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Defenders in Action: Endangered Species Act Endangered
Would you consider your child a failure if she or he got a grade of 99 on a test? Well, that's essentially what some leaders on Capitol Hill are saying about the Endangered Species Act.
Opponents of the act argue that there have only been a few species removed from the endangered species list and thus it has failed. Conservationists counter that the act's primary purpose is to prevent animals and plants from imminent extinction. It has a more than 99 percent success rate in that category.
"The act's opponents have it exactly backwards. The Endangered Species Act is the alarm bell, not the cause of the emergency," Jamie Rappaport Clark, executive vice president of Defenders, told a group of senators at a recent hearing. "When that alarm sounds, it means we are driving species toward extinction, increasing the risk to the web of life, and therefore to ourselves."
The U.S. Senate and House of Representatives are discussing plans for the act's "reform," a term that conservationists are concerned is just a euphemism for "destruction." One bill, sponsored by Rep. Dennis Cardoza (D-California), would eliminate any meaningful habitat protection for endangered creatures. Another bill, introduced last year by Rep. Greg Walden (R-Oregon), would hamstring decisions regarding endangered species with additional bureaucracy under the guise of "sound science."
At the Senate hearing, Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-New York) introduced a letter signed by a group of 10 world-renowned scientists supporting the Endangered Species Act. In that letter, the scientists—including Harvard's E.O. Wilson and Stanford's Paul Ehrlich—pointed out that only nine of the 1,800 species protected under the act have gone extinct.
Visit www.saveesa.org to learn more, and to sign a petition to help save the act.
