The Messenger – How the groundbreaking law became a critical bulwark against a growing extinction crisis: “In the half-century since, more than 2,300 species from bald eagles to tiny river snails have been listed, and the ESA has helped keep 99% of those from extinction — including the Kirtland’s warbler. Though it has its flaws and failures, with limited funding and slow response times sometimes undercutting its mission, the act has proven to be a critical bulwark against an accelerating extinction crisis and one of the more impactful pieces of environmental legislation ever passed. “The Endangered Species Act has been an enormous success,” said Holly Doremus, an environmental law expert at the University of California, Berkeley. While it’s not perfect, “we’ve done a lot more conservation than we would have, been more conscious of the impacts that we’re having, and been forced to confront them,” she said. “To me, that’s a huge success.”

For all its impact, the actual text of the ESA is relatively short. It’s “one of the most elegant and structurally cohesive laws we have,” said Brett Hartl, director of government affairs at the Center for Biological Diversity. The ESA’s guiding principle is “to provide a means whereby the ecosystems upon which endangered species and threatened species depend may be conserved.” That starts with deciding which species are in need of protection, a process known as “listing.”

See also Mother Jones – Endangered – For 50 years, the Endangered Species Act has been one of our most valuable environmental tools. Can it survive today’s attacks?