The Endangered Species Act of 1973 (ESA) is one of the most cherished and reviled laws ever passed. It mandates protection and preservation of all the nation’s species and biodiversity, whatever the cost. It has been a lightning rod for controversy and conflicts between industry/business and environmentalists. In this volume, leading Endangered Species Act experts interpret and propose legislative and administrative changes to prepare the ESA for future challenges. They explore regulations on avoiding harm to and producing benefits for species, cooperation between state and federal agencies, scientific analyses, and the necessary politics to enact their ideas. This is a call to action to chart an enlightened future for the Endangered Species Act that embraces the nation’s moral commitment of 50 years ago to address species extinction constructively, mindful of biodiversity, and as a fixture among the nation’s values and needs. The interconnected web of life includes all living species that depend on each other for survival, us among them. The stakes—our very future—are too high to ignore.

The Endangered Species Act of 1973 (ESA) is one of the most cherished and reviled laws ever passed. It mandates protection and preservation of all the nation’s species and biodiversity, whatever the cost. It has been a lightning rod for controversy and conflicts between industry/business and environmentalists. The year 2023 marks the 50th anniversary of this law, and provides an opportunity for a measured and thorough evaluation thereof. We cannot know today’s challenges and opportunities without understanding their histories. This book is the most comprehensive history of the ESA ever published, and the first to consider the entire history of the law from all angles in a single volume. The history of the ESA has been one of increasing impact, complexity, and controversy. In 1978, the Supreme Court declared that Congress intended for the U.S. government to save all species at any cost, and thereafter application of the ESA became steadily more controversial, as seen in the example of the northern spotted owl and the timber wars in the Pacific Northwest in the late 1980s and early 90s, and then everywhere as the ESA became a political football in the highly partisan environment of the late 1990s and amendments to the law ceased. This book is not only a history, but a call to action. It will take more conservation, more funding, and more innovative solutions if we are to save our wildlife and biodiversity. It will take the engagement to every American to muster the collective will to meet this challenge. The hope of this book is that we will be able to look back and say that we accomplished more in the second 50 years of the ESA than we did in the first.

In Earth’s Emergency Room, author, attorney, and environmental historian Lowell E. Baier celebrates 50 years of the landmark Endangered Species Act of 1973, a bipartisan law passed by Congress and signed into law by President Richard M. Nixon. Baier provides an insightful and entertaining history of the ESA’s dramatic highs and lows. His own work with the ESA from its inception to the present, and with the key figures who shaped its history, from field biologists to Presidents of the United States, give the book a unique, human element. He looks back at a lifetime of environmental advocacy and tackles one of today’s leading challenges: the unprecedented decline in species due to climate change. Drawing from his extensive experience as a negotiator and activist, Baier argues that the ESA is flexible enough to ameliorate the biodiversity crisis while still respecting landowners, states, and industries. He ultimately calls on all Americans to embrace a spirit of bipartisanship and conservation to strengthen the law that has been Earth’s emergency room for half a century.

Winner, Independent Press Award - Conservation/Green, 2021 The only hope for successful conservation of America’s threatened, endangered, and at-risk wildlife is through voluntary, cooperative partnerships that focus on private land, where over 75% of at-risk species can be found. Private landowners form the bedrock of these partnerships, and they have a long history of rising to meet the challenge of conservation. But they can’t do it alone. This book is a guide for private landowners who want to conserve wildlife. Whether engaged in farming, ranching, forestry, mining, energy development, or another business, private working lands all have value as wildlife habitat, with the proper management and financial support. This book provides landowners and their partners with a roadmap to achieve conservation compatible with their financial and personal goals. This book introduces the art and language of land management planning as well as regulatory compliance with laws such as the Endangered Species Act of 1973. It categorizes and explains the tools used by wildlife professionals to implement conservation on private lands. Moreover it documents the multitude of federal, state, local, and private opportunities for landowners to find financial and technical assistance in managing wildlife, from working with a local NGO to accessing the $6 billion per year available through the federal Farm Bill.

How it is that the United States—the country that cherishes the ideal of private property more than any other in the world—has chosen to set aside nearly one-third of its land area as public lands? Now in a fully revised and updated edition covering the first years of the Trump administration, Randall Wilson considers this intriguing question, tracing the often-forgotten ideas of nature that have shaped the evolution of America’s public land system. The result is a fresh and probing account of the most pressing policy and management challenges facing national parks, forests, rangelands, and wildlife refuges today. The author explores the dramatic story of the origins of the public domain, including the century-long effort to sell off land and the subsequent emergence of a national conservation ideal. Arguing that we cannot fully understand one type of public land without understanding its relation to the rest of the system, he provides in-depth accounts of the different types of public lands. With chapters on national parks, national forests, wildlife refuges, Bureau of Land Management lands, and wilderness areas, Wilson examines key turning points and major policy debates for each land type, including recent Trump Administration efforts to roll back environmental protections. He considers debates ranging from national monument designations and bison management to gas and oil drilling, wildfire policy, the bark beetle epidemic, and the future of roadless and wilderness conservation areas. His comprehensive overview offers a chance to rethink our relationship with America’s public lands, including what it says about the way we relate to, and value, nature in the United States.

Environmental law expert Lowell E. Baier reveals how over centuries the federal government slowly preempted the states’ authority over managing their resident wildlife. In doing so, he educates elected officials, wildlife students, and environmentalists in the precedents that led to the current state of wildlife management, and how a constructive environment can be fostered at all levels of government to improve our nation’s wildlife and biodiversity.