ISSUE BRIEF: ESA Needs to be Repealed
ESA is broken, and the only way to fix it is to get rid of it!
The Issue:
The Endangered Species Act (ESA) was enacted more than 30 years ago with the best of intentions. Its original goal: save species in danger of becoming extinct and help them recover to health. Americans overwhelmingly support these goals. In that time, less than 1% of species in North America have been recovered out of more than 1300 that were listed in the last 30 years.
The 33 year failure should prompt major reconsideration as to whether the law is a worthy venture. Every day more and more Americans are coming to understand the ESA is less about species and more about control of land and resources. You only have to look at the past 30 years since the enactment of the ESA to see what it has produced - the dramatic destruction of property rights and the failure to recover species.
Environmentalists are fighting hard against any ESA reform. There is good reason. The Endangered Species Act is one of the best federal land use laws on the books which accomplishes a much more important goal for the environmental movement.
If environmentalists and politicians really cared about the animals, they would get rid of the Act and give landowners the freedom to do what they do best – produce necessary resources while taking care of the land and all who inhabit it.
Impacts on the West:
The negative impacts of current ESA law are so pervasive that it is difficult to list them all completely. But here is one study that shows that the costs of the ESA are in the billions of dollars a year:
http://resourcescommittee.house.gov/issues/more/esa/accountingforspecies.pdf
These costs can be compared to the track record of the Act in terms of its ability to recover species to health. In its more than 30 years of operation, the ESA has succeeded in recovering endangered species less than one percent of the time.
Solutions:
- Take 60 seconds to tell Congress that ESA is broken and the only way to fix it is to repeal it!
Take Action on this Issue