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Most everyone knows the old adage about those who ignore history being doomed to relearn its lessons all over again. The federal government has recently proposed a rule that would no longer recognize the destruction of an endangered species’ habitat as “harm.” This rule redefining “harm” clearly represents an attempt to ignore over a century of progress in conservation science, practice, and policy. It is patently obvious that a species is harmed when its habitat is lost in favor of political and economic expedience. Even a casual understanding of history shows that ignoring the long-established focus on providing habitat for wild species is a huge setback for conservation.
A brief review of relevant conservation history is in order, including a few prescient observations from Wisconsin’s Green Fire’s inspirational thought-leader, Aldo Leopold.
Over 125 years ago, the initial goals of the emergent conservation movement emphasized protecting species from certain types of human-inflicted harm. In the late 19th century unregulated market hunting and other wildlife slaughters were driving several species toward extinction. (Remember the Passenger Pigeon’s tragic extinction). Harm to wildlife was viewed as primarily a result of deliberate, direct “taking,” including intentional killing, capturing, selling, trading, and transporting.
So, solving the problem of threatened wildlife seemed straightforward: Protect them from the human-inflicted harm of unsustainable taking. Early conservation policies and legislation, like the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918, reflected the irrefutable evidence that many species were being threatened with extinction by such intentional, direct harm. But inadvertent, indirect harm such as habitat destruction was not adequately addressed.
By the 1920s, a few conservation thinkers like Aldo Leopold recognized that protection from deliberate, human-inflicted harm was alone insufficient to address increasingly complex threats to wild species. Leopold was among the earliest to use the new science of ecology to show that many species were being harmed through inadvertent, human-caused habitat loss, which at the time was not widely recognized as a threat.
Speaking specifically about then-declining game species, Leopold noted:
“Game conservation is at this moment in a particularly difficult stage of its development. The set of ideas which served to string out the remnants of the virgin game supply [legal protection from excessive taking], and to which many of us feel an intense personal loyalty, seem to have reached the limit of their effectiveness. Something new must be done.”
The new approach to wildlife conservation that Leopold championed was active habitat management. He realized that:
“The one and only thing we can do is to make the environment more favorable…It is the fundamental truth which the conservation movement must learn if it is to attain its objective.”
Since the 1930s, habitat management has become a central pillar of modern wildlife conservation. The pace of human-caused habitat loss has accelerated and conservation science has repeatedly confirmed that habitat loss is now the primary way that we threaten wildlife in the modern world.
One might hope that conservation policies would reflect that irrefutable scientific evidence, especially as more and more wild species have become threatened and endangered by habitat loss. The lessons of conservation history show that protection alone is inadequate to address the needs of threatened and endangered species. Those lessons are not being heeded. Indeed, they seem to be deliberately ignored by today’s policymakers.
Compared to game species, it has taken a long time for endangered species to receive specific policy and legislative attention. The first explicit federal policy and legislation to address the growing issue of species endangerment and extinction was the Endangered Species Preservation Act of 1966. By that time, habitat loss was well documented to be the primary cause of endangerment. Yet, the Act still focused primarily on legally protecting the newly listed endangered species from direct human-inflicted harm by punishing anyone intentionally taking a listed endangered species.
A notable exception was authorizing the federal government to purchase habitat of an endangered species for addition to the National Wildlife Refuge system. In 1968, newly acquired habitat for the endangered Key Deer became the Key Deer National Wildlife Refuge. But it was clear to conservation scientists and practitioners, if not policymakers, that it would never be possible for the federal government to either purchase enough habitat or manage enough habitat on public land to address the needs of the growing list of endangered species.
The next step in our national policy on endangered species was the Endangered Species Conservation Act of 1969. That Act expanded protections of endangered species from deliberate takings, both domestically and internationally. But the central issue of habitat loss was still not addressed. Also notably absent was the idea of actively managing listed species, even though Aldo Leopold had made it clear 45 years earlier that wildlife management was necessary as well as wildlife protection. Commenting on how to restore depleted game species, he noted that “…game, to be successfully conserved, must be positively managed, rather than negatively protected.” In 1969 that insight was still largely lacking in our policies on dealing with the endangered species crisis.
In the late 1960s, conservation scientists and practitioners began lobbying for more active management of endangered species that specifically addressed each listed species’ unique ecological needs. Human-caused deterioration of the environment, for wild species as well as people, had also become widely understood as a foundational tenant of environmentalism. Gradually, the concept of “recovering” endangered species through active management gathered momentum. This change meant protection and management of a species’ habitat, rather than just protection from direct harm through deliberate taking.
I played a small role in that lobbying effort. Together as scientists, practitioners, and the broader conservation-minded public, we created change in our approach to saving endangered species. The result was the Endangered Species Act (ESA) of 1973. For the first time, this Act explicitly addressed the central issue of habitat loss as a cause of endangerment. It also promoted active management, especially of an endangered species’ habitat, as well as passive protection.
