“Animal Crackers” And ESA Power Mongers

Pound the drum slowly but loudly and then perhaps with the help of a few more people, like Sean Paige, The American Contrarian, we can let a few more people know that the Endangered Species Act is no longer about protecting endangered species. It’s about power grabbing and property rights destruction.

The Endangered Species Act to most Americans is just a law they’ve heard about, which might even give them a warm and fuzzy tickle deep inside. To many Westerners it’s synonymous with tyranny — an all-powerful presence that licenses the federal government to trample property rights, destroy jobs, obstruct energy development and restrict access to supposedly “public” lands, all to “protect” a subsegment of a subspecies that some graduate student says is rare.

Read the entire Sean Paige piece, “Animal Crackers” here.

Paige brings out much of the same bits of information I have for some time now but from a little bit different perspective. The end result is the same though. Lost in all of this is the fact that when the ESA was hammered out in 1972, it was all for a good cause and by golly, as Paige says, it gave us all warm and fuzzy feelings. Then it was discovered how powerful legal manipulation of the Act could result in overwhelming control to those seeking it.

One of Paige’s comments left by a reader, suggested changing the law, the Act, if he didn’t like what it did. Easier said than done as the environmental movement in this country is extremely powerful and any such mention of messing with their political scepter would mean political doom for those who try.

The reader also claimed the Act was popular. Paige suggested the reader needed to “get out more” and have a talk with those people who have been victims of ESA power. I might also suggest to that reader that perhaps the two biggest reasons he might think the ESA is popular is 1). The overwhelming majority of people don’t understand the act nor are they aware of the abuse that has taken place. 2). It hasn’t affected them directly…..yet.

If we can continue to pound the drum to educate people, then perhaps one day we can get needed changes to the Act in order to actually protect a few animals.