Because it isn't about protecting animals, or the environment. It's about stealing resources.
"Revealing a stunning record of failure and fabrication over nearly half-a-century,
a new report by Robert Gordon of the Heritage Foundation calls for sweeping administrative reforms of the federal Endangered Species Act (ESA).
"Enacted in 1973, the ESA has managed to “recover” only 40 species, or slightly less than one species per year."
"Even worse, almost half of the “recovered” species – 18 out of 40 – are what Gordon calls “federally funded fiction.” It turns out that these 18 “recovered” species were never endangered in the first place and were placed on the endangered species list due to poor data. This, however, has not kept the Department of Interior’s Fish & Wildlife Service (FWS) from trumpeting their “recovery” as a success.
“This deceitful practice portrays mistakes as successes, distorting the most important measure of the program,” Gordon writes. “It also triggers other mandatory actions further wasting taxpayer dollars, serves as a justification for the adoption of more restrictive land management practices by other agencies, obscures significant problems with the data used to justify listing species, and erodes the overall credibility of the Service and the program.”
"Were it not for the incompetence and dishonesty of the FWS, the examples of phony recoveries cited in the report would be comical. The Concho water snake found itself on the endangered list, because the FWS determined that the construction of a reservoir would destroy its habitat. "
Feds fabricate data to cover failures of Endangered Species Act – Free Range Report
