The Endangered species act is one that is full of controversy. It was originally made to help prevent the extinction of animals such as the bald eagle. This was in itself a good and ambitious reason to enact this legislation into law. However, as time went by certain groups of people started rallying for the use of same law to protect animals such as rodents, namely mice and rats. These were animals that were initially not meant to be protected by this law but as fate would have it the law turned out to be a double edged sword. Now certain people push for the protection of these animals with even though it is clear most people want to be done with the rodents. They claim that there must a natural balance meaning that even these animals have a place in our ecosystem. The law is ambiguous on what animals to protect and which not to. This in effect gives such groups the legal ground they need to push for their argument. When it comes to laws that protect the environment, there are international laws that do this in effect.
The Kyoto protocol is one of the laws that safeguard our environment, and with it the animals are protected too, but the ESA is more specific. For the ESA to be fully effective, ambiguity must be worked out. It must be specific which animals are to be protected and which ones are not to be protected. Humanity has caused much of the extinction of most animals through actions such as deforestation and hunting, so this law is very much needed to protect these animals. As to the number of species that are there, it will not really be possible to identify them all because some animals are in places not physically accessible. Even if we do access these places, the animals may have already become extinct by then.
Work Cited:
"Team Races to Catalog Every Species on Earth." Daily Nature and Science News and Headlines | National Geographic News. N.p., n.d. Web. 6 Nov. 2012.
