ABSTRACT
Improving the environment for wildlife is a critical challenge for the world in the next several decades. Two important issues are (1) improvement of the aquatic health of surface water systems and (2) better management of biological resources. Existing U.S. law has been inadequate to deal with these issues. For instance, the Clean Water Act (CWA) has not met any of its goals proposed by Congress. Pollution from point sources has more or less been reduced, but eighty percent of pollution in streams is from agriculture, which is unregulated. Biological resource management is vaguely the task of the Endangered Species Act (ESA), which has not been very effective, and is prone to crisis management and vociferous criticism. For one thing, ESA does not define the population of species. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that the issues are scientifically and technically complicated, place great demands on cash, and are local in nature, but sometimes global in effect. Therefore, fiscal conservatives want to give local control for endangered species management, where little, if any, resources are available for solving the problems.
