The Endangered species Act as it stands today however, has gone radically astray.  Environmental extremists have managed to work the provisions of the Act into the realm of ridiculousness and to a point where it has become an unacceptable and unnecessary burden on many segments of this society.

 The ability to “list” ones favorite endangered species and thus place them under the protection of this law has resulted in a steadily increasing list of “sacred” creatures.  At this point farmers now find it hard to farm, woodsmen can’t cut trees, fishermen are being threatened with closures to fishing and the list of those being restricted continues to mount.  In most cases, as we know, it isn’t the crop or trees or fish that are under protection, it is some obscure creature of the field, the woods, or the sea that has brought down the weight of this law on these operations.  Increasingly, we are protecting birds, bugs, butterflies, mammals, moths, plants, rodents and the list goes on.  It is interesting to note that this whole process has become so out of control that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had, a few years ago, actually announced that it was suspending the listing of any more species under this Act.

 As most of us know, the ESA has come into play in the lobster fishing world in the name of saving whales.  As written, it has placed the fishermen and the National Marine Fisheries Service in an almost impossible situation.  With regard to endangered whales, it allows zero takes and basically defines “a take” as harassing, impeding, bumping, interrupting, getting too close to, entangling, injuring or killing a whale.  It is unreasonable and unforgiving.  This is also why the environmental groups launch their legal attacks using this law rather then the more moderate Marine Mammal Protection Act.

 The ESA has been due for a reauthorization process in Congress for several years now and no action has been taken because it’s considered a political hot potato.  Environmental groups have been keeping political pressure on legislators to not bring the Act up for the process fearing that it could be gutted by the increasing number of politicians who have had enough of the lunacy.  It is true that reauthorizing the ESA would probably be a long and political sensitive process and who knows how it would turn out.  Another interesting question that should be explored either technically or legally, is whether the law even exists today since it has expired?  Now there’s an interesting thought!  The legislative legal beagles, however, have been insisting that such a law continues to exist in its current form until it is reauthorized.

 On yet another level, laws can be changed or abolished.  It has happened and the ESA is becoming a prime candidate.  As an example, we have all heard of that infamous law that resulted in what is known as Prohibition.  Actually it was a Constitutional Amendment adopted in 1919, the 18^th Amendment.  Basically, this measure prohibited legal drinking of alcohol, to be blunt.  It spurred the era of backroom, undercover, crime ridden social upheaval over alcoholic beverages.  The law may have been well intended but it became a social and enforcement nightmare and was repealed by the 21^st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1933.  The point here is that laws can be changed if they become over burdensome or ridiculous.

 In the case of the Endangered Species Act, we feel it is time that this unreasonable and over burdensome U.S. law be repealed or at the very least be modified to bring it back to some level of reasonability.

 The phrase “all things in moderation” is frequently used to promote a better way of doing something.  In trying to protect declining species, maintain support for that protection and protect the sanity of society as well as, in our case, our fishermen, it is time to either do this type of protection in a more moderate way or allow the ESA itself to go the way of prohibition and the dinosaur.

 Can I save my favorite bug – the mosquito?

  Bill Adler
Executive Director                     

5/05