President Richard Nixon signed the ESA into law 50 years ago today, December 28, 1973. It had passed the Senate unanimously (92-0), and the House by a margin of 390 to 12. In a case five years later, the U.S. Supreme Court called it “the most comprehensive legislation for the preservation of endangered species enacted by any nation”, Tennessee Valley Authority v Hill, 437 US 153 (1978), https://law.resource.org/pub/us/case/reporter/US/437/437.US.153.76-1701.html.
Yet it’s been controversial from the beginning and remains so today, having become part of the “culture wars” that rage in our hyper-partisan country in 2023. Volumes could be (and have been) written to analyze the reasons. A recent article by AP reporter Travis Loller to commemorate the 50th anniversary sums it up as follows: “it pitted two American values against each other: the idea that Americans should preserve their incredible natural resources (the United States invented the national park, after all) and the notion that capitalism was king and private property inviolate.”[i]
The ESA is at a pivotal moment, confronting both the pressures of climate change, and the continuing hostility to the Act itself among some legislators and powerful industry opponents.
But hope remains. The Endangered Species Coalition, an organization working at the grassroots “to stop the human-caused extinction of our nation’s at-risk species, to protect and restore their habitats, and to guide these fragile populations along the road to recovery”, recently published “Ten Stories of Hope”[iii].
We encourage you to celebrate the ESA’s milestone by looking at the images from the publication, reading the stories, and remaining hopeful. We hope you are inspired to take action.
