What's Wrong With The Endangered Species Act

I hope you are doing well. My name is and I am a student at Southern Illinois University. I am writing to you in regards to your article written about the Endangered Species Act called Bad for Species, Bad for People: What’s Wrong with the Endangered Species Act and How to Fix It. Although I might agree with some of the claims you have made, I find myself disagreeing with a majority of the statements made throughout the article. I feel as if you kept your argument very one sided and overlooked both sides of the story whilst not stating all the facts that you argued.

The Endangered Species Act (ESA) was enacted in 1973 to replace an earlier act in the 1960s. The act’s purpose is to protect and prevent plants, animals, and the ecosystem from

threats, damage or possible worldwide extinction. The Endangered Species act is important because it is the only act of its kind; meaning, the deletion and or alteration of this act would have a great effect on our wildlife.

One claim that really stuck out throughout the entirety of the essay was the penalization and discrimination land owners receive under this act. Throughout the article, Seaholes heavily focuses on the “land-use control provisions” and how the Act effects public and private landowners. Seaholes claims that stripping the ESA’s land-use controls would create a solution to this problem, when in fact it will do nothing but create a less stable environment to those endangered animals and produce more bad than good. Land-use control is very important because not everyone has the same idea when it comes to needs, interests, and lifestyles. So, stripping away land use control will affect the sustainability of endangered animals in a number of ways. Taking away land use controls would affect our environmental values. Land owners would have complete control over the destruction of native wildlife and habitat, control over how and where they remove their waste, and control over the endangered animals that may live on the property. Giving land owners complete land control would also effect and decrease

our economic values. If land control was completely in the hands of the landowner urbanization will completely take over our natural environment. This will lessen the amount of land for animals to live and inhabit and lesson land for farmers who mass produce for the country. Lastly, giving all land control to all land owners would impact our social values. Land use control was put into place to protect the health and safety of all people and animals. If anything such as a flood, natural disaster, or sinkholes were to affect an area, it would be up to the land owners to fix it. This can cause problems finically for the owners or overtime just never be fixed. Seahole fails to mention that funding is given to landowner in territory of species even when located on non-federal land. Although giving landowners complete control over their land sounds like a good idea, in the long run it will have severe effects on the sustainability of wildlife and wildlife preservation.
Although land control is what Seaholes mainly argued, he also argues that the people responsible for listing animals on the endangered species list do a poor job of collecting their data. Seaholes backed up a majority of this statement with un-researched data or opinion. The Endangered Species organization does a lot when it comes to researching which animals do and don’t make it onto the list. According to the National Wildlife federation, there are two different federations that foresee the animals and data that is reviewed to get onto the Endangered Species list. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service are in charge of all of the animals that predominantly live on land while The U.S. Marine Fisheries Service are in control of aquatic animals and ecosystem. Seaholes fails to mention this throughout his article making his statements less credible. Seaholes also fails to mention that the steps the organizations take to classify a species as stable or unstable. One of the first things the ESA does in their data collection is to survey state and national scientists to get a count of the animals that are threatened. Whether a species is listed or not depends on a number of factors and criteria. They take the severity of the endangerment into account and whether or not protection can be provided to the animals in different ways. According to the National Wildlife Federation website, the animals surveyed are evaluated on certain criteria such as “if a large percentage of the species vital habitat been degraded or destroyed… if the animal has been over consumed by commercial, recreational, scientific or educational use… threatened by a disease or predator…and are there other manmade factors that threaten the long-term survival of the species.” Being able to find this information so easily really deceived his readers which is why I thought his argument was too one sided.
Once an animal is listed, they remain on the list until there is no longer a risk for their survival, or until the species has grown in population.

There are have been a very large amount of animals who have been saved by this act. In Seaholes article he claims that “almost all of the species listed under the ESA are not extinct” and that the animals listed aren’t actually endangered. I completely disagree with this claim for a number of reasons. One reason I disagree is that, this act is the only one of its kind. Protecting plants and wildlife is a very big job so, without it, there would be no preservation for our ecosystem whatsoever. Extinction is real and once they are gone they are gone. Another reason why I disagree with Seaholes is because there are numerous cases of different animals, fish, and plant being save by the Endangered Species Act. For example, some very well-known animals saved by the ESA would be the American grey wolf, the alligator, and the grizzly bear, just to name a few. Before the grizzly bear was on the Endangered Species List, it was rumored that there were to be only about eight hundred to one thousand bears left in the United States. The ESA took action and created a recovery plan to save the grizzly bears as they do for every animal that is placed on the list. Now, there are over fifty thousand grizzly bears in the United States. Once the animal is delisted, it will be monitored to make sure they stay unthreatened. The grizzly bear is just

one success story that has come out of the ESA. Seeing as the ESA has saved quite a number of animals from extinction, that debunks Seaholes claim saying that animals on the list aren’t extinct and aren’t being recovered off the list.
After everything being said, the Endangered Species Act is very important for many of reasons. It is the only act of its kind to preserve, save, and monitor threatened plants and wildlife. I hope that by gaining more knowledge about out wildlife, members of the community will band together to save our animals from being gone forever. Seaholes did a poor job in arguing his point of view of the Endangered Species Act. He poorly supported his claim of land control, inaccurate data, and saving species with un researched information that made his claims and article one sided.