The ultimate goal of the ESA, stated in Section 2 of the law, is to maintain healthy ecosystems. Healthy ecosystems support healthy humans and wildlife, yielding a prosperous and secure United States. We need only look at Russia to discover the fate of nations that ignore environmental health in favor of uncontrolled development, as the Soviet Union did during Communist rule. Ecosystem management is a recent concept that seeks to combine the scientific and social tenets of successful ESA implementation into a new call for protecting ecosystems as a whole. This diversity, as later sections of this report explain, functions as the foundation for human survival and well-being.
Loss of biodiversity threatens to impoverish human society.
Scientists such as Harvard University biologist Edward 0. Wilson have pointed out that species extinctions are occurring today at unprecedented speed. The solution to this crisis lies in the genius of human adaptability. Although humans have the capacity to destroy, they also have the ability to monitor and control their own actions, to use foresight in warding off danger, to use science to recognize hidden biological dangers and to choose not to destroy, but to preserve and protect habitat and species. The human challenge is to understand the natural world and to build a harmonious relationship with it for the benefit of both nature and humankind.