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The Endangered Species Act

© Danita LaSage

The Endangered Species Act of 1973 (ESA) is one of the most powerful pieces of legislation enacted in the United States for the preservation of wildlife. In a sense, though, its roots go back much farther than the activism of the 70s. As early as 1900 it was illegal in the US to cross state lines with birds or game that had been killed illegally. Other early pieces of legislation also reflected an interest in the preservation of certain species, such as black bass. By 1964 the Fish and Wildlife Service was keeping a list of rare and endangered fish and wildlife species in the US. In the late 60s and early 70s, though, the public was becoming more aware of, and more interested in, the concept of endangered species - partly due to Rachel Carson's popular book "Silent Spring," which pointed out to the general populace the fact that bird populations were becoming decimated by the widespread agricultural use of pesticides.

So in 1973 the government was given greater scope and power, specifically assigned to the secretaries of commerce, the interior, and agriculture (Shogren, 1998). The focus was broadened was rare and endangered species to include "threatened" species - those that were not technically endangered, but would be in the foreseeable future if present trends were to continue.

In the early days of the act the emphasis was more on isolated instances and isolated species - one of the most-quoted instances has been the construction of the Tellico Dam. In this case construction of the dam, though nearly complete, was brought to a complete halt when it was discovered to be the habitat of an endangered three-inch fish called the snail darter. At that time the interpretation of the law seemed to imply that the future of the endangered species must be protected, whatever the cost - no matter how inconvenient or damaging to the human community. The idea was that small, isolated, remnant populations of an identified species needed to be protected from extinction.

These days the ESA is interpreted more to mean protection of habitat, bringing the Act more in line with ecologists and biologists who argue that habitat destruction is the single more pressing problem facing wildlife species today. An individual or agency who wants to develop a piece of property must be certain that the development of that property does no harm to endangered and threatened species by destroying its habitat. From that perspective, the goal of the ESA is to ensure that species whose numbers are dwindling need to have protected areas in which they can nest, breed, raise their young, forage, and find shelter from predators. This interpretation can have a tremendous impact on private landowners, especially if most of the habitat of a threatened species happens to be on privately land.

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