Fifty years ago, a bipartisan Congress did the right thing by a vote of 482 to 12. Congress passed, and President Richard Nixon signed, one of the most important pieces of environmental legislation in American history. The Endangered Species Act of 1973 was a far-reaching law designed not only to protect animal and plant species that might be threatened or endangered, but also to reintroduce those species into their previous habitats. That legislation has had enormous ecological impacts and is one of the reasons gray wolves will return to Colorado by year’s end.
The law is basically about humility and a national belief that our legacy as Americans includes the original plants, animals and insects found in our 50 states. For a century after the Declaration of Independence in 1776 we ran roughshod over the continent erecting fences, killing bison and passenger pigeons, mining, logging and building a nation. By the 1890s, a conservation movement was born to make better use of our natural resources. How could we be more efficient? How could we waste less grass, timber, water and soil?
“We are not building this country of ours for a day. It is to last through the ages. We stand on the threshold of a new century,” Theodore Roosevelt said in 1903. An ardent believer in conservation, Roosevelt saved 230 million acres of public land for all Americans, but even though he was an expert on birds and big mammals, he did not understand the predator-prey relationship. He labeled wolves and mountain lions “beasts of waste and desolation.” Roosevelt did not realize the role of predators in helping maintain healthy populations of deer and elk. Native peoples understood that role, but not America’s scientists. Not yet. It would be decades later in the 1950s and 1960s before the conservation movement evolved into the environmental movement and ecology became widely understood.
Finally, for the first time, we were concerned not just with protecting natural resources for our own use as Americans but in preserving the environment itself. In his book, “A Sand County Almanac,” Aldo Leopold used the phrases “land ethic” and “land health,” and he believed we should manage landscapes to contain the most species possible. His son, Starker Leopold, in “The Leopold Report” prepared for the National Park Service in 1963, argued that wildlife in national parks should be “a vignette of primitive America” and that all species belong.
A decade later, Congress passed the Endangered Species Act, which is “in some ways the most remarkable of our environmental laws,” according to legal scholar John Leshy, distinguished professor emeritus from the University of California. He adds, “Strictly focused on saving what many consider God’s creation – and perhaps for that reason enjoying deep and wide bipartisan support – its powerful commands operate only if an endangered species is formally ‘listed’ by federal wildlife officials. As efforts to protect the sage grouse show, this can be a powerful incentive to undertake voluntary efforts to safeguard species, so as to avoid ‘listing.’”
In the United States, progressive change begins as an idea, becomes an ideal and evolves into law. The Endangered Species Act represents a sweeping affirmation of ecological ethics, and it has had positive effects with the return of American eagles, bald eagles, peregrine falcons, alligators, Kirtland’s warbler and California condors.
Thanks to the law, I’ve heard the sharp calls of peregrines in Yampa Canyon and Echo Park in Dinosaur National Monument. We have protected peregrine habitat locally here on Perins Peak and Chimney Rock National Monument where peregrines have nested. Condors returned to the Grand Canyon and to Marble Canyon where they fly both above and below historic Navajo Bridge. At Vermilion Cliffs National Monument in Arizona, we camped for a week, walked the cliff rim and saw so many condors it was hard to keep track of their wide wingspans as they rode thermal currents ever higher against the vast skies of the Colorado Plateau.
Yes, it is not easy living with endangered species. The tiny fish labeled a snail darter stopped a few dams. There are rare flowers, rare rabbits, miniature owls and even smaller bats. Small species can have big impacts. The diminutive cactus ferruginous pygmy-owl sparked the Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan. Room to roam for endangered desert tortoises has halted motorcycle rallies and sprawling residential developments.
“People sometimes complain about how long a species remains listed under the ESA; we need to recognize how long it took to get a species to the point of being imperiled,” said Gary Skiba of the San Juan Citizens Alliance. With more than 30 years of experience as a wildlife biologist, he said, “The ESA is often cited as one of our most effective environmental laws, and it is. We need to keep it strong to help ensure that future generations can enjoy our wildlife heritage.”
Since 1973 we have saved 58 species, but we’ve also lost and are losing species to extinction. One of the environmental groups working the hardest to save species is the Center for Biological Diversity, which has successfully argued in court for polar bear habitat, for wolves to return, and even for tamarisk-chewing beetles not to be introduced into riparian areas used by the Southwestern Willow Flycatcher. The CBD has campaigned for critical habitat for Canada lynx, the Hawaiian monk seal, California tiger salamanders, American jaguars and hard-to-find Chelan mountainsnails.
How ironic that in Roosevelt’s time the Bureau of Biological Survey ran a special laboratory in Denver to create predator poisons like strychnine. That same federal agency is now the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service dedicated to species protection. Its professional staff makes critical decisions during a 90-day review as to whether a species should be listed as threatened or endangered. Across the West there have been fights about listing the Greater Sage Grouse. Now nationwide, the once prevalent bumblebee is in trouble. So are we as Americans because buzzing bumblebees may pollinate up to one third of our agricultural plants. According to Smithsonian Magazine in 2021, the species has vanished from Maine, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Vermont, Idaho, North Dakota, Wyoming and Oregon with a 98% decline in New York state.
There have been successes with the ESA as well as losses, but conservationist and founder of the Sonoran Institute Luther Propst believes, “The Endangered Species Act has served the United States and the world remarkably well for 50 years as the public policy ‘Emergency Room’ for plants and animals. Without doubt, the ESA is one of the most important and effective statutory foundations for protecting wildlife, wildlife habitat, and life on Earth.” He adds, “We are all fortunate that leaders of both parties had the foresight to pass the act.”
So where do we go from here? We keep the law intact. We leave the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in charge. As we struggle with climate change and global warming, let’s try to save all the plants and animals we can for our 21st century Noah’s ark, also known as spaceship Earth. Half a century ago, our politicians had extraordinary prescience. Now 50 years later, let us applaud and reaffirm the humility inherent in the Endangered Species Act.
Andrew Gulliford, an award-winning author and editor, is professor of history at Fort Lewis College. Reach him at andy@agulliford.com.
