The Endangered Species Act -- Worthwhile Law or Waste of Time?
In class, you read about ONE side of the Endangered Species Act or ESA. Then you got information about the other point of view. You should now be armed with information supporting both sides of the argument. The question is, where do you stand? What do you think about the ESA? Please answer one or more of the following in about a paragraph, and use SPECIFIC information from your reading, or your partners reading to support what you think. You may also respond to other peoples comments in your post.
1) Is the Endangered Species Act working?
2) Is the Endangered Species Act fair to businesses and companies?
3) If given the power, what changes would you make to the endangered species act?
4) Any other thoughts about the act.
I think that the ESA is not working! I thinnk that although it is protecting them, it is not helping them become less endangered. In one article we read only a dozen of the two thousand endangered species were taking off the endangered species list. Which is a one percent recovery rate. These statistics do not make it seem like the ESA is helping very much.
ReplyDeleteI think that the ESA is working! I think that protecting certain organisms are a good way to help protect them. By giving them a category you take away from the personal experiences each animal had. Its like saying that if you take all the Mexican birds and protect them, but only two of them are endangered then you are wasting the resources. I think the endangered species act helps magnify the organisms that really need help.
ReplyDeleteI think the ESA is not working. It is just helping the animals. It isnt halping them from coming less extinct. They really need to tell the people not to hurt the animals. In the article Iread today it says that the law for protecting endagered animals has not been changed since 1988. They are not doing enough to stop extinction of the animals. They need to work harder.
ReplyDeleteI don't think the ESA is working, because the act can't really monitor what every person in the world is doing, and can't stop people from killing plants and animals that are endangered. The law has not been updated in many years and out of the 2,000 species on the list, only about 24 have been taken off. So much money has gone into an act that really isn't working!
ReplyDeleteI think that the ESA is working. It has helped many species come back from the brink of extinction. Some of the animals that it has helped are the grizzle bear, and bald eagle.the bear population has tripled in the past 35 years. Now the population is estimated to be at 600. In 1970 the bald eagle population was down to 85. Thanks to the ESA it raised up to 630 pairs in 2010. The ESA helps to bring your attention to the organisms that really need support.
ReplyDeleteI don't think the ESA is working. In the article I read today, it said that there is only a one percent recovery rate. That means that only 24 species have fully "recovered" out of about 2000. As Americans, I strongly believe we can do better.
ReplyDeleteNice job so far guys! Justine, you bring up a good point, we can do better? I wonder how? What are some things we can do differently to make sure we save more of these species (this question is open to anyone)
DeleteI take both sides of the agrument. It is bad because there is a one percent recovery rat, and they lost 4 million dollars, but in a way, these problems can can help them change.They could, instead of just protect one species, they could protect and whole class of species and their ecosystems too. They can also be good because you are still prtotecting the animals, it is just a little slow. Obama has raised the average amount of plants/animals being recovered. And that would 25 a year, while Bush only averaged to 8 a year.The ESA was also able to recover some animals that we know very well. Like the Grizzly Bear and the Blad Eagle. But one theydon't seem ot protect is the wolf. So these articles can go either way. The way you see the information is up to the person reading the article.
ReplyDeleteThe ESA is not working because only 24 out of the almost 2,000 species on the list have been rescued from extinction. The only thing the ESA is accomplishing is the addition of fees to the United States National Debt. When we tried to save the marbled murrelet, it cost $4,000,000 to protect it. The $4,000,000 used by the ESA was supposed to go to a wind energy project. The ESA is wasting money that humans need to help develop new technology for us to become more advanced in the future, which is essential. Protecting endangered plant and animal species is not as important as developing the human way of life. It is a 38 year old law that has produced little success. I believe that we should abolish this money wasting law immediately!
ReplyDeleteI take both sides on this matter because its helped and its failed. It increased the grizzly bear population three times as it was some years before. But it also costs a lot of money to keep it running. They also helped the bald eagle gain its population. They said only 24 out of 2000 species were saved due to this act. Its not much but at least its helping.
