Endangered Species Act overview and implementation

Endangered Species Act

Most people are familiar with the Endangered Species List which is a document that shows various fish, birds, mammals, and other creatures that are in danger of extermination from the face of the Earth. The lists served the purpose of ensuring that the government would do whatever was necessary to stop this from happening. When the Endangered Species Act was first envisioned, the idea was that creating a piece of federal legislation to prevent the killing of animals that had a severely decreased population would help to revitalize that species and prevent the animal's extinction. What started out as a grassroots campaign from concerned environmentalists and nature conservationists became a subject for political discourse and debate. In the Act of 1973, the policy outlined was that provisions would be made for listing species, as well as for recovery plans and designation of critical habitats would be founded for these species (Endangered 1973). It is somewhat fitting that a topic of such controversy would be put into law by a controversial Commander and Chief. President Richard Millhouse Nixon signed the Endangered Species legislation officially into law on the 28th day of December, 1973. Although the Act itself only came to the foreground of political attention during this era and the decade before it, attempts had been made to create similar types of legislation for nearly a century before that.

Starting in the year 1900, the term extinction became more and more known in American society. Ornithologists George Bird Grinnell and Joel Asaph Allen began writing articles about the near-eradication of the bison and the passenger pigeon (Wiedensaul 2006). The two men noticed that quite a variety of birdlife was slowly disappearing because of hunting, collecting, and the introduction on non-native plants or animals to their habitats. One example of this destruction was the population of the whooping crane which had at one time a large population in the United States. After the intrusion of man, the population of the whooping crane had decreased to less than two dozen birds still living in the wild by the mid-1940s (Whooping 1996). Consequently, when the Endangered Species Act was signed into law, the whooping crane would be one of the first creatures to make the Endangered Species List. The number of whooping cranes has increased dramatically since its placement on the list. Some conservationists have argued that this increase in the whooping crane population can be more attributed to the political actions banning the chemical DDT than acts of preservation in the animals' individual habitats.

The first actual piece of legislation that in any way regulated the animal trade market or indeed dealt with endangered populations was the Lacy Act of 1900. This law made it illegal to transport or sell birds that had been killed in ways that violated state gaming laws. Similar acts, the Migratory Bird Conservation Act of 1929 and the Bald Eagle Protection Act of 1940, all dealt with prohibition of killing certain species because of their low population numbers. It was in the 1960s that the trend of legal actions dealing with animals and nature switched from preservation to those which focused on conservation and resurrection of population. The first and most important of these was the Land and Water Conservation Fund Act of 1965 which provided federal moneys to preserve the natural habitats of certain animals. This action made it illegal to further encroach on the protected land which served as habitat for at risk animals. A year later, the Land and Water Conservation Fund Act was followed by the Endangered Species Preservation Act. This legislation authorized the government to list endangered species but gave them little power to conserve them. It made federal and state agencies aware of certain species that were in danger without plans to regulate how they would be protected. An amendment was made in 1969 which expanded the Lacey Act of 1900. This amendment expanded the law to not only protect birds, but also prohibit the trade of mammals, reptiles, amphibians, mollusks, and crustaceans.

One of the first successful actions of the Endangered Species Act had to do with cooperation with the Environmental Protection Agency to ban the use of the pesticide DDT. Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane or DDT was used as an insecticide on large crops to prevent bugs and birds from damaging the crops (Lear 1997). Instead of preventing the animals or insects from consuming the vegetation, the creatures would often eat the chemical-sprayed food and die from it. Scavenger creatures would eat the poisoned and it would lead to a chain reaction of death and population diminishing. Environmentalists and other scientists had proven that there was a direct correlation between this chemical and the decreased population of many animals, including the American Bald Eagle. After the use of DDT was prohibited, this decrease halted and the bird's population increased exponentially. The same was true of other creatures who had been affected by the DDT being sprayed in and near their food sources and habitats.

In the Endangered Species Act of 1973, some of the vaguer terms were defined within the legal document. The term conserve, for example, was defined as:

the use of all necessary methods and procedures to bring any endangered or threatened species to the point at which the measures under the Act are no longer necessary. This includes, but is not limited to, all activities associated with scientific resources management, such as research, census, law enforcement, habitat acquisition and maintenance, propagation, live trapping, or transplantation, and, in the extraordinary case where population pressures within an ecosystem cannot be otherwise relieved, may include regulated taking (1973).

