Endangered Species Act

Passage of the 1973 Endangered Species Act stands as one of the fundamental legislative victories of the environmental protection movement. It is also widely considered to be the most controversial. The act was intended to halt - and even reverse - the startling decline in animal and plant species caused by pesticides, water pollution, habitat destruction and other consequences of human activities. It requires landowners to refrain from developing land that is defined as critical to the survival of species listed as endangered. Critics say the law violates property rights by authorizing the government to “take” privately owned land, inhibits economic development and wastes taxpayer dollars. Both critics and supporters of the law say the environmental record of the past quarter-century proves their point.