Conservatives are beating up on the Endangered Species Act again. Secretary of the Interior Manuel Lujan Jr., who is responsible for enforcing it, launched a bad-cop assault on the act a few weeks ago, charging, in effect, that the law’s rigidity prevented him from having the freedom to decide which species deserved to survive and which ones should be sacrificed.
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The supposed lack of flexibility is one of the two major lines of attack the Right has developed in its, so far, fruitless assault on the Endangered Species Act. The other, the yahoo approach exemplified by Lujan’s remarks, could be stated simply as: “I never heard of this animal. Why should I save it?” This approach assumes that only famous endangered species like the bald eagle and the whooping crane ought to be covered by the act. Mussels and butterflies and plants with small, plain flowers or funny names–like the Furbish lousewort–shouldn’t qualify. Neither of these arguments makes much sense, and if you keep reading, I will tell you why.
First, the rigidity of the act. The law commits the secretary of the interior to oppose any undertaking that threatens a population of an endangered species. He is not allowed to take economic factors into consideration. His first concern must always be the protection of the endangered plant or animal. Why make such a strict rule?
There is an ineffable sadness about the end of a line. I wonder what the zookeeper at the Cincinnati Zoo thought on that morning in 1914 when he discovered Martha, the last living passenger pigeon, dead in her cage? That was it for a unique configuration of life. There will never be another passenger pigeon.
So the people who use the spotted owl as a tool for saving the virgin forests of Washington and Oregon are not really hiding behind the Endangered Species Act while pursuing some sort of hidden agenda. The way to protect the owl– and doubtless many other less visible species–is to protect the forest that sustains it.
Bulldozing Mount Graham is like taking an ice pick to the flawlessly polished mirror of an astronomer’s telescope, like forcing the astronomers to study the heavens with a major piece of the sky blotted out.