The term "taking" in this context means the killing of an animal that is currently on the Endangered Species List. Taking a listed animal without a permit or other form of government permission can result in severe financial penalties or even jail time to the perpetrator of the unsanctioned action.

Many non-native plants and animals are directly responsible for the declination of a species. Another cause is the usurpation of natural habitats by private landowners. Oregon State University did a study in the mid-1990s wherein they observed that hatchery production in the Columbus River had expanded below Bonneville Dam to support the fisheries. The population of the coho salmon had subsequently declined significantly. Under the law, only certain animals classify as a population. As defined by NMFS, a population or group of populations may be protected as a species under ESA if it is reproductively isolated from other populations and if it represents an important component in the evolutionary legacy (Waples 1991). The researchers looked at the mitochondrial DNA of different salmon to determine that these were a unique species and not a variation of another type already listed. These techniques would prove useful to later ecologists who were seeking to prove similar arguments.

Among the many amendments and additions with regard to animal protection and conservation, where a series of laws which were designed to protect the habitat of endangered species even if these habitats were on private property. These make it unlawful to remove or exterminate animals that are on the endangered species list. More than half of the habitats of listed animals are on private personal property. These landowners are given moneys from the government to encourage them to do whatever is in their power to embrace and protect the endangered species in question. In addition to these grants, there are laws which would punish those who intentionally destroyed these animals or forced them out of their habitats. However, there are exemptions to these rules. One such example is the "No Surprises" rule which is designed to protect the landowner should unforeseen circumstances occur which would put the animal's habitat in danger through no fault of his or her own.

The Endangered Species Act made it lawful for federal agencies to acquire lands to protect animals' habitats in the event that the landowner was unable or unwilling to comply with their protection. The Land Acquisition portion of the law (ESA §5) stated that the Secretary of Agriculture "is authorized to acquire, by purchase, donation or otherwise, lands, waters or interests therein" (1973). This has been one of the many criticisms of the Endangered Species Act; that it violates some human civil rights in the attempt to preserve the animals under their supervision.

There have been, in fact, many criticisms of the Endangered Species Act since its initial form in 1900. One such criticism, according to Kevin Hill (1993) is that "Conservatives criticize the Act as slow and ineffective while business leaders complain it protects marginal species at the cost of jobs" (page 239). This first point cannot be discounted. It is a fact that some species have become extinct while on the waiting list for inclusion under the Act. The second is among the plethora of issues that critics of the Act point to as reasons that the Act has done more harm than good. In 1992, more than $50 million was allocated for the protection of animals under the law. With this kind of money, it is very important to ensure that the funds are being distributed property and that no malfeasance is occurring. Hill (1993) goes on to say that, "Taxonomic decisions not to list a species can result in the tragedy of a species' extinction; but poor taxonomic decisions inappropriately listing a species can result in a misallocation of limited resources" (page 239). With regard to finances, the state governments are supposed to take some of the economic burden of paying for these conservation programs. According to the 1973 Amendments to the legislation, the federal cost of a state's conservation program "may not exceed 75% of estimated costs, although it may be increased to 90% when two or more states have a common interest in a listed species and its conservation may be enhanced by the cooperation of the state" (1973). In a nation with a severe economic problem, as the United States currently has, setting aside federal monies to animals may seem like a less necessary provision than other laws.

Some of the negative consequences of the creation of the Endangered Species Act have included preemptive destruction of habitats by property owners who were concerned that the discovery of these animals would impact them financially. This scenario has become known as the "Shoot, Shovel, and Shut-Up" action (Dubner 2008). Another issue has been the conflict between a state's individual laws regarding endangered species and federal laws about the same thing.

Once placed on the Endangered Species List, an animal may be delisted. To achieve this, the threats to that species must be eliminated or controlled, population size and growth must have increased significantly, and the stability of their habitat must have increased in quality and quantity. Also, some species have been delisted when it was discovered that improper data collection had caused their inclusion in the first place. "Downlisting" may also occur where population has increased to the point where an animal is no longer in danger of extinction. These animals are reclassified from "endangered" to "threatened." Among these animals, the grey wolf has recently been delisted.

