From Cato:
In early 2006, landowners in Boiling Springs Lakes, N.C., began clear-cutting timber from their property after the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) announced that development could threaten local red-cockaded woodpecker populations. The FWS released a map showing clusters of the woodpecker in the area and announced plans to identify additional habitat for the endangered bird. That prompted landowners to grab their chainsaws to clear their property of the trees in which the woodpeckers make their homes before their land could be designated as endangered species habitat.
...As a practical matter, the Endagered Species Act (ESA) requires private landowners to obtain permission from the FWS before modifying endangered species habitat on their own land. However, it is not illegal to modify land that might become endangered species habitat some day in the future, nor are landowners required to take affirmative steps to maintain endangered species habitat. So, in Boiling Springs Lakes as elsewhere, landowners seek to avoid the burden of the ESA by eliminating potential species habitat on their land.
"Scorched earth" is better than "preserved earth with pretty birds" to landowners under the current language of the ESA. Would this kind of reality inspire those who implement, manage, and advocate environmental protection and are proponents of the ESA to reconsider the impact that the law is having on potential habitats for birds, or because they are government they are immune to the reality that their law seems to do more harm than good concerning its intent. Less invasive government regulation may led to more habitats for red-cockaded woodpeckers.
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