Would you like have your children live in a world where the great American Bald Eagle no longer soars through our skies? Would you wipe the last existing members of an animal species off the face of this earth just to grade a field for a mall parking lot? Believe it or not, some people and industries would not think twice about doing so. But thanks to the Endangered Species Act of 1973, these people who care nothing about Mother Nature and the future of our ecosystem cannot do so. I am one hundred percent for the Endangered Species Act and every thing it represents. In the following paper I will defend the Endangered Species Act and even try to persuade those who even dare to imagine reconsidering this bill.
In order to choose any side on this topic, you must first know and understand the Endangered Species Act and the laws and policies that were created by it. The .
Endangered Species Act, or ESA for short, was passed by congress and became law in 1973. It is one of many federal laws such as the Lacey Act, the Bird Treaty Act, the Marine Mammal Protection Act, and the Bald Eagle Protection Act, but it is the most important one by far (Sherry, 9). The Endangered Species Act was developed for many reasons. In the mid sixties Congress started to notice that the country was rapidly growing due to technological advances and population increase, and that this growth was causing threat and extinction to some of Americas native species (Sherry, 9). Previous bills did not provide the protection that was needed to protect these animals so congress went about devising a bill that would protect any species threatened and also its habitat. The Endangered Species Act was the first piece of environmental legislation that actually protected an endangered species habitat. This unique aspect is one of the ESA's must powerful tools. .
"The purpose of the ESA is to conserve "the ecosystems upon which endangered and threatened species and subspecies depend" and to conserve and recover listed species"(FWS WWW).