Posted on 08/05/2023 1:09:15 AM PDT by Olog-hai
Biologist Ashley Wilson carefully disentangled a bat from netting above a tree-lined river and examined the wriggling, furry mammal in her headlamp’s glow. “Another big brown,” she said with a sigh.
It was a common type, one of many Wilson and colleagues had snagged on summer nights in the southern Michigan countryside. They were looking for increasingly scarce Indiana and northern long-eared bats, which historically migrated there for birthing season, sheltering behind peeling bark of dead trees. […]
The two bat varieties are designated as imperiled under the Endangered Species Act, the bedrock U.S. law intended to keep animal and plant types from dying out. Enacted in 1973 amid fear for iconic creatures such as the bald eagle, grizzly bear and gray wolf, it extends legal protection to 1,683 domestic species.
More than 99% of those listed as “endangered” — on the verge of extinction — or the less severe “threatened” have survived. […]
Yet the law has become so controversial that Congress hasn’t updated it since 1992 — and some worry it won’t last another half-century.
Conservative administrations and lawmakers have stepped up efforts to weaken it, backed by landowner and industry groups that contend the act s tifles property rights and economic growth. Members of Congress try increasingly to overrule government experts on protecting individual species. …
(Excerpt) Read more at apnews.com ...
The problem with the Endangered Species Act, as is the problem with everything the government does, is it was hijacked to further political aims. If there was a project some Greenies didn’t like, they’d find a species that the project endangered and *viola! * the project is killed. Virtually everything is viewed by the Left as a means to accomplish their goals. And the goals of the Left are diametrically opposed to the rest of us in the pursuit of happiness. The best thing we could do is role back government to what it was in the 1920’s.
If they had had the Endangered Species Act back in the day, we might still have dinosaurs, mammoths, and sabre toothed cats.
Exactly! Species have been coming and going for millions of years and then here comes the USA to try to gum up that process…
Time to get rid of the ESA. It is a unconstitutional over reach by the federal government.
It’s pure arrogance for some people to believe that they can control it.
The extinction is of sub species that are not fit.
Turns out the spotted owl can live in a variety of places and doesn’t want to die off.
The ESA is a political/emotional tool.
(Emily Litella voice)
What’s all this I keep hearing about endangered feces?
How can feces be endangered?
People are pooping all over the place!
You know the rest.
Evolutionists, darwinists, natural selection lovers
All love them selves some evolution
Until they don’t.
The ESA prevents evolution.
( not that I believe in it /-)
Kinda like dems love democracy until their butts are voted out.
What I was thinking....
The actual problem is the act is applied locally not nationally. Take the example of the Bald Eagle - everyone assumed that soon there would be no more on Earth.
But there were many thousands, except in certain places which were deemed part of the bird’s “historic range”.
There could be a few of something in the county you live in, but millions in the next county over. However, for the act, both counties would be treated equally.
Translation: We need more money!
What extinctions has the Endangered Species Act... prevented? Cannot think of one- and lots of species have gone extinct over the past million years without help from humans either way.
For more “natural” and interesting evening walks. “Daddy isn’t coming home kids— adjust!”
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