This handbook is a guide to the federal Endangered Species Act, the primary U.S. law aimed at protecting species of animals and plants from human threats to their survival. It is intended for lawyers, government agency employees, students, community activists, businesspeople, and any citizen who wants to understand the Act--its history, provisions, accomplishments, and failures.
This eleventh edition was developed during the encyclopaedia's transition from a British to an American publication. Some of its articles were written by the best-known scholars of the time and it is considered to be a landmark encyclopaedia for scholarship and literary style.
"Wildlife in a Changing World" presents an analysis of the 2008 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Beginning with an explanation of the IUCN Red List as a key conservation tool, it goes on to discuss the state of the world s species and provides the latest information on the patterns of species facing extinction in some of the most important ecosystems in the world, highlighting the reasons behind their declining status. Areas of focus in the report include: freshwater biodiversity, the status of the world s marine species, species susceptibility to climate change impacts, the Mediterranean biodiversity hot spot, and broadening the coverage of biodiversity assessments."
"As Secretary of the Interior, implementing the Endangered Species Act was one of my most important, and challenging, responsibilities. All who deal with this complex and critical law need a clear and comprehensive guide to its provisions, interpretation, and implementation. With chapters written by some of the foremost practitioners in the field, the new edition of Endangered Species Act: Law, Policy, and Perspectives is an essential reference for conservationists and the regulated community and the attorneys who represent them."---Bruce Babbbitt, former Secretary of the Interior --
This book represents the most comprehensive compilation of data on threatened vascular plants ever published. It includes the names of some 33,000 plant species determined to be rare or threatened on a global scale. Conservation assessments were provided by the IUCN Species Survival Commission, the National Botanical Institute (South Africa), Environment Australia, and CSIRO, The Nature Conservancy, the Smithsonian Institution, and the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, together with hundreds of botanic gardens and botanists throughout the world. The Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh and the New York Botanical Garden have made major in-kind contributions.The result of 20 years work by botanists and conservationists around the world, it is intended as a conservation tool, a provider of baseline information to measure conservation progress and as a primary source of data on plant species. Most importantly, however, it provides the building blocks on which to base a worldwide effort to conserve plant species.
Main description: The first listed species to make headlines after the Endangered Species Act was passed in 1973 was the snail darter, a three-inch fish that stood in the way of a massive dam on the Little Tennessee River. When the Supreme Court sided with the darter, Congress changed the rules. The dam was built, the river stopped flowing, and the snail darter went extinct on the Little Tennessee, though it survived in other waterways. A young Al Gore voted for the dam; freshman congressman Newt Gingrich voted for the fish. A lot has changed since the 1970s, and Joe Roman helps us understand why we should all be happy that this sweeping law is alive and well today. More than a general history of endangered species protection, Listed is a tale of threatened species in the wild-from the whooping crane and North Atlantic right whale to the purple bankclimber, a freshwater mussel tangled up in a water war with Atlanta-and the people working to save them. Employing methods from the new field of ecological economics, Roman challenges the widely held belief that protecting biodiversity is too costly. And with engaging directness, he explains how preserving biodiversity can help economies and communities thrive. Above all, he shows why the extinction of species matters to us personally-to our health and safety, our prosperity, and our joy in nature.
The 1994 IUCN Red List of Threatened Animals was a major advance on its predecessors in clarity of layout and amount of information presented. This is taken further in the 1996 edition, which is also the first global compilation to use the complete new IUCN Red List category system.
The Endangered Species Act (ESA) may be the most powerful environmental law in the United States. Enacted in 1973, the ESA prohibits any actions that may cause harm to endangered plants and animals or the ecosystems upon which they depend. But although more than 1,200 species are protected under the Act, most remain in peril. The ESA may have saved some species from the brink of extinction, but there is little evidence it is working as intended to recover endangered and threatened species. In some cases, the Act's extensive regulatory requirements may actually discourage conservation efforts. In Rebuilding the Ark: New Perspectives on Endangered Species Act Reform, Jonathan H. Adler leads a group of environmental law experts in evaluating the ESA's successes and failures and exploring multiple avenues for reform. The authors examine methods for incentivizing conservation on private land and water, for revising and standardizing the ESA's regulatory framework, and for increasing transparency, accountability, and public participation in the Fish and Wildlife Service and other conservation agencies. Rebuilding the Ark also considers how the Act should be reformed to address the threat of climate change, and how ESA reform in the United States may affect species conservation overseas. The Endangered Species Act has not been altered for over twenty-five years. Debates over ESA reform are often contentious and hampered by partisan infighting and pressure from interest groups. But reform is crucial if we are to achieve the ESA's ambitious goals and conserve the world's endangered plants and animals. Rebuilding the Ark is a valuable resource for policymakers, conservationists, business owners, and concerned citizens alike.
