2023 was a major anniversary for the Endangered Species Act – it's now 50 years old. With historian Douglas Brinkley we mark a milestone:

When Theodore Roosevelt was president, he lamented that the North American bison, once 40 million strong, had been nearly wiped out by commercial hunters. An avid birdwatcher, Roosevelt also mourned the fact that hunting and habitat loss had killed some 3 billion passenger pigeons in the 19th century alone, driving the species to extinction.

This photo from 1892 shows a pile of buffalo skulls at the Michigan Carbon Works in Rougeville, to be ground up for fertilizer. Burton Historical Collection, Detroit Public Library

Roosevelt roared from his bully pulpit: "The wildlife and its habitat cannot speak. So, we must. And we will."

It would take another six decades, though, before the United States caught up with Roosevelt—but when it did, it went big.

On December 28, 1973, Richard Nixon put his presidential signature to the far-reaching Endangered Species Act, which for the first time provided America's iconic flora and fauna with serious legal protection.

The remarkable success of the Endangered Species Act is undisputable. An astonishing 99% of the threatened species first listed have survived. Due to the heroic efforts of U.S. government employees, bald eagles now nest unmolested along the Lake Erie shoreline; grizzlies roam Montana's wilderness; and alligators propel themselves menacingly across Louisiana's bayous.  

Nature: Bald eagles in Idaho 01:53

Whether it's protecting a tiny Kirtland's warbler in the jack pines of Michigan, or a 200-ton blue whale in the Santa Barbara Channel, the Endangered Species Act remains the most dazzling and impactful environmental feat of all time.

In Northern California the Yurok Tribe has successfully reintroduced the California Condor back to its ancestral lands. 

How hunters can aid the California condor's comeback 05:07

Recently, a federal judge approved the reintroduction of gray wolves in Colorado.

Nature: Wolves of Yellowstone 02:22

And while America is still mourning musician Jimmy Buffet, his conservation legacy lives on with the Save the Manatee Club in Florida.

Nature: Manatees 01:45

Upon reflection, what President Nixon said in 1973 still holds true: "Nothing is more priceless and more worthy of preservation than the rich array of animal life with which our country has been blessed."

     
For more info:

  • "Silent Spring Revolution: John F. Kennedy, Rachel Carson, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, and the Great Environmental Awakening" by Douglas Brinkley (HarperCollins), in Hardcover, eBook and Audio formats, available via Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Bookshop.org
  • douglasbrinkley.com
  • Save the Manatee Club
  • Yurok Condor Restoration Program

       
Story produced by Liza Monasebian. Editor: David Bhagat. 

    In:
  • Endangered Species Act
  • Endangered Species

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