ESA: Species Savior

by Haley Brown

The stakes are high when it comes to conserving the earth's biodiversity; is the Endangered Species Act up to the task?

The bald eagle is one of the ESA's success stories.

The Endangered Species Act (ESA) is generally considered to be a positive program. A poll from 2015 showed that 90% of Americans support it. Since Richard Nixon passed it in 1973, the act has aimed to prevent animal and plant species from going extinct due to human interference.

Ecologists agree that legislation to conserve biodiversity is necessary—each species plays a unique role in its ecosystem, so the loss of any can be detrimental. However, ecologists disagree on the ESA's efficacy. Currently over 2000 species are on the list of endangered and threatened species covered by the act. 99% of species on the list are still around, which some see as a success. However, critics are more focused on the mere 1% of those that have been recovered and removed from the list. So how should we measure the ESA's success? With the condition the earth is in now and all the destruction humans have inflicted upon our natural neighbors, the ESA's success can really only be judged justly by the species it has kept from extinction.

Last summer I went on a research trip to Alaska to study the dietary and growth trends of rockfish. The fish weren't the only animals I saw though; I was amazed to see bald eagles everywhere! They hung around the lodge with the frequency and proximity of crows around a Walmart. The most incredible part is that in just 1963, there were only 417 nesting pairs of bald eagles in the lower 48 states.

Restrictions were placed on killing the eagles, and eventually the shell-thinning pesticide DDT was banned. It was when the ESA was passed, though, that their numbers really began to recover. Now there are around 10,000 nesting pairs of the birds in the contiguous United States, and they are no longer on the endangered species list. The chance to help wildlife thrive like that is why I study ecology.

A photo from my research trip of the beautiful,
biodiverse Alaska landscape.
   

Doing what they can

The ESA has kept myriad species from going extinct—scientists estimate around 273. It's true that only a small proportion of the protected species have been fully rehabilitated and delisted, but I would argue that's not the primary goal of the act. In a more ideal world—maybe if the ESA had been implemented much earlier—it would serve as a preventative measure, something to encourage people to act on their own to conserve species so they wouldn't have to be listed. At this point, however, after humans have spent hundreds of years harming habitats and overhunting, we're forced to focus on keeping biodiversity's head above the water.

As far as the species that remain on the list for years, that's not really a surprise. If we removed restrictions on harming species and their habitats, it would be only a matter of time before people ended up putting them right back on the list. If your cat attacked your Christmas tree and broke some ornaments, you would probably block the tree off so the cat couldn't make a further mess of things. But after you got the mess under control and replaced some of the ornaments, would you give the cat free reign again? Of course not. If you did, you would only be asking for more broken ornaments.

Communication and the ESA

The black-footed ferret is a treasured species in the western United States. They were thought to have gone extinct until a small population was found in Wyoming; that population was used to repopulate southwestern areas, including the Utah-Colorado border. The Monte L. Bean museum on BYU campus is one organization that is making efforts to preserve the species and educate the public on its importance. Since being reintroduced with the protection of the ESA, their populations have grown drastically. However, they need continued conservation, or they could actually go extinct this time.

The bald ibis is a critically endangered
bird that is protected by the ESA.

The ESA is often criticized for not distributing its funds well across species, and for focusing on "charismatic" species like the panda while giving little attention to other important, less cute species like the bald ibis. The funds for the act could probably be better distributed, but that does not lessen its success. In addition, convincing the public to care about saving endangered species is an important part of getting funds and making the ESA successful.

An important step toward the ESA was Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring. Published in 1962, the book called out chemical companies for harming the environment with pesticides  and political figures for not doing anything about it. People across the country read it and were inspired to take action. A model for communication in conservation, Carson played a huge role in the nationwide ban on DDT and the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Closing

William Wordsworth, a true man of the Romantic era, communicated his love for nature in "The World Is Too Much With Us." With the rise of urbanization, he was distraught that people no longer took time to appreciate what brought him so much peace and introspection. He longed for a world of the past, one in which he could look over a landscape and "have glimpses that would make [him] less forlorn." Hopefully we won't come to a day that we feel the same way about beloved species gone extinct. Using a time machine to recover lost species would be much more difficult than conserving the species and resources we already have with legislation like the ESA.

There are plenty of valid criticisms of the ESA. It could probably distribute its funds more evenly. It could do a better job of communicating with the public and with landowners so they are more willing to work toward conservation themselves and support the act. However, what we should not underestimate is the ESA's success. Without it, the world would be much poorer in biodiversity than it already is.

Image credits

• Bald Eagle, photographer unknown, licensed under CC0
• Bald Ibis, by Kev Chapman, licensed under CC BY 2.0

Sources

• The Endangered Species Act Won't Save Animals. It Wasn't Designed To. - Sarah Gold; Slate
• On Time, On Target - Kieran Suckling, Noah Greenwald, and Tierra Curry; Center for Biological Diversity
• The Endangered Species Act: A Wild Success - Center for Biological Diversity
• Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, a book that changed the world - Mark Stoll; The Environment & Society Portal
• A Wild Success: A systematic review of bird recovery under the endangered species act - Center for Biological Diversity
• The World Is Too Much With Us - William Wordsworth; Poetry Foundation