According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (2007), before settlers arrived in the Midwest, wolves had a heavy population. North America has two species of wolves: the red and the grey, as well as their varying subspecies. These creatures served an important function in the ecosystem of the pre-human United States. Being predatory by nature, the wolves would prohibit the overpopulation of moose and deer. Their primary diet consists of ungulates which are large hoofed mammals such as elk, deer, moose, and caribou. However they have also been known to eat beaver, rabbits, and other smaller animals (Defenders 2011).

When the settlers began moving west, numbers of wild animals decreased because of competition from human hunters. Wolves had less to hunt in the wild but more food from the domesticated animals such as sheep and cattle that settlers brought into the areas. When these creatures became too much of a burden to farmers and ranchers, government policy, as well as personal policy for those who had lost livestock, was to diminish the wolf population. They were successful to the point that the grey wolves were almost hunted to extinction. Once placed on the Endangered Species List, federal agencies created a plan to restore the animal's population. Now there are more than 5,000 gray wolves in the continental United States. One of the things that the conservationists did to try to revitalize the population was take Canadian and Mexican gray wolves and release them into the wilds of the Rocky Mountains. These wolves were put through a pre-acclimation period before being introduced to the wild to ensure that they would survive and breed. The hope was that these wolves that had been raised in different terrains would be able to breed with wolves already in the area to create a stronger population. In January of 2009, it was declared that certain gray wolves would be removed from the Endangered Species List. This would include wolf populations in Idaho, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, Utah, and Wisconsin. However, wolves in the state of Wyoming would still be protected (Burgess 2009). This would not remain the case.

After the 2009 ruling, several pro-conservation groups filed lawsuits against the federal government. In an article for the L.A. Times, reporter Matt Volz wrote that "they argued that the government's decision would have set a precedent allowing the government to arbitrarily choose which animals should be protected and where." In August of 2010, the gray wolf was reinstated to the Endangered Species List in Montana and Idaho. A federal judge ruled that the government's decision to remove the animals in the first place was a political one and not an environmental one. In both states, the fear of an overpopulation of the grey wolf had led to the creation of state-sanctioned wolf hunts with a cap of around one hundred. This meant that the state approved the hunting of nearly a hundred animals that until recently had been considered endangered or at the very least "at risk" (Volz 2010). Before the judge's decision, how to classify the grey wolf had been at the discretion of state agencies. Judge Donald Molloy stated that instead of state determination, the decision about how to classify an animal should be uniform throughout a region, in this case the Rocky Mountains. From now on, the wolves must be protected throughout the region or removed from each state's Endangered Species Lists. Opponents of the ruling are blaming the state of Wyoming for the decision. Since the state refuses to remove the grey wolf from their Endangered Species List, the rest of the states must deal with a creature that has become overpopulated.

This ruling put farmers and ranchers in Montana in the same position as the early settlers. Since the reintroduction of the wolves to the area and their surplus population, wolves have been preying on livestock. The owners of said livestock had the option to remove these predators from their private property. In 2009, 97 cattle and 202 sheep were killed by grey wolves in the state of Montana. An additional 75 cattle and 324 sheep were killed in Idaho. Carolyn Sime, wolf program coordinator for Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks stated that after the 2010 ruling, they will no longer have the authority to kill grey wolves even on their own land. Wolves that kill human beings can still be killed in defense of the human population. In an article in the Washington Post, reporter Kari Lyderson wrote that the minimum population number for an endangered animal in the area to be relabeled to a "threatened" species is 300. Conservationists believe that allowing the grey wolf to be hunted in over-populated areas is a disguised effort to minimize their population from 5,000 back to this original number (2010). In reply to this assertion, Bob Ream, retired wildlife biology professor and member of Montana's wildlife advisory commission said, "You have to ask the question, how many is enough? There's no danger to wolf populations -- wolves are here to stay. I don't think any amount of hunting in Montana will eliminate them" (Lyderson 2010).