In addition to the war on women’s bodies, healthcare, clean drinking water, scientific facts and immigrants, the misguided beliefs of Republicans are now further endangering the environment and as well as the lives of species already at risk. Republicans are planning to take apart the Endangered Species Act in order to allow for more detrimental and disastrous drilling and logging to occur, regardless of the environmental consequences.
Why Republican Lawmakers Hate the Endangered Species Act
Republicans have spent most of the last eight years pushing back against the Endangered Species Act, saying that it is blocking economic development. Luckily, Democrats, the White House, and environmental lawsuits have kept them at bay. But now that they control both Congress and the White House, environmentalists fear it is only a matter of time until Republicans destroy the Endangered Species Act altogether.
Republicans, like House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Rob Bishop, believe that act has been used to control land instead of save and rehabilitate species. Maybe someone needs to tell Bishop that there won’t be any species to rehabilitate if they don’t have a habitat. Part of protecting endangered species is protecting their homes, a concept many Republicans struggle with when the pressures from logging and oil companies are felt.
Bishop went on to say that he would like to invalidate the act. Other Republicans call for limits on the number of lawsuits that can be used to protect species. They also propose that a cap be implemented for how many species can be protected at one time. Unfortunately, species protection doesn’t work like that. Usually when one species is threatened, so are many others that share the same habitat as that species or rely on that species as a food source. Flying in the face of science and, at this point, common sense, Senator Jim Inhofe has suggested one species be removed from the protection list every time one is added. Senator Dan Sullivan went so far as to suggest that applications for protection should be limited to one species at a time. Clearly these Republican senators are happy to make decisions that completely undermine scientific fact and logic if it means finding a way to chop down more trees or drill for oil.
How Environmentalists Are Responding
Like many people, wildlife advocates and environmentalists have been bracing for ugly changes since Trump took over the presidency. Jamie Rappaport Clark, president of Defenders of Wildlife explained, “Any species that gets in the way of a congressional initiative or some kind of development will be clearly at risk. The political lineup is as unfavorable to the Endangered Species Act as I can remember.”
J.B. Ruhl, a Vanderbilt University law professor, agrees. He noted that by simply changing the wording of the act, Republicans could change it from a conservation tool that protects land and species to little more than a law against over-hunting. What many Republicans don’t realize is that many species on the protection list are reliant on conservation methods for their survival. Rehabilitating a species to a point where it can be removed from the list is a long, difficult, and sometimes impossible task. The idea of implementing a cap or removing a species every time you need to add a new one, then, is utterly ridiculous. The success of the Endangered Species Act is evident in the number of extinctions avoided, not the speed in which species are removed from the list. Since its beginning, 99% of species under protection from the Endangered Species Act have avoided extinction.
History of the Endangered Species Act
The Endangered Species Act entered into force in 1973. At that point, both Republicans and Democrats almost unanimously supported the bill as its purpose was to eliminate the threat of the extinction for America’s national animal, the bald eagle. The Act did what it was supposed to do and bald eagles were removed from the endangered list in 2007.
Now over 1600 plants and animal species in the United States are protected under the Endangered Species Act with hundreds more under consideration. With the Republicans in power, those numbers may dwindle. It’s only a matter of time before the Republicans decide to wage war on the Endangered Species Act once again. And this time, we don’t have someone in the White House who will stop them.