The editors of the Washington Post call for updating the Endangered Species Act to provide greater incentives for preserving biodiversity:
The Trump administration’s attempt to weaken the Endangered Species Act is easy to criticize. This month, it proposed a rule that would limit what constitutes “harm” under the law to only direct actions against wildlife, such as hunting, wounding or trapping. Destroying their habitats would no longer count.
Anyone who’s ever seen roadkill littering U.S. highways should understand the flaw in this logic: Species can thrive only when they have space to live free from dangers imposed by humankind.
It is not enough to simply defend the status quo, however. An honest assessment of the Endangered Species Act would conclude that, alongside its strengths, it has many weaknesses. As scientists warn that the world is entering a period of mass extinction, lawmakers would be wise to rethink federal conservation strategies. This means reforming the act to better incentivize citizens to protect the country’s precious biodiversity.
concluding:
President Donald Trump and his party are unlikely to embrace these reforms. But Congress in recent years has shown that there is strong bipartisan appetite to strengthen protections for endangered species. The best way forward is to embrace market-oriented strategies.
I materially agree with what they propose but I don’t think they’ve thought it through. Preserving biodiversity whether through bans on hunting, etc. or introducing “market-oriented strategies” increases production costs in the United States which puts us at a competitive disadvantage to countries which subordinate biodiversity to other goals notably China, India, and Brazil. Each of those countries destroys thousands or hundreds of thousands of hectares of forest cover annually, habitats to hundreds or thousands of species. Providing those countries with competitive advantages has the presumably unintended secondary effect of encouraging that activity.
If we are genuinely interested in preserving biodiversity, we need to align the incentives to produce more of what we consume rather than offshoring that production to countries that aren’t concerned about the environmental impact of industrial production.
Actual real hunters are concerned about loss of habitat which is generally more of an issue rather than actual hunting. It’s not an issue for celebrity, rich guy hunters since they either just pay for access or get invited. Everyone else is more aware of the issue. Anyway, it’s a matter of trade offs. We can shift the balance more towards production as long as we accept loss of habitat and lack of biodiversity.
Steve
You’re missing the point, steve. Biodiversity is promoted by producing more here and importing less from countries that don’t really care about biodiversity.
Daves last paragraph, plus:
This is a crock of shit: “Anyone who’s ever seen roadkill littering U.S. highways should understand the flaw in this logic: Species can thrive only when they have space to live free from dangers imposed by humankind.”
I live in Towns County, GA. Young Harris/Hiawassee on Lake Chatuge to be specific. We literally live in the middle of ginormous parks. Look it up. Its easy.
Road kill? Its incredible here, despite the parks. Deer, armadillos, rabbits, skunks, squirrels and on and on. Yet there is an incredible tally of wild acres. But animals are killed all day long.
Blame it on humans? OK. Then let’s all live without cars, or in Atlanta. Its silly. And let’s be honest – although no one wants to talk about it, we glorify nature. But at night we routinely hear the gruesome howls of a pack of coyotes who have caught a deer, or turkey, or…….and are busy eating it before its even dead. No doubt the body count exceeds road kill. Let’s get real.
And as far as mass bio-extinction, spare me the BS. I’ve been hearing about bio-extinction, mass starvation, disease and pestilence since I was a teenager. Doom-porn sells. Al Gore sponsored a highly touted film predicting that artic ice would be gone by………..wait for it…….2015. Real scientists (snicker) endorsed the notion that arctic ice would be gone by 2030. FL 2/3 under water. NYC as Venice…..
Those pesky icebergs better read the memo, because the most recent measurements show absolute stability in the ice mass for 20 years now.
Not to worry. Upon these finding the charlatans, er, I mean the climate scientists declared “well, the computer models predict this. You see, you have to have global cooling before you get global warming.”
Sometimes these issues become tests of mental acuity……
The bald eagle was saved by banning DDT, which happened a year before the Endangered Species Act was enacted. There is not a lot of evidence that the ESA has done much. The op-ed explains why — most endangered species are on private land. Successful protection of endangered species occurs through active management on public lands. There are Constitutional and practical limits to what the government can do to protect species on private land. The key statutory provision in the ESA is that the federal government shall not authorize, fund or carry-out actions that destroy or adversely modify critical habitat. IOW, this law is dead-center of the abundance people’s complaint that the federal government cannot do things anymore and that sensible projects get hung up by lawyers in the courts and agencies demanding more and more studies.
Maybe those concerned might take a page from Ducks Unlimited which fund raises to create and protect the marshlands ducks want and hunters find their bag limit. However, that requires more than lobbying and running to the courts.
Biodiversity loss is a direct and unavoidable consequence of human population growth. We are, after all, an invasive species. So, the main environmental policy should be a freeze on the US population: Zero Population growth, ZPG. If you are not willing to do that, then US biodiversity will continue to decline.
Almost all our current immigrants come from cultures that do not value biodiversity. Environmental protection is a middle class thing. So, support for environmental protection in the US will inevitable decline. It’s baked into the next cake.
It is possible that the coming socialist police state (note the recent Canadian election and the EU) will use the cover of environmental policy to control the population.
Dave- I didnt miss the point I simply point out that it’s a trade off. It’s hard to quantify the value of lost species. It’s easier to do so for production. It’s pretty clear that the ESA has been abused so make it incumbent on the people who want to keep the ESA to work faster and give better value estimates. Limit them to one study.
Drew- No real scientist predicted the ice would be gone by 2030 and the volume of ice is still decreasing. I specifically use the word volume. The extent of ice has actually increased in some places due to lower salinity from melting ice but volume is down.
Steve