Biodiversity and Mom

• Main Author: Nagle, John C.
• Format: Text
• Language: unknown
• Published: NDLScholarship 2003
• Subjects: Endangered Species Act; ESA; wildlife; extinction; endangered species; Animal Law; Law; Great auk
• Online Access: https://scholarship.law.nd.edu/law_faculty_scholarship/472; https://scholarship.law.nd.edu/context/law_faculty_scholarship/article/1478/viewcontent/30EcologyLQ991.pdf

In December 1973, Congress enacted the Endangered Species Act (ESA). The law was the latest, and greatest, federal effort to prevent wildlife from becoming extinct. The members of Congress who voted for the law always mentioned bald eagles, grizzly bears, whooping cranes, alligators, and whales—the animals, in short, that today are most likely to be memorialized as Beanie Babies. They were also aware of the species that had already disappeared from the earth, such as the passenger pigeon and the great auk. Such images yielded an overwhelming vote in favor of the law. President Nixon signed it on December 28, 1973, proclaiming that "[n]othing is more priceless and more worthy of preservation than the rich array of animal life with which our country has been blessed." The law itself explains why Congress included all of these creatures within the ambit of the ESA, stating, "species of fish, wildlife, and plants are of esthetic, ecological, educational, historical, recreational, and scientific value to the Nation and its people." All of these values are important. Yet the utilitarian values of protecting species—aesthetic, ecological, educational, historical, recreational, and scientific—always struck me as inadequate. More recent defenses of biodiversity in general, and the ESA as a means of protecting it, have emphasized the moral, ethical, and religious reasons for preventing any species from going extinct. In short, the utilitarian justifications are helpful, but they cannot fully explain the role that the diversity of species plays in human society.