Improving the Endangered Species Act

¶ … Improving the Endangered Species Act

Since its inception in 1973, the Endangered Species Act (ESA) had 109 species listed as endangered. Today there are at last count 1,500 endangered species that the ESA is designed to protect and ensure their long-term survival (Robbins, 2010). Like much of the legislation designed to protect endangered species of all types, the ESA has yet to reach its full potential. The effects of political infighting and a lack of focus on the goals of the ESA has marginalized its effectiveness over time (Robbins, 2010). So has the lack of focus on creating a cohesive strategy to ensure more species survive for generations to come. Presented in this paper are suggestions for improving the effectiveness of ESA from articles in class and from outside sources, and from observation and analysis.

Analysis and Recommendations

First, the ESA is excellent at cataloging species that are endangered, yet does little to define a strategy by species to protect them. The result is often an uncoordinated set of responses to endangered plants, animals, birds or fish going extinct. This approach to solving endangered specifics lacks a unified strategy, costs the government an exponentially higher amount of spending, and can be ineffective in accomplishing its primary goal. The need for a more effective framework for cross-department coordination is necessary if endangered species strategies are to be effective. Having this framework will get out of the drastic measures taken when a given species is about to go extinct. Second, the ESA has no definitions of the amount of habitat necessary for an endangered species to return above threatened species status. While the ESA grants access to private land for purposes of protecting an endangered or threatened species, it does not provide for guidance and strategy to government organizations as to when they should intervene. This is often up to Interior Department and other coordinating government agencies.

Fourth, the impacts of chemicals and harmful byproducts of manufacturing and process industries are more quantifiable and therefore traceable in the environment. This has led to the early successes of the ESA related to control of DDT and other harmful chemicals, which directly contributed to endangering wildlife (Robbins, 2010).

Additional steps that are needed include reporting the results of recovery efforts on a public website that shows the contributions or roadblocks individual politicians and political organizations are making. This will force much greater accountability and transparency around the goals of the ESA. Second, there needs to be a more effective strategy for coordinating recovery efforts across all government agencies so that ongoing strategies by species are put into place. This will save the chaotic nature of recovery efforts using a more consistent framework. Third, there needs to be much greater focus on fines and prosecution if necessary when companies willingly dump toxic materials into the environment, knowing it will affect an endangered species. These fines need to go for advanced monitoring and evaluation tools, technologies and processes to ensure consistent efforts are made to protect and move engendered species back to a recovery point. Paying for these improvements through fines would also ease the political infighting that at times slows down ESA efforts as politicians are for the most part debating whose state budgets will have to absorb the majority of the costs. Finally and most important, states need greater control over the implementation of ESA programs and greater government funding as well. Corporations who choose to violate well-known standards of clean operation need to be heavily fined to make state programs funded entirely from these fines. This will send a clear message to corporations who choose to ignore environmental guidelines that they will be the ones who will pay not only to clean it up, but also to save species they could have potentially made extinct.