Saving “Endangered” Species or Regulating with Bad Data

The Endangered Species Act (ESA) will reach the half century milestone in several years and yet, many of the relatively few species that have supposedly “recovered” because of the law were, in reality, never endangered. Similarly, many species now regulated under the ESA were put on the list using erroneous data. The law’s problems are both in the way it is written and implemented and have made it so contentious that it has not been reauthorized in several decades. Federally regulated species can impose substantial burdens on private property owners and create huge conflicts in federal land management. This is true even when the data used to proclaim them endangered is erroneous which wastes scarce conservation resources.