Congress formally and clearly stated the purposes of the ESA were:
“to provide a means whereby the ecosystems upon which endangered species and threatened species depend may be conserved [via habitat conservation], to provide a program for the conservation of such endangered species and threatened species [via active management], and to take such steps as may be appropriate to achieve the purposes of the treaties and conventions set forth in subsection (a) of this section.”
The ESA reaffirmed that it was illegal to “take” an endangered or threatened species. Take was defined as “harass, harm, pursue,” “wound,” or “kill.” A subsequent regulatory rule further clarified that “harm” included “significant habitat modification or degradation where it actually kills or injures wildlife by significantly impairing essential behavioral patterns, including breeding, feeding or sheltering.”
Achieving the purposes of the ESA led to the creation of non-regulatory “Recovery Plans.” These plans addressed the specific actions needed to recover a listed species to non-endangered status, especially by characterizing the species’ critical habitat needs. One of the first Recovery Plans was for the endangered Kirtland’s Warbler, a forest songbird that breeds exclusively in the Upper Midwest in young jack pine forests. This Recovery Plan was completed in 1976 and focused appropriately on the need for habitat management as the key to recovery of the species. The Kirtland’s Warbler was eventually delisted from the ESA in 2019 because it had reached recovery goals through successful management of its jack pine habitat.
As more Recovery Plans were prepared, the scope of the critical habitat needs of endangered species became clearer than was probably the case when the Act sailed through Congress with only a dozen dissenting votes. Conflicts emerged between the critical habitat needs of listed species and a few high-profile development activities, such as the Tellico Dam in Tennessee. In that case, the dam would have destroyed habitat of the endangered Snail Darter. Situations like this became wicked controversies that increasingly ended up being resolved in courts.
Addressing critical habitat needs of endangered species had opened Pandora’s box, particularly after the Supreme Court clarified the Endangered Species Act’s authority. In the first major test of the law in 1978, the Court found, “The plain intent of Congress in enacting this statute was to halt and reverse the trend toward species extinction, whatever the cost.” That clearly included managing critical habitat, even if it meant incurring financial or other burdens. In 1995, the Supreme Court reaffirmed that the law’s prohibition of “harm” extended to damaging an endangered species’ critical habitat, including on private lands, which is where habitats of almost all listed species exist.
Compromises were needed. Responding to special interests that were being inconvenienced, in 1982 Congress amended the Act, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service revised rules about critical habitat. The 1982 amendment initiated “Habitat Conservation Plans,” which provided a cooperative way for landowners to engage in otherwise legal activities that might incidentally harm an endangered species or its habitat if the negative effects of the activity on a listed species were adequately minimized and mitigated. In 1998 the “No Surprises” policy further reduced future legal consequences if a landowner had fulfilled their part of a Habitat Conservation Plan.
To give landowners even more incentives to manage existing high-quality habitat or restore degraded habitat on their land, “Conservation Banking” was introduced in 2003. It provided market-based incentives for landowners to manage endangered species and their habitat. Landowners could profit from selling habitat or species credits to a third party that needed to offset adverse impacts to a species covered under a Habitat Conservation Plan.
Going even further to encourage landowners to preemptively manage a potentially endangered species and its habitat, in 2017 a “Conservation Credit System” became available to landowners. Landowners earned mitigation credits for efforts that benefited a declining species of conservation concern and preserved its habitat through management activities designed by state wildlife agencies. These credits could later be redeemed to either offset or mitigate activities that might harm a species if it subsequently became listed under the ESA. The credits may also be traded or sold to a third party. The history of the Act has, thus, been characterized by a series of compromises that attempted to accommodate the habitat needs of listed species while respecting the rights of landowners.
Although conservation science provides crucial guidance, our approach to saving endangered species has inevitably become a product of politics. What will happen if today’s policymakers ignore the history of conservation science and the innovative practical efforts to manage endangered species and their habitats?
We have enjoyed a century of progress in conservation science, practice, and policy since Aldo Leopold explained that habitat management is “the fundamental truth which the conservation movement must learn if it is to attain its objective.” That progress will be lost if the proposed rule is adopted.
Some species that could have been saved will go extinct if their habitat is lost. The prospects for future recoveries of endangered species will be significantly compromised in a cynical effort to prioritize short-term economic and political benefits over the long-term needs of endangered species and the benefits we all share from their survival. After all, these species are recognized in the Endangered Species Act as providing “aesthetic, ecological, educational, recreational, and scientific value to our nation and its people.”
Beers-Bascom Professor Emeritus in Conservation
University of Wisconsin-Madison
and
Senior Fellow
Aldo Leopold Foundation
and
Ambassador
Wisconsin’s Green Fire
The Aldo Leopold Foundation was founded in 1982 with a mission to foster the Land Ethic® through the legacy of Aldo Leopold, awakening an ecological conscience in people throughout the world.
"Land Ethic®" is a registered service mark of the Aldo Leopold Foundation, to protect against egregious and/or profane use.
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