Fur Flies Over the Endangered Species Act

Re “A Property Rights ‘Trophy,’ ” editorial, Jan. 9: The Times is wrong to claim that the Endangered Species Act is not an expensive luxury. It is a brutally expensive luxury for journalists needing subject matter for feel-good editorials when the news gets slow.

Let’s not forget that the act was written by staffers and a few friends, and read by very few. Alston Chase’s seminal history relates that eight people, including two animal rights activists and the future chief of law enforcement for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, essentially hashed out the bill. The bill was so obscure and carelessly considered that it passed Congress by a gigantic margin, but was forwarded to President Nixon for his signature only after one of the authors found it buried in a file cabinet and whisked it to the White House in the nick of time.

The rest, they say, is history; a sick, tawdry history of junk science, lost jobs, community upheaval, wildfires, clogged courts, radical eco-fundamentalism, lousy land management, rampant waste, spineless politicians and, best of all, unsaved species.

Dave Skinner

Whitefish, Mont.

*

It’s only a bird, an animal or merely a reptile; what’s the big deal? Well, believe it or not, we fit in there somewhere. Preservation of the Endangered Species Act is vital to every person on this planet. The dollar interests of those close to the administration could never have appreciated a soaring eagle or grazing buffalo or peered into a mirror and wondered at the fragility of life.

Ted Lepon

Los Angeles