Is the act fair? That is a very obvious NO!

If it were fair we (taxpayers) would not be extorted millions of dollars by those who choose to abuse the act for their own selfish purposes.

Has there been some success stories? Yes, and its a good thing too. If it there had not been any success stories this legislation would have been punted off the books long ago.

I really don't understand the logic of much of the environmental community when it comes to this act. Some of the groups leverage the act responsibly (I think I would consider most salmon listings responsible use). Other enviro groups just seem to have no clue about what the end result of their well-intentioned actions will be. And the worst is that there are some of these groups who pick out species which are in low numbers just to gain status and financial benefit. What happens, and was has happened, is they create enough of an economic hardship in enough congressman's districts that the benefits of the act don't matter. And really they don?t have to piss off a lot of politicians, they just have to piss off some of the powerful ones. And oh boy have they managed to do that, but that?s another story.

I don't think that most people realize how easy the ESA could be torn down to provide a small fraction of the protection it does now if the wrong things happened. All it would take is some democrat senators to join the republicans and wild salmon might be in serious trouble.

This is why I personally support and the RFA supports ESA reform, not scraping it, but reforming it. Reform in a way that does not really impact the salmon listing, but in a way that brings some common sense to the act. If it does not get reformed now we may very well loose it later.