with the ESA.

The federal bureaucracy has contributed at least four components to the ESA dilemma. First, implementation standards have varied from one administration to the next. In practice, implementation has been sporadic and unreliable. Second, from the outset the bureaucracy separated...

No discussion of environmental policy would be complete without looking at the economic factors. The economics of endan gered species is a complex topic. Some claim the ESA has put thousands of people out of jobs in the Pacific Northwest; others claim it robs property owners of their intrinsic and constitutional right to use their property to their economic advantage.

Economic theory views the environment, and especially endangered species, as an “externality” and therefore outside the control of the marketplace. Because biodiversity includes the resources upon which the human race relies for its survival (Watson and Heywood 1995), many scientists...

In 1987, the Office of Technology Assessment estimated that at least twenty-eight federal laws address the maintenance of biodiversity in some form. These authorities are enforced by a multitude of federal agencies with little or no interagency coordination (Norse 1993). The ESA fosters single-species management practices that are implemented only when the species is declared threatened or endangered. We cannot adequately protect species without managing them in the context of their larger ecosystems, and that requires a collaborative practice called ecosystem management.

In 1991 Congress asked the National Research Council (NRC) to review the scientific aspects of the ESA and...

From small and homely species to large and majestic ones, from tropical rain forests to desert scrublands to Arctic tundra, all life forms and ecosystems have bearing on the survival of the earth and therefore on the survival of humankind. Nature is and has always been in constant flux—always evolving. The earth has survived single catastrophic events in the past, some of considerable duration.

Can the earth survive the onslaught of systematic and continuous species loss that it faces today? The answer is up to humankind and will depend on concerted and collaborative effort to work at the conservation...