Vermont law professor Pat Parenteau frets that “the Endangered Species Act is in jeopardy.” Though the law is “wildly popular,” says Parenteau, “hostile forces” in Washington want to kill it.
He admits that few species have successfully recovered enough to be delisted, but says that the threats to those species remain real. He also claims that “at least 227 species,” including the “whooping crane, bald eagle, American crocodile, peregrine falcon, gray wolf, and humpback whale” would have gone extinct without the act.
The Antiplanner doesn’t think the ESA did anything to recover those species. The bald eagle and peregrine falcon recovered because of the ban on DDT which happened before the law was passed. The grey wolf was never in danger, and it was transplanted back into Yellowstone and the West by popular demand, not because of the ESA. The American crocodile was saved by the Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission, not the federal government. Pressure from anti-whaling groups protected the humpback whale, which was being hunted by people from other countries who weren’t under the jurisdiction of the Endangered Species Act.
Parenteau has the audacity to claim that some species, “like the black-footed ferret,” have “lost more than 90 percent of their historic range.” Actually, 99 percent of the ferret’s historic range still exists. What the ferret has lost is the prairie dogs that are its obligate prey. How did it lose those? The federal government was (and still is) poisoning them. What good is the ESA if it couldn’t stop that from happening?
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The big problem with the law is that it puts most the costs of species recovery on the backs of a minority of people. The Antiplanner proposes instead to give people incentives to protect species. One way of doing so is to charge recreation fees on public lands and dedicate a share of those fees to endangered species recover, including paying private landowners to optimize habitat for rare species.
Recreation fees on public lands would also allow more private landowners in the West to charge recreation fees, which would give them incentives to protect wildlife habitat as well. Actually, I think all users of public lands should pay fees and a share of all those fees should go toward protecting endangered species and other non-market resources.
A second incentive would be to privatize wildlife, giving the owners incentives to protect and promote the species and their habitat. I discussed this in great detail in a 1996 report. That wouldn’t work for all species (but it would for a lot more than you might think), but between privatization and habitat protection paid for out of public land recreation fees, all or nearly all species could be covered.
People like Pat Parenteau need to decide whether they are advocates of endangered species or of a particular law that may seem powerful but isn’t necessarily protecting species. If they are the former, then they should support the Antiplanner’s proposals. If the latter, however, then their eagerness to impose huge costs on society to little benefit should be dismissed.
Of the 1,800 species currently on the endangered species act only about 40 have been removed.
Now of those 40…
9 are extinct…..Whoops
15 were mistakenly counted so they don’t count at all, yet the government counts them as a success story
3 are species of kangaroo….that live in Australia? Not our problem
3 are birds of prey whose numbers were rebound after the EPA banned the use of DDT
one is the Tinian monarch a bird whose habitat was shelled to bits in WWII whose numbers were fine by the time scientists bothered to count them.
one is the american alligator, scientists overestimated the threat they faced combined with the fact they’re bred commercially means they’ll never go extinct.
One is the robbins cinquefoil a new hampshire plant which was easily saved solely by park rangers redirecting hiking trails so hikers didn’t step on them.
One is the canadian goose saved by hunting restrictions, not Endangered act
one is the gray whale, again those numbers were fine cause commercial hunting of whales ceased thanks to the petroleum industry making whale oil obsolete.
It is so cute how humans pretend to care so much for species and even subspecies. Environmentalists posit that millions of species and subspecies (99% beetles) disappear in the Amazon every year, but that has gone on so long that nobody cares anymore. Billions of dollars were wasted slowing down the striped owl from displacing the spotted owl for a few decades, as if that made any difference to anybody ever. Does anybody really care if the owl in the woods is striped or its nearly identical subspecies cousin spotted ?
But the Antiplanner’s plan is fatally flawed. Why would endangered species lovers pay more money? They won’t. You have to make it trendy and elite, say to have a Subaru or an REI/North Face label on their clothing, for which the environmentalists will pay thousands of dollars for.
The ESA is actually an anti-science law.
Darwin and his successor scientists taught us about natural selection and evolution of species.
The ESA has been used to block development where a certain minor sub-sub-subspecies of frog that lives in only one location might go extinct. Science through Darwin tells you that such a frog will inevitably go extinct no matter what we do – unless we want to artificially promote that frog at the expense of other species.
Species evolve and adapt. Maybe not the way the ESA supporters want, but nature ignores their laws and desires. The ESA and its supporters want to play God and decide which species should survive and thrive – all the while using our money to do so.
The Antiplanner wrote:
Recreation fees on public lands would also allow more private landowners in the West to charge recreation fees, which would give them incentives to protect wildlife habitat as well. Actually, I think all users of public lands should pay fees and a share of all those fees should go toward protecting endangered species and other non-market resources.
I suggest one addition to your list above – this is probably heresy, but in my personal opinion is that users of roads on federal lands that are open to the public should be funding the operation, policing and upkeep of those roads, presuming that traffic is heavy enough to allow such funding (and I can name plenty of federal roads that fall into that category – I am a frequent user of same). Even some “backwoods” motor roads should be funded at least in part by users, when the government agency that owns the land collects a fee for use, it should include some sort of road charge.