This paper critically examines the Endangered Species Act (ESA) and argues that blanket animal rights protections can produce unintended consequences for human communities and competing species. Drawing on case studies including the Klamath Basin irrigation crisis, the recovery and expansion of western mountain lion (cougar) populations, and the conflict between protected cougars and endangered Sierra Nevada bighorn sheep, the paper demonstrates that wildlife protection policy often pits one protected interest against another. The author proposes developing a "means testing" framework to evaluate the economic and social impact of endangered species designations before implementation, suggesting that truly balanced wildlife policy must weigh human welfare and ecological complexity alongside conservation goals.
According to Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of Law (1996), the Endangered Species Act (ESA) obligates the government to protect all animal and plant life threatened with extinction. Included in this category are endangered species, defined as any species "which is in danger of extinction throughout all or a significant portion of its range." Also protected are threatened species, defined as any species "which is likely to become endangered in the foreseeable future throughout all or a significant portion of its range." The broad scope of this act is creating problems for those who are responsible for granting rights to animals. Unlike humans, who have been granted certain unalienable rights by their creator (U.S. Bill of Rights), animals receive the rights they enjoy from the highest species on earth: man.
By treating the subject of animal rights as a holy grail, activist groups are creating measurable harm for citizen groups and communities across the nation. Because the actions of the federal government are significantly impacting the lives and safety of other animals and humans alike, the subject of animal rights policy must be reexamined. The term "means testing," as well as the concept of "economic impact," has come to be applied to government actions that could significantly affect the rights and well-being of American citizens. As a measure of self-regulation, the government is increasingly requiring that new legislation be studied before implementation to ensure that the desired outcome will have no unforeseen consequences. As the "rights" of endangered animals begin to impede the activities and, in some cases, the economic well-being of U.S. citizens, this paper recommends studying the subject and determining a framework upon which a means testing structure could be assembled to measure the economic impact of proposed animal rights declarations.
Seldom does the government, or the activist groups behind government legislation, act purely on the basis of altruistic motives. For reasons that are sometimes easily discernible, and at other times obscured beneath momentary political crises, those who influence government legislative behavior often carry a political or cultural agenda of their own. Such is the case with the ESA. By protecting the "rights" of individual animals, entire communities are being negatively affected. In some cases, community development is put on hold at the risk of disrupting a community's economic stability due to the presence of an endangered species.
A striking example occurred in Klamath Falls, Oregon, where farmers were prohibited from irrigating their fields because of the presence of a protected fish in the local water supply. The irrigation would not have consumed all the water, nor would the annual irrigation schedule have destroyed the fish's habitat. The ESA was invoked nonetheless under its second clause, which is sufficiently broad to include "threatened" species — those likely to become endangered in the foreseeable future.
"April 6, 2001 is a day which will live in infamy, a day when those in the Klamath basin project and their descendants were stripped of all irrigation water," said third-generation farmer Marshall Staunton. "They became part of history as the first Bureau [of Reclamation] irrigators to completely lose an entire irrigation water supply. How they lost the water our nation promised can be summed up in three letters: 'E.S.A.'" (Souza, 2001)
Many war veterans were originally invited to the Klamath Basin as homesteaders to raise families and farm, and their descendants remain on family property today. The Reclamation Act of 1902, which encouraged America's veterans to participate in a lottery drawing for land in the West, brought them to their own piece of the American dream. Lands and water were made available to homesteaders, who in turn financed the construction and operation of the water works. However, these landowners now hold the federal government in contempt for reneging on that agreement in 2001, when the U.S. Department of the Interior announced that Klamath Basin growers would receive no water that year due to drought conditions and the protection of endangered species. Federal officials chose to increase lake levels to benefit the endangered Lost River sucker and the threatened Coho salmon.
"Folks are starting to cry out. We are so angry and disgusted," Staunton said. "We are in complete despair and it is probable we are all going down. There are 1,400 martyrs here who are without water" as a result of the Coho salmon and a sucker fish's "rights." (Souza, 2001)
Those who live along the California-Oregon border fear that a lack of water will be devastating to agriculture, schools, supermarkets, hardware stores, and the entire community. "This is the first time in our nation's history that the Endangered Species Act has totally decimated thousands of jobs, businesses, and the heritage of such a widespread area. An expected economic loss of $300 to $400 million will make it almost impossible for this area to survive," Staunton said (Souza, 2001).
Similar situations are being experienced in the West with regard to the western mountain lion, locally known as the cougar. Mountain lions, also known as pumas, are solitary, highly mobile carnivores that inhabit low-density forests and roam enormous tracts of land across western North America. For decades, these characteristics made the cats difficult to research. According to Hansen (1995), cougars once claimed the most extensive range of any land mammal in the Western Hemisphere, roaming from the Canadian Yukon to the South American Straits of Magellan. They can be found from sea level to 14,765 feet and in habitats as diverse as Pacific Northwest forests, Southwestern deserts, and Florida's Everglades. While adaptable, the cougar is not invulnerable. Decades of habitat loss from increasing land development and persecution by hunters have reduced the lion's North American range to the 12 western states, Mexico, and a limited territory in Canada. A small remnant community of Florida panthers also remains on the endangered species list, inhabiting a small area in southern Florida.
The Florida panther is now found only in South Florida, primarily in the Big Cypress Swamp. The 50 to 70 remaining big cats that have been identified are threatened by inbreeding and geographic isolation, leaving them vulnerable to disease, congenital defects, and natural disasters. They are ranked among the most imperiled mammals in the world. In a bold experiment, state wildlife officials introduced closely related Texas cougar females into the region, hoping to enhance the panther's genetic variability and thereby forestall what many biologists saw as its impending extinction (Natural History, 1999). Kris Thoemke, director of the National Wildlife Federation's Everglades Project Office, notes that "the panthers' gene pool was somewhat enriched by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's import of 10 close cougar relatives from Texas two years ago" (Bogo and Motavalli, 1999). The move was controversial, but most observers agree the panther would have disappeared without such intervention.
