The Ark Reposes in Dry Dock

• Author: G. Tracy Mehan III
• Pages: 162-165

162 Best of the Books: Ref‌lections on Recent Literature

The Ark Reposes in Dr y Dock

By G. Tracy Mehan III

Rebuilding the Ar k: New Perspectives on Endangered S pecies Act

Reform, edited by Jonath an Adler. The AEI Press, 246 pages.

From the January/ February 2012 issue of The Environmental For um.

Let us stipulate that the Endangered Spe-

cies Act of 1973 is right up there with

the Superfund law and the Clean Water

Act rules impacting wetlands, as one of the

“most criticized and controversial of all envi-

ronmental laws,” as described by Jonathan H.

Adler, professor at Case Western Reserve Uni-

versity School of Law, and editor of Rebuilding

e Ark: New Perspectives on Endangered Spe-

cies Act Reform.

Private landowners, farmers, businesses,

and government ocials have all been entan-

gled with regu lation and lawsuits to protect

endangered or threatened species listed pursu-

ant to this very powerful statute, once deemed

the “pitbull” of environmental law: “short,

compact, and has a hell of a set of teeth,” according to one environmentalist.

Bald eagles, wolves, grizzly bears, snail darters, and the Delhi Sands

ower-loving y, and 1,300 other listed species, have generated much con-

troversy and litigation which may become more acrimonious as the issues of

climate change and variability begin to manifest themselves in the decline or

extinction of some species.

As J.B. Ruhl of Florida State’s College of Law and a contributor to this

stimulating collection of essays has observed, a wave of “mitigation litiga-

tion” is coming. In 2009 e Center for Biological Diversity, one of the more

litigious environmental organizations, which had previously sued to list the

polar bear due to climate change, dedicated $17 million in the formation of

the Climate L aw Institute to “establish legal precedents requiring existing