![]() ![]() Members of Congress try increasingly to overrule government experts on protecting individual species. Yet the law has become so controversial that Congress hasn’t updated it since 1992 - and some worry it won’t last another half-century.Ĭonservative administrations and lawmakers have stepped up efforts to weaken it, backed by landowner and industry groups that contend the act s tifles property rights and economic growth. Habitat loss, pollution, climate change and disease are putting an estimated 1 million species worldwide at risk. “And I believe very strongly that we’re in a better place for it.”įifty years after the law took effect, environmental advocates and scientists say it’s as essential as ever. “The Endangered Species Act has been very successful,” Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said in an Associated Press interview. ![]() More than 99% of those listed as “endangered” - on the verge of extinction - or the less severe “threatened” have survived. Enacted in 1973 amid fear for iconic creatures such as the bald eagle, grizzly bear and gray wolf, it extends legal protection to 1,683 domestic species. law intended to keep animal and plant types from dying out. The two bat varieties are designated as imperiled under the Endangered Species Act, the bedrock U.S. It doesn’t look good,” said Allen Kurta, an Eastern Michigan University professor who has studied bats for more than 40 years. “It’s a bad suggestion if we do not catch one. The scientists had yet to spot either species this year as they embarked on a netting mission. They were looking for increasingly scarce Indiana and northern long-eared bats, which historically migrated there for birthing season, sheltering behind peeling bark of dead trees. It was a common type, one of many Wilson and colleagues had snagged on summer nights in the southern Michigan countryside. “Another big brown,” she said with a sigh. Biologist Ashley Wilson carefully disentangled a bat from netting above a tree-lined river and examined the wriggling, furry mammal in her headlamp’s glow. ![]()
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