Utah State University political science professor, and PERC senior associate, Randy Simmons recently spoke on the Endangered Species Act to the Western Governors Association. An op-ed based on his talk is available here. Following are some highlights:

[The ESA] uses a regulatory approach born in the Nixon administration, and it ignores the role of states and landowners. It ignores incentives. A new endangered species act should correct these misunderstandings.

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the ESA is broken because it ignores one other important reality: 80 percent of all listed or threatened species have all or part of their habitat on private land.

Under the current law, landowners are punished for cultivating, encouraging or allowing habitat that attracts or protects an endangered species. The ESA prohibits harm to an endangered species and the Fish and Wildlife Service interprets harm to include modifying habitat.

Thus, "A forest landowner harvesting timber, a farmer plowing new ground, or a developer clearing land for a shopping center (stands) in the same position as a poacher taking aim at a whooping crane,” according to Michael Bean of Environmental Defense.

Rational, normally law-abiding citizens, therefore, often engage in preemptive habitat destruction. If they expect an endangered species may come to their land, they destroy the habitat.

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by engaging property owners in the effort to protect species, we will also follow Leopold's claim that "Conservation will ultimately boil down to rewarding the private landowner who conserves the public interest.”

No claims about the value of biodiversity or moralizing about the diversity of life will change that basic fact.