The ESA faces a well organized and well funded attack. While no environmental groups support this bill, virtually every organization and industry that has been working to undermine the ESA have endorsed the Kempthorne bill. In addition, it appears that President Clinton may support this bill. S.1180 will roll back essential protections for endangered species in a number of ways, including by further delaying the listing of threatened and endangered species and undermining recovery of species. Both wildlife and wild places must be protected.
Extinction is forever.
The PIRGs have been working over the past several years to defend the ESA from special interest attacks. To date, we have successfully defended the ESA, but the battle to save the ESA is far from over. Thus, we need to ensure that the current ESA is not rolled back in Congress. While the current ESA is better than a substantially weakened Act, the ESA does need to be strengthened if we are to stave off the extinction of many more species. There are currently 86 cosponsors supporting this bipartisan bill.