Legally Extinct;
Why Wildlife Protection Laws Aren’t Enough
There have been many great pieces of legislation written to protect wildlife and the wildlands where they live. Among them: The Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918, NEPA the National Environmental Policy Act 1969, The Endangered Species Act (ESA) of 1973, The Wilderness Act of 1964 and the North American Wetlands Conservation Act of 1989. These pro-wildlife laws all sound good on paper but not only are they are constantly being watered down by pro-development judges and lawyers, who are more interested in looking for loopholes then helping wildlife survive, there is less and less wilderness to protect. Here’s just one bleak statistic, the US lost an additional 17,800 square miles of natural habitat and agricultural land to development between 2002 and 2017, according to the latest 15-year dataset from the federal Natural Resources Conservation Service
If wild animals had hired the lawyers to write these laws, would they still keep them on retainer? I don’t think so. I think they would demand to have their protections expand to include curbing human population growth. It’s great to see animals like bald eagles being removed from the endangered species list, but compared to their hay day, they are still rare and compromised in many states. Many ornithologists, for example, believe that the eagle population numbered about half a million birds when Columbus arrived in America, and now their numbers have reached just over 300,000.
The World Wildlife Fund’s Living Planet report 2022, couldn’t be more depressing: The report reveals an average decline of 69% in wildlife species populations since 1970. Sadly, we are in the era of our 6th mass extinction, the sixth one our planet has endured. This time however we are the meteor. Human pressure to expand into the range of wild animals destroys habitat, introduces diseases, invasive species, and increases deadly roadkill encounters. Our climate is so full of greenhouse gases that we are simultaneously baking our ecosystems. All of this is exacerbated by the fact that our human population numbers continue to grow by over 80 million a year hitting the frightening milestone of 8 billion in the fall of 2022.
Globally and locally, growth is the quintessential enemy of wildlife. It is fueled by the number of feet as well as how much those feet are consuming. Taming growth, stabilizing our population and then ratcheting it down would do more to help reduce climate gases than all of the COP (Conference of the Parties) climate conferences put together.
The truth is, that humans are at the top of the food chain. That is what makes our high numbers so dangerous to wildlife. Imagine if lions were as populous as locusts. They would take over and eat everything in sight, rendering our planet lifeless. That is what we are doing. We are top predators unable to do anything but behave like locusts because our numbers are so high. All of our wildlife protection laws must incorporate stopping our growth in order truly protect wildlife. No matter how much we love pandas and pangolins, we have more power to protect bobcats and wolves from within the halls of our own legal system and we need to use that power. There are countries losing habitats fast due to their population pressures, but we still have time to stop the massacre here in the US.
The tragedy is that so most of our laws are designed to promote growth. If we divided our laws into two columns, pro-growth or anti-growth, the pro-growth side would win by a landslide. Under the umbrella of growth live so many laws and we don’t even question their effects anymore. We just accept them as a part of our lives like sunrises and sunsets.
Permits are legally and easily issued to build apartments and stadiums, dams and shopping malls. Utah is a state with serious drought problems, yet they issued over 33,000 building permits last year, more than any other state. Tax Increment Financing (TIF) is a welcome mat for developers who get legal permission to avoid taxes sometimes for as many as 50 years, so they can build their projects with less cost to them and with no commitment to the infrastructures of surrounding communities. Sanctuary cities are very pro-growth and have popped up across the country designed to combat deportation and detention of immigrants. By defying federal laws, they are welcoming growth and impending disaster.
Looking away and refusing to enforce borders, illegal immigration continues to add to the population of the US by the millions and we can ill afford all of the ramifications of those increases. The laws that are missing from the endangered species picture are the laws that would decrease growth. Anti-growth or degrowth laws if you will, are not a part of the national conversation, but they need to be. All of our laws need to be looked at through this lens: Do they cause the population to rise or fall? Do they encourage growth or limit its dangerous path?
If total fertility rates are mainly to blame for increasing numbers, they must be encouraged to come down. Among degrowth based laws which would curb fertility: incentives for small families, free access to birth control and reproductive rights for women, more supportive and cheaper foster care and easier adoptions. There also needs to be consistent civil discussion about our imminent ecological collapse.
If immigration mainly to blame for forcing numbers up, like it is in the US, they must be tamed with more restrictive laws that are humanely enforced. Responsibly controlled borders must be a part of a formula for a nation if it wants its wildlife to survive the pressures of ecological collapse. Macro thinking is required if our natural places are to remain free from the footprints of newcomers who are not to be mistreated but need to be restrained with laws which are both federally mandated and enforced, humanely of course. Temporary visas for educational opportunities must be just that, temporary. Allowing populations to grow with either laws and customs which encourage either high fertility rates or immigration is asking for extinction to exhilarate no matter how many wildlife acts are on the books.
These discussions can no longer afford to be sidetracked by accusations of racism. It is a flimsy avoidance strategy of a monumental degree. History has proven that descendants of slaves are relegated to the back of the hiring line every time we have a wave of immigrants come into the US. (See: Back of the Hiring Line by Roy Beck 2021).
If wildlife were able to hire the best lawyers and sue us for allowing growth and its sprawl to destroy their habitat I for one would want to be on that jury and vote for the plaintiff.