In December of 1973, the Endangered Species Act (ESA) was passed. The Act claims to provide a means to conserve endangered and threatened species and to provide a program for the conservation of such endangered species and threatened species. Appropriate steps toward these goals were provided for in the act as well (Ray 82). Although the act has generated little controversy throughout most of its history, the law is now at the center of one (Bean 22). A host of business, development, resource extraction, and ideological interests have targeted the law for radical change or extinction. Recently, the federal government implemented the National Biological Survey, a project that created still more controversy about the act among those who believe it would expand the reach of the Endangered Species Act even further (Interior 1475).
Senator Mark Hatfield, one of the authors of the act, while still supporting its reauthorization, admits that there are problems with the act in the way the law is interpreted and administered. The Senator recently expressed concern that the act favors preservation over conservation, and that there was no question that the act is being applied in a manner far beyond what he and his colleagues envisioned when they wrote the act (Ray 82). The act, according to Hatfield, was intended to deal with the human side of environmentalism. Congress always considered the human element as central to the success of ESA and now the situation has gotten out of control.
Douglas Wheeler also has stated that the Endangered Species Act is not working. He helped write the act in 1973 when he was a legislative aide in the Nixon Administration (Zausner 124). According to Wheeler, while the law does protect animals, it has also degenerated into a tool used cynically by anti-development groups to delay projects they oppose. Indeed, Andy Stahl, resource analyst for the Sierra Club and Legal Defense Fund, has been quoted...