The end of the Endangered Species Act
This piece was written several weeks ago, when the U.S. House of Representatives passed an overhaul of the Endangered Species Act. It was originally intended to be a letter to the editor, which explains its short format. I've signed on to a wonderful letter to congress coming out of the Society for Conservation Biology that I think all ecologists should sign on to, to create momentum against the overhaul in the Senate.
It’s a dark day for the imperiled wildlife of America, and a torrent of species extinctions can be expected if the U.S. House of Representatives reform of the Endangered Species Act passes the Senate. The changes made by Republican legislators emasculate the Act to further a radical property rights agenda and give millions of dollars in entitlements to developers. The central justification for the revision seems to be the argument that any government action that reduces a property owner’s profit for society’s benefit must be financially compensated. This argument, taken to the conclusion its proponents hope for, is absurd: all urban zoning would be a “taking” and be unmanageable, and any restrictions on a factory’s pollution would have to be reimbursed by taxpayers!
Americans need to realize that the House’s “reform” is designed to be unsustainable: developers get to characterize whether their project will impact an endangered species, and to define how much any designation of critical habitat will cut into their profits, with little oversight. What a recipe for corruption and fraud! Let’s call it what it is: a swindle, at the expense of taxpayers and endangered wildlife.
