Improving the Endangered Species Act Essay

Total Length: 647 words ( 2 double-spaced pages)

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This has led to the early successes of the ESA related to control of DDT and other harmful chemicals, which directly contributed to endangering wildlife (Robbins, 2010).

Additional steps that are needed include reporting the results of recovery efforts on a public website that shows the contributions or roadblocks individual politicians and political organizations are making. This will force much greater accountability and transparency around the goals of the ESA. Second, there needs to be a more effective strategy for coordinating recovery efforts across all government agencies so that ongoing strategies by species are put into place. This will save the chaotic nature of recovery efforts using a more consistent framework. Third, there needs to be much greater focus on fines and prosecution if necessary when companies willingly dump toxic materials into the environment, knowing it will affect an endangered species. These fines need to go for advanced monitoring and evaluation tools, technologies and processes to ensure consistent efforts are made to protect and move engendered species back to a recovery point.
Paying for these improvements through fines would also ease the political infighting that at times slows down ESA efforts as politicians are for the most part debating whose state budgets will have to absorb the majority of the costs. Finally and most important, states need greater control over the implementation of ESA programs and greater government funding as well. Corporations who choose to violate well-known standards of clean operation need to be heavily fined to make state programs funded entirely from these fines. This will send a clear message to corporations who choose to ignore environmental guidelines that they will be the ones who will pay not only to clean it up, but also to save species they could have potentially made extinct.

References

Robbins, S.. (2010). Play Nice or Pick a Fight? Cooperation as an….....

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