ReplyDeleteNice job so far guys! Justine, you bring up a good point, we can do better? I wonder how? What are some things we can do differently to make sure we save more of these species (this question is open to anyone)
ReplyDeleteI am kind of on both sides of the argument. The ESA said that 24 out of the two thousand species were saved but that is barely any saved. But maybe it is doing something. I think it might be helping though becuase in the article i read about bears the population of them trippled over 35 years, a very long time. So im on both sides
ReplyDeleteI think that the ESA is not working. Although ESA helped some animals to recovery, it is a big waste of money. During my reading, I read that the ESA wasted $4,000,000 trying to protect the marbled murrelet when the money was supposed to go on a wind energy project and it is also blocking many job creating projects. The ESA should start spending their money wisely and doing something productive because right now they are just wasting time and money.
ReplyDeleteAlthough the ESA has helped certain endangered species like the eagle, I do believe it could be improved. The ESA has not been updated in a long time and the recovery rate is only one percent. The government should take some time to review the ESA and focus on how to not only protect, but also help organisms recover. The ESA has prompted hundreds of lawsuits and led the government to abandon the wind energy project, but it has also helped many organisms from going completely extinct. I think it is up to the government to enforce and make the ESA more successful.
ReplyDeleteI think that the ESA is working. the reason I think this is is because, yes, we only saved 24 out of about 2000 animal species, but right now biodiversity is at its peak so far. As seen on a previous worksheet thats showed when the previous 5 mass extinctions happened, when the last one occured there was about half the biodiversity we have today. Back then they also didn't have human industry threatening them like it is now. If we were to compare the statistics, we are currently doing a good job saving animals from endangerment. Also i think that we should spend the money that is avalable to the act and try to save what we presume to be a keystone species instead of going out and trying to save everything, for example, the Aye-Aye, there are so little of them and it has been that way for so long, so if we stop using resources on them and put them to saving, lets say coral reefs, who can make an ecosystem literally out of themselves and house many different species of fish, seacucumbers, plankton, etc, then it would yeild better results if saved than compared to the aye-aye. If i was given the power i would save animal from endangerment that i presume to be a keystone species or a species that we can research from and learn from.
ReplyDeleteI think the ESA is not working! They are definitly trying to push the act and trying to help,but its not doing anything. In one article it said there is only a 1% recovery rate and there losing money by trying to help. Obviously something not working.
ReplyDeleteI believe the ESA is not working. It's protecting them to some extent but it's not really making them any less endangered. Alot of money is put into this and It's not working they way that it should or is supposed to. Out of all the endangered animals on the list only 1% have gotten off the list or recovered. I think they should try doing more to get them off of the list instead of spending so much money to protect them.
ReplyDelete1) Is the Endangered Species Act working?
ReplyDeleteI think that people are very optimistic about this act because there are many reasons why it should still carry on and many reasons why it shouldn't carry on. Most of the time, the species will thrive and triple its population. However, sometimes, the people that make the decision will spend way too much money (billions) on trying to save the animal or plant and it ends up not working at all. I think that overall though, it is not worth continuing. I feel like the safety of our plants and animals are being thrown to the bottom of the totem pole right now, because we cannot afford loosing all the money that would go toward it.
I also like some of my classmates, take both sides on the matter of if the Endangered Species Act is working or not. I feel that the act is working in a sense that it is very beneficial to the preservation of some endangered species. The only problem is that it is not saving enough species. Only 24 out of almost 2,000 species have been taken off the endangered species list. You can easily say that it is a waste of money to keep the act going if it is only saving the littlest amount of species on the list. I mean it is extremely expensive and is taking funding from projects that could be more helpful to us so maybe I can say that I would much rather side with removing the act.
ReplyDeleteI think the ESA is working in some ways but not entirely. Yes, it does legally help endangered species on paper, but overall it's too hard and expensive to enforce. Which is why only about 24 of nearly 2000 animals have been able to recover. I'm not saying that I would remove it though. Even though it hasn't been noticeably successful, it still has helped some species of animals recover, when without the ESA they might not have.
ReplyDelete-If we all stopped buying useless junk, what positive things would happen? Negative?
ReplyDeleteI believe if we stopped buying useless junk there would be some positive and negative outcomes. Some positive ones could be less pollution produced due to the factories producing these goods. Another positive outcome could be each individual person spending less money so that way we could spend it on important things, such as insurance and food. We would also use much less energy to produce these goods then we are now. It will cut back on industrial waste and commercial waste. Some negative effects of stop buying useless junk could be the economy would plummet. Most politicians are worried about the decreasing economy and this would certainly not help the situation. One more bad effect could be people spending there money on less important things than the current junk. It could turn into a passion devoted to worse things then collecting junk. Those are some reasons that could be positive, and negative outcomes on not buying as much junk.