To piggy-back on Rich's idea of ESA listing meaning money in the bank, Bob Lackey (of EPA and OSU) has a blog post about the Salmon Recovery Industrial Complex. Essentially, our recovery actions are more about accumulating and spending money than actually accomplishing recovery. He might not be wrong.

I mean, SRKWs are starving and what don't we do? Ensure they have lots to eat. Salmomids need more spawners so what do we do? Not put more fish on the grounds.

But, we throw money at projects.