The term "endangered" is inconsistently applied  The practical difficulties of the 'endangered' status: The complications which have grown up surrounding the 'endangered' status given to some species are in themselves a good reason to do away with this cumbersome and harmful practice. It should firstly be noted that it can be incredibly difficult to get species removed from the 'protected' lists even once they have been added even when their numbers show they are no longer in jeopardy. The grey wolf again serves as a good example; it is considered to be 'endangered' (and thus protected) in the United States, as there are only 3,700 such wolves in the lower 48 States today, despite the fact that an estimated 58,000 grey wolves live in the wild in Alaska and Canada. [1] This is clearly an example of a misapplication of the 'endangered' label but which is incredibly difficult to revoke once it has been given, due to pressure from ecological groups and the media.  The sort of laws used to 'protect' endangered species may even incentivize the exact opposite kind of behaviour on the part of landowners. When, for example, a farmer finds on his land an animal from an endangered species, and the law thus requires him to make significant changes to his farming practices to protect the creature, this imposes a significant economic cost on him. This means that that farmer may have a large economic incentive to simply dispose of the creature and hide the evidence of its presence, when in the absence of the law the farmer might not take any steps to intentionally exterminate all examples of that endangered species on his land. Economists writing in the Journal of Law and Economics found an example of similarly perverse incentives provided by endangered species protection law amongst logging companies in the United States. When faced with a protected species of woodpecker which preferred to nest in trees at least 70 years old, and which when found, the law required timber owners not to harvest wood within a large area around that woodpecker's nest, loggers simply responded by harvesting more trees in areas where these woodpeckers might appear and by intentionally harvesting tees at age 40 instead of waiting for them to mature to 70 and thus becoming potential habitats for the woodpeckers. This resulted in even less available habitat for the woodpeckers than before the protection laws were passed [2] This example helps to further illustrate how 'protecting' endangered species requires cumbersome legislation that is prone to mistakes, difficult to retract and may incentivize even more harmful behaviour towards these species than if the laws did not exist.  [1] Bailey, Ronald. “Shoot, Shovel and Shut Up”. Reason.com. December 31, 2003.   [2] Lueck, Dean, and Michael, Jeffery A. “Preemptive Habitat Destruction Under the Endangered Species Act”. Journal of Law and Economics. Vol. 46. No. 1. April 2003