Further complicating the panthers' situation is their location in southwest Florida, one of the fastest-growing real estate markets in the country, where their most significant predator is the speeding car. Panthers typically roam an area of 150 square miles in search of prey — mainly white-tailed deer — and that habitat is fast disappearing. "It doesn't take much development to disrupt them," says Thoemke. "The panther issue goes right to the heart of efforts to control sprawl and growth. And even when there are large habitat areas, if there's not enough food, the animals can't intermingle through wildlife corridors" (Bogo and Motavalli, 1999). Floridians have put the panther on their license plates, but have to date shown little inclination to stop the growth that is endangering the animal's future.
According to the National Wildlife Federation, "Conserving wild cats is integral to protecting the West's wildlife heritage and to saving many of the pristine wild places they call home," says Elizabeth Murdock, chief author of the NWF's Keep the Wild Alive campaign report (nwf.org).
Although cougars are typically considered numerous in the West, their numbers have been significantly reduced to roughly 50% of what the population was at the turn of the century, and their territory has shrunk to less than one-third of its traditional habitat. The cougar has been virtually eliminated east of the Mississippi River, and its fate in the West has been threatened by increasing loss and fragmentation of contiguous habitat. Cougars in Texas, the northern Rockies, and southern California, for example, had disappeared from much of their former range until federal regulations began to protect them.
Habitat loss poses the single greatest threat to cougars, which require significant areas of wild land to establish home ranges and permit their young to disperse. A cougar's home range typically varies from 25 to 500 square miles for males and up to 400 square miles for females. With the ever-advancing human development of land for housing and businesses, the loss of traditional habitat is synonymous with the decline of animal populations.
Losing these top predators can tilt the ecological balance and create ripple effects throughout the food chain. When apex predators disappear from the landscape, other species sharing their habitat can experience overpopulation or population decline. In predator-free environments, species that were once typical prey — large mammals such as sheep, coyotes, and deer — can experience rapid population growth. When those populations grow too large, the result is a shortage of natural resources such as food and range area, leading to advancing death rates due to malnutrition, reduced breeding success, or disease spread through overcrowding.
Another problem posed by new suburban developments is the shrinkage of cougar habitat into isolated islands, placing a greater number of cougars in close contact with humans. Mixing cougars and humans can be as dangerous as mixing gasoline and sparks — sooner or later they encounter each other with disastrous consequences. When cougars become too populous on limited habitat, they become more aggressive in seeking new territory. Furthermore, cougars that are not hunted over an extended period begin to lose their fear of humans, doubly increasing the risk of contact between people and the big cats. The result is harm to humans or the eventual destruction of the cougars themselves.
In Colorado, suburban expansion around Denver, Boulder, and Colorado Springs continually encroaches on cougar habitat, converting wild areas into settlements and displacing cougars. In California, cougar populations on the outskirts of San Francisco, San Diego, and Los Angeles are coping with human expansion; while the cat is flexible, pressures from ever-increasing urban growth put both cougar and human populations at significant risk.
Cougars are among several imperiled wild cats featured in the NWF's report. Although many acres of wild land have been degraded or destroyed in the United States, Canada, and Mexico, many important habitat areas still support these animals. The purpose of the ESA is to conserve these lands and thereby help North America's wild cats survive. In areas such as southern California and the Rocky Mountain regions of Colorado, where native habitat has been so greatly reduced, conservation efforts must focus on preserving what little native land remains and protecting additional wilderness areas.
During the 1960s and 1970s, many state wildlife departments reclassified the mountain lion from vermin to game animal, affording the big cat greater protection. The setting aside of 700 million acres of public land and the passage of legislation such as the Wilderness Act helped protect critical habitat and improved prospects for the cat's survival. Currently, however, wildlife managers point to increased sightings and increased attacks on livestock and people. Compared to the status of cougar populations at the turn of the century — when most states still paid bounties — the animals certainly seem to be resurgent in many parts of western North America. Many wildlife professionals believe the cougar is now making a comeback, and because of this fact, the endangered species concern relates not only to the big cat but also to those who may become its prey.
"Mountain lion numbers have increased across the West," agrees cougar expert Kenney Logan, who along with Linda Sweanor — his colleague and wife — completed a 10-year lion study in the San Andres Mountains of southern New Mexico. "But it is important to understand that lions are recovering from depressed numbers, not just increasing. They are reestablishing populations in many areas. Man has been a dramatic mortality factor on cougar populations over the last 200 years, and now we are simply not killing as many. Game status and the elimination of state-supported bounty hunters helped" (Hansen, 1995).
"Rising cougar attacks as populations recover"
"Cougars threaten endangered Sierra bighorn sheep"
As a result of the unforeseen consequences of the advancing animal rights agenda, the concept of wildlife protection is headed for a reckoning. The principal legislative players are Senator Dirk Kempthorne (R-ID) and Representative George Miller (D-CA), both of whom have sponsored bills that would dramatically alter the Endangered Species Act. Senate Bill 1180, introduced by Kempthorne in 1997, weakens the ESA by adding new bureaucracy and offering a 15-month window during which destructive actions such as clear-cutting could continue after a species has been listed. It also gives the government considerable leeway in preparing recovery plans. House Bill 2351, introduced by Miller, also in 1997, strengthens the act by allowing greater public participation, requiring more federal research on candidate species, providing tax incentives for landowners who voluntarily implement beneficial measures, and establishing binding deadlines for recovery plans.
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