The Overcrowded Ark
The Economist calls for an update to the Endangered Species Act, citing that lots of plants and animals have entered the list and few are leaving it. Meanwhile, the stoppage of industrial work in areas where these species reside results in sacrificed jobs and city growth.
According to the article, just 47 species have been removed from the threatened or endangered list, and several of those were due to outside factors such as the banning of the insecticide DDT.
“When the Endangered Species Act was signed in 1973, it was expected to protect charismatic fauna such as the bald eagle and Yellowstone’s grizzly bears. These days it covers such obscure life-forms as the Stock Island tree snail, the Banbury Springs limpet and the triple-ribbed milk-vetch, along with 1,348 other animals and plants. In the absence of other powerful laws, it has become the chief weapon of environmentalists—and the bane of landowners and property-rights activists.”
The Endangered Species Act has also given rise to the phenomenon of “shoot, shovel and shut up,” where farmers will kill off members of a species before it has a chance to become endangered. The law only protects a species once it is on the list, and by that time it may be too late to be saved.
However, the article believes there’s little chance the law will be repealed, as it has reached such a status that suggesting this would be political suicide. To learn more about the Endangered Species Act, click here.
Sandra Keil
posted on September 7th, 2007 at 4:29 pm
I think this article brings to light an important aspect of the “shoot, shovel and shutup” phenominon. Under the current law, a land owner is punished for having endangered species on his property, so much in fact, that they find it worth the risk to kill of the species rather than protect it. By punished, I mean, they oftentimes lose the ability to use their land. For a farmer, one can imagine this would be devastating. If their land practices are such that endangered species are living on their land, they must be doing something right. Instead of punishing them, why not reward them? If we are concerned for the survival of the species, then we should be incentiving land owners. Protecting species benefits everyone, but the ESA puts the burden on private land owners. Any economist will argue that this is unfair: a public benefit should be shouldered by the public, not a few private citizens. If we really want to protect species, we must also protect the rights of land owners. The Act should be amended to incentive land owners to create better habitat rather than force them to comply with unfair regulations. The land owners will more likely be agreeable to maintaining the habitat, the public will be able to rest assured that more species are being protected and best of all, more species will survive.