Gigi Maturo
Senior Seminar
Temeles and Sims
October 19, 2010
Research Paper Outline
1. Introduction to the endangered species act
a. History of the act
i. Changes and formation
ii. Purpose of the act
iii. A History of the Endangered Species Act of 1973. U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service. April 2008
iv. Was passed essentially unanimously
b. General consensus
2. Case study
a. Dusky seaside sparrow
i. Went extinct after protection, due to DDT and loss of habitat
ii. Post et al. 1981
iii. Example of late protection
3. Ecology of Exctinction
a. Population size
b. Reproductive rates-harder to mate when there are less individuals
c. Habitat loss-hard to reverse
d. Disease- can wipe out genetically similar small populations
e. Loss of genetic variation (inbreeding)
f. Overexploitation
g. Lack of subpopulations
h. Global warming
i. Changing habitats-habitat loss
ii. More suitable habitat to pathogens
i. Pollution
i. Again, loss of habitat due to degradation
ii. Actual effects of chemicals
1. DDT for example
j. Ricklefs et al.
4. In the media
a. Species vs humans
i. Bush: "It's time to put people ahead of owls."
ii. Large predators can be scary and violent
iii. Disbelief in global warming
iv. Eilperin 2008
v. Managing populations: Brown 2010
1. Wolves in Montana have recovered nicely so people
want to hunt them now
vi. “America’s most controversial environmental law.”: Houck
5. General issues with the ESA
a. Whether enough species have recovered to say that it is successful
i. Some say yes some say no
ii. Taylor et al. 2005
iii. Whether stabilization is a success
1. I say no, if a species cannot survive on its own then the
species has not recovered
b. Determining what would have happened is subjective
i. Ferraro et al. 2007
1. No control group
2. Can you design experiments to have a control group?
3. Is this irresponsible?
4. Maybe if this is tried before a species is actually
endangered
c. What parts work?
i. Having specific species plans
ii. Spending a lot of money on specific species
iii. Taylor et al. 2005
iv. Kerkvliet et al. 2007
v. 13 have recovered out of 1300
vi. Early intervention
d. What parts don’t?
i. 7 have gone extinct
ii. Up to now multi-species programs have failed
iii. Kerkvliet et al. 2007
iv. Late intervention
6. Solutions
a. Shift the attitude towards species conservation
i. Necessity instead of luxury
ii. Education
1. Ecosystem services
2. Dangers of monocultures
iii. Andrew Revkin
iv. Limited resources
b. Protecting species before they are endangered
c. Use economics
i. Solow and Polasky- can’t save all species so allow economics to
guide decisions
ii. Allow your money to do the most it can
d. Spend more money
i. Take away military funding
ii. Stop having wars (this is what I think, clearly won’t happen)
7. Conclusion
a. All is not lost
b. By shifting public opinion and will we can get the increased funding
and the policy changes needed to enact stricter and more proactive
legislation.
c. By portraying it as a necessity will allow this to become a priority over
economic arguments
d. By using economic arguments can disband any theory about species
being in conflict with economic gain