Essay: Down with The God Squad

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Precisely what makes the Endangered Species Act unique is that it views the % world not through man's eyes but from the high ground of the Creation. It sets no test for survival and respects the meek as it does the mighty. The humpback whale and the black rhinoceros enjoy no greater protection than the noonday snail and the lakeside daisy. Recently an inch-long unpigmented eyeless shrimp found in a sinkhole near Gainesville, Fla., joined the ranks of the imperiled. In shielding the humblest species, the act expresses its highest reverence for diversity, and has evolved into an almost sacred covenant defining the nation's relationship with nature.

In recent months, Agriculture Secretary Clayton Yeutter Jr., Interior Secretary Manuel Lujan and some in Congress have suggested amending the law and letting the God Squad make the toughest calls. That would be the effective demise of the act. The Senate last week defeated a measure that would have empowered the God Squad to settle the dispute over timbering the ancient forests. But the broader question remains. Ruling on a species' fate has eternal consequences. A political appointee's vision dims beyond the next election. Matters of such gravity ought to reflect society's broadest interests. Biologists, environmentalists, theologians, historians and, yes, representatives of industry have a claim to participate in such decisions. Some in this Administration and its predecessor have criticized the Endangered Species Act and shown a willingness to subordinate biological evidence to political expediency. Such was the case with the spotted owl and the Mount Graham squirrel.

Today species are vanishing on a grand scale. There are 1,116 imperiled species on the list, an additional 3,600 candidate species behind them. Some will die out waiting to be listed. These numbers are only a pale reflection of a wider problem. In tropical rain forests, loss of habitat is pushing at least 20,000 species a year into extinction, according to Harvard entomologist Edward O. Wilson. If the U.S. is to influence policy overseas, it will be by dint of example, not rhetoric. Wealthy nations must check their own appetites before asking far greater sacrifices of poorer nations.

A relative newcomer on earth, man knows little about the species with whom he shares the landscape. Fewer than 1.4 million of earth's tens of millions of species have been named, much less examined for their part in making the planet more hospitable. How then do we measure each loss or know when we have severed a vital link with nature? Observes noted paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould: "It would be a very bleak world with cockroaches and dogs and not much else." The final blessing of the Endangered Species Act is that it preserves the elements that stir man's sense of wonder. That benefit alone is too precious for the God Squad to barter away.