Endangered Species Act (signed on Dec. 28 forty years ago) -- posting from Think Progress dot-org website

www.thinkprogress.org/ Forty years ago on December 28, 1973, President Richard Nixon signed the Endangered Species Act (ESA), saying, “Nothing is more priceless and more worthy of preservation than the rich array of animal life with which our country has been blessed . . .I congratulate the 93rd Congress for taking this important step toward protecting a heritage which we hold in trust to countless future generations of our fellow citizens.” Since then the ESA has been credited with saving a number of species from the brink of extinction, including the bald eagle, the American alligator, the grizzly bear and the prairie dog. The act has prevented the extinction of 99 percent of the more than 2,140 species it currently protects. The ESA became law during the first waves of the modern environmental movement in America. Rachel Carson’s influential book Silent Spring had been published 11 years earlier. The Santa Barbara oil spill happened in 1969. Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency and signed the Clean Air Act in 1970. At the time of its signing, the ESA was meant to protect against the rapid development and pollution that was depleting habitats. Since then another major factor has come into play, one that exacerbates these already prominent issues as well as adding new elements of its own: climate change. . .