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For Immediate Release
World-Renowned Scientists Caution Senate on Endangered Species Protection
Endangered Species Act Called "Most Important" Tool Against Extinction
WASHINGTON - Led by Harvard University's E.O. Wilson, ten prominent scientists in biology and other environmental fields today called on the U.S. Senate to strengthen the Endangered Species Act, rather than heed industry calls to weaken it, in order to help stem a worldwide mass extinction crisis. Today's letter stands in stark contrast to a report by House Resources Committee Chairman Richard Pombo opposing the Act, noting instead the law's success as an "alarm system" and bulwark against the finality of extinction. Read the letter.
"The Endangered
Species Act represents our nation's most determined effort to take
responsibility for preserving its precious biological diversity. By offering
strict federal protections to the species that are included on the list, the
government has drawn a line which it will not allow human pressures to cross
over. That line is extinction," the letter reads. "In both its scope and its
irreversibility, extinction is the most frightening, most conclusive word in our
language. When a species has been declared extinct, not only have all its
individuals died, but the possibility of any such individuals ever existing
again has been foreclosed. The variety of life with which we share the earth is
sadly in rapid decline. Life is grounded in biological diversity, and the fate
of this diversity, which created and sustains us, is now in our
hands."
The new report prepared for Chairman Pombo by his staff criticized rates of species recovery under the Act, but failed to note that the Endangered Species Act has been a phenomenal success at its primary purpose, the prevention of extinction. Of the more than 1800 species under the Act's protections, only 9 have been declared extinct, a 99 percent success rate. The Pombo report also fails to highlight chronic under funding of recovery programs by Congress and rampant political manipulation of the Act's implementation over the past four years that has devastated morale within the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
"We hope Congressman Pombo is serious about improving Congress' record on recovery, because we join him in looking for ways to get species that are in trouble out of the Act's emergency room and back to good health" said Rodger Schlickeisen, President of Defenders of Wildlife. "But he needs to recognize that before you can recover a species, you must keep it from tumbling over the final brink to extinction, and that's the Act's most important function, at which it has been extremely successful."
The letter is signed by E.O. Wilson (Harvard University), Jared Diamond (UCLA), Paul R. Ehrlich (Stanford University), Howard Mooney (Stanford University), Stuart Pimm (Duke University), David Simberloff (University of Tennessee), Peter Raven (Missouri Botanical Gardens & University of Missouri), Gordon Orians (University of Washington), David Wilcove (Princeton University), and James T. Carlton (Williams College-Mystic Seaport).
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Defenders of Wildlife is a leading
nonprofit conservation organization recognized as one of the nation's most
progressive advocates for wildlife and its habitat. With more than 480,000
members and supporters, Defenders of Wildlife is an effective leader on
endangered species
issues.
