Whats Wrong With The Endagered Species Act

The Endangered Species Act, which was passed in 1973, is enormously powerful. In other laws federal agencies are required to provide protection to species where practicable, But the Endangered Species Act elevated protection of all species to one the U.S. government’s highest priorities. This protection is absolute. No equivocation. “The Act is widely regarded by its proponents as one of this country’s most important and powerful environmental laws and an international model.”(Stroup 2)

How can such a powerful tool have such inadequate results? The answer is that the Endangered Species Act ignores the fundamental economic problem of scarcity. Resources for saving species are inevitably limited. They are s

Some environmental leaders recognize that a real problem exists. Michael Bean, an Environmental Defense Fund attorney who is often informally credited with authorship of the Endangered Species Act, told a group that included FWS officials, that there is an “increasing evidence that at least some private landowners are actively managing their land so as to avoid potential endangered species problems.” He emphasized that these actions are “not the result of malice toward the environment but fairly rational decisions, motivated by a desire to avoid potentially significant economic constraints.”(Stroup 9) It is ironic that the Constitution bared the U.S. army from requiring a citizen quarter a soldier, yet the government can require that same citizen to quarter an endangered species at the landowner’s expense. Brandt Child bought 500 acres of property in Utah in 1900, planning to build a campground and golf course near its three lakes. The next year, The FWS told him he couldn’t use his property because the lakes were inhabited by 200,000 federally protected thumbnail-sized Kanab ambersnails. The snails differ from other snails only in their golden color. Mr. Child is out $2.5 million because he can’t use his property and the government won’t compensate him for the loss.

Economist Donald Coursey finds that in the United States and in other industrialist nations, citizens’ support for measures to improve environmental quality is highly sensitive to income changes. In economic terms, the income elasticity of demand for environmental quality is 2.5. That means that a 10% increase in income leads to a 25% increase in citizens’ willingness and ability to pay for environmental measures. According to

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