Wild Ones: A Sometimes Dismaying, Weirdly Reassuring Story About Looking at People Looking at Animals in America

by Jon Mooallem

One historian writes that most in Congress believed the Endangered Species Act was “a largely symbolic effort” to protect only the kinds of species environmentalists call “charismatic megafauna”—grizzlies, whales, bald eagles, and other large, beautiful species that people tend to feel an easy connection with. But the act had been quietly beefed up by idealistic staffers, and was much further-reaching and more powerful than most congressmen took the time to understand. After its passage, there was instantly a lot of buyer’s remorse. (In a famous example, a small fish called the snail darter quickly complicated a dam-building project in Tennessee.) Meanwhile, protection was being sought for obscure birds and skinny little snakes that none of these legislators had ever heard of. Within two years, some twenty-three thousand species had been proposed for endangered status. The Smithsonian pulled together a list of 3,187 plants it considered worthy of protection. The paperwork alone was staggering. The agencies responsible for ruling on those petitions, primarily the Fish and Wildlife Service, soon found ways of brushing them off their desks.