Question Earthority!

“Currently, the ESA offers landowners a very perverse incentive. Find an endangered species on your property and you will lose the right to use the property should that species come to the attention of the Fish and Wildlife Service. The landowner’s incentive is to eliminate the species and keep quiet about it, a practice so commonplace that it has its own pejorative alliteration: ‘Shoot, shovel, and shut up.’ This incentive, a creation of Washington policymakers, also hurts endangered species by giving landowners an incentive to reduce their habitat. Landowners will not cultivate habitat if it means more intrusive government restrictions. Even some environmentalists have come to recognize that if you want to protect species you must protect private property.” (02/28/06)