Description of Endangered Species Act?

Question

Description of Endangered Species Act?

Answer 1

There's a comprehensive description on Wikipedia, which describes its history (became law under Nixon in 1973), how it works (the importance of species being listed as threatened or endangered, the way that certain areas or business practices can be affected, how it is enforced, etc...).  It even gives some numbers showing its relative strength and weakness under different presidential administrations over time (there are a lot of ways in which the executive branch can alter the effectiveness of the act -- including not classifying at-risk species as "threatened" or "endangered", not enforcing certain policies, or challenging scientific findings in order to change the conclusions as to environmental impacts of certain practices -- as happened with respect to the Klamath river salmon issue).  Wikipedia is not always reliable, but this is a pretty good entry, and you can verify the information in other sources if you are doing research for a paper....

Here's a link:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endangered_...

Answer 2

The Endangered Species Act of 1973  is the most wide-ranging of the dozens of United States environmental laws passed in the 1970s. This act was designed to protect critically imperiled species from extinction due to "the consequences of economic growth and development untempered by adequate concern and conservation"

Answer 3

Here are two websites that are very good and contain a lot of good information (and they are the government agencies that deal the most with it and are charged with enforcing it)

http://www.fws.gov/endangered/wildlife.h...

http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/pr/laws/esa/

Hope it helps you out!