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Defenders Magazine
Defenders View: Celebrating Endangered Species
December marks the 30th anniversary of the Endangered Species Act (ESA), arguably America ’s most important environmental protection law. In 1973 the administration of Richard Nixon joined with bipartisan congressional leadership to enact this amazing legislation. Instead of promoting the act’s immense contributions to biologically healthy landscapes that benefit future generations, the Bush administration is determinedly promoting actions to gut the ESA and give effective control of the landscape to its special-interest industry contributors.
To help us remember at this critical time the environmental, cultural and moral significance of this landmark law, I offer the following excerpt from my celebration of the ESA’s 25th anniversary in our summer 1998 issue. As counterpoint to this administration’s view, I offer a perspective that suggests America would be a much poorer nation without the 1,200 endangered species this law protects.
What are endangered species? They are the warmth, joy and glory of being alive amid the vast diversity of living things -- big and small, delicate and mighty. They are the vital ingredients of landscapes whose resulting harmony is welcome counterpoint to the chaos of modern human existence. They are the instruments that make the music of nature, producing a symphony delightful to the ears and soothing to stress-filled minds.
Endangered species are the memories of childhood, the stuff that carefree, sunny afternoons were made of. They are the beetles and snails, butterflies and dragonflies endlessly pursued and carefully captured to be admired in mason jars with freshly picked grass and newly aerated lids.
Endangered species are the rhythm of the seasons. They are the migrating birds whose sweet songs announce each spring, the wildflowers that scent and color the summer meadow, the earth-toned leaves that fall on crisp autumn mornings, and the tracks of predator and prey acting out age-old dramas across the winter snow.
Endangered species are the inspiration for countless books, songs, poems, paintings, photographs and sculptures that enrich our culture beyond measure. They are Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt Whitman, Mark Twain, Robert Service, John Muir, A.B. Guthrie, Emily Dickinson, Rachel Carson, Aldo Leopold, Wallace Stegner, John James Audubon, Ansel Adams, Frederic Remington, Charlie Russell, Aaron Copland and many more whose inspiring works are tribute to a natural world now at risk.
Endangered species are the essence of wild nature. They are the hunter and hunted whose behavior has determined the characteristics of countless animals, making bison tough, antelope swift and mountain goats nimble. They are the excitement and adventure that only wildness can offer.
Endangered species are the frontier challenges that shaped the unique American character. They are the at-risk survivors of the clash between ever-advancing civilization and constantly retreating nature, but also the salvation of that civilization which gains perspective, vitality and balance from a world where nature’s challenges still exist and where ultimate freedom and independence still prevail.
Endangered species are a warning that the margin between existence and extinction is narrowing, that millions of years of evolutionary processes are being forever altered. They are a signal that the web of life of the future will be much less rich and complex, with uncertain consequences for all species, including our own. Endangered species are a reminder that all living things are part of creation and have their own dignity and intrinsic worth apart from any value that we might bestow. But they are also species threatened by a fate worse than death, now surviving only precariously in life’s shadows, midway between being and not being -- innocent victims of human actions at odds with true humanity.
This is what endangered species are today. Their tomorrow depends upon society’s willingness to adopt a wiser, more compassionate and morally superior view of progress. So does our own.
Rodger Schlickeisen is the president of Defenders of Wildlife. To send him an e-mail, write Rodger@Defenders.org.
