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Synopsis of Assessing the Ark:

A Christian Perspective on Non-Human Creatures

and the Endangered Species Act

Published by Crossroads, A Ministry of Evangelicals for Social Action (ESA), Vol.1, No. 10

For the last several years there has been much discussion and debate concerning the land, its creatures, and our responsibilities as humans. In the United States the Endangered Species Act has been at the center of these debates. For example, in a position paper on the Act a group of professional foresters assert: "American society should recognize that humans have a legitimate biotic right to compete with other species for goods and services from the land."1 The foresters continue, however, in the same position paper to espouse a perspective not usually associated with folks on "their side" of the issue:

However, humans have an ethical responsibility to other species, as well as their own progeny, to harmonize their activities within ecosystems for the conservation of goods and services that have both extrinsic and intrinsic values.2

These two quotes epitomize two positions in the debate surrounding the Endangered Species Act. We humans need the "goods and services from the land"--a need the meeting of which, many argue, is severely hindered if not precluded by the Endangered Species Act in its current form. And yet we also have a responsibility to "harmonize" our actions with the needs of other creatures, especially those nearing extinction--a responsibility, many others argue, that the current Act is ill equiped to discharge. Is the current Endangered Species Act overkill? Or is it too little too late? Do we need to change the Act? If so, how exactly?

Congress is now facing these issues as it debates the reauthorization of the Endangered Species Act of 1973. Assessing the Ark is intended to examine the United States Endangered Species Act--its history, its implementation, its most common questions and criticisms--from a Christian point of view. Christians have compelling reasons to be involved in this issue, since care for creation lies at the very heart of biblical Christian spirituality, properly understood. And Christians have arguments distinctly their own for being responsible earthkeepers, especially for keeping those of God's creatures most near to extinction.

So this monograph is an attempt to think not only clearly and deeply but also Christianly about the topic of endangered species. What should Christians think about the protection of endangered species? What are the best means to carry out our responsibility to endangered species, assuming such a responsibility exists? Should Christians support efforts to reauthorize the Endangered Species Act of 1973? Should they encourage efforts to change the current Act, and if so, in what way? Should they join those who wish to weaken the Act? What specific policy proposals should Christians support with regard to this issue? And in any case, why? What arguments can and should Christians give for their specific proposals? Do they have a distinctive voice in the cacaphony of voices clamoring for attention?

This monograph aims to provide sufficient analysis of the Endangered Species Act--its provisions, accomplishments, controversies--and sufficient attention to biblical and theological matters to develop a coherent Christian ethical perspective from which to offer a public policy proposal on this timely issue. Given that aim, the authors first present a Christian perspective on species. Drawing on the riches of the Bible they derive seven theological motifs--e.g., integrity, finitude, fruitfulness--and ethical principles--e.g., biodiversity, sufficiency, sustainability--which should guide reflection and action concerning God's non-human creatures, especially those in danger of extinction. These biblically rooted ethical principles generate certain duties incumbent on us as humans--duties which function as arguments in support of the protection of endangered species. Christians should care for vanishing species, the authors argue, not primarily for prudential reasons, but because of their piety. They care, for example, because non-human creatures are valuable in themselves as creations of a good and loving God, because humans as God's image-bearers are given the responsibility of keeping creation, and because such care is a fitting response of gratitude for the gifts God provides.

Next the Endangered Species Act itself is described. How did it come to be? How does it currently work? What role does the federal government play? The final section explores various common questions and criticisms of the current Act. What is a species? What constitutes genuine endangerment? Has the Act really worked to preserve species? Isn't the economic cost of implementing the Act too high? Along the way ten specific policy proposals are set forth. The authors' central thesis is that the Endangered Species Act should be renewed; but they also suggest ways it can be improved, e.g., by making recovery plans more ambitious, by giving priority to certain ecological values like sensitivity to degradation and rarity of habitat, by moving from a species-by-species approach to an ecosystemic perspective. Included in this final section are such current controversial issues as takings legislation and economic analysis.

To paraphrase Dickens, we live in the best of times and we live in the worst of times. On the one hand, the continued existence of many nonhuman creatures is imperiled. The American Fisheries Society estimates that one third of our freshwater fish taxa are endangered: 106 stocks of Pacific Coast anadromous salmon and trout are now extinct; 214 additional stocks are in danger; 36% of the crayfish and 55% of our mussels are extinct or in grave danger of extinction.3 Indeed, a number of species are now gone forever, extinct because of our care-less behavior: the Eastern cougar, the Atlantic elk, the Carolina parakeet, the Badlands bighorn sheep, the Oregon bison, the Florida wolf, the golden grizzly bear of California. And this list includes only some of the so-called mega-fauna. It is not the best of times.

But one could argue that while perhaps not the best of times, the days are not all darkness and gloom. Without the Endangered Species Act and the ban on DDT, the bald eagle would probably be extinct in the lower 48 states, rather than nesting, among other places, along the Mt. Vernon Highway of Virginia. In 1986 only three individual plants of Peters Mountain mallow existed and they were not reproducing. Through the recovery efforts of the ESA, the lifecycle needs of the plant were uncovered and provided for and its habitat protected. In 1993 500 Peters Mountain mallow seedlings repaid the recovery efforts.4 Despite the very real losses and potential for even greater losses in the future, there have been very real gains in the preservation of species and the habitats in which they (and we) dwell. Because of the ESA there are success stories such as these.

For many the reason we need the ESA is rooted in prudence. We need to protect and preserve other species because it is in our own best interests. For example, the majority of our medicines originate with plants--the yew, the rosy periwinkle, and the kudzu have each provided hope for cures for major diseases such as ovarian cancer, childhood leukemia, and Hodgkin's disease. This rationale is important. But the underlying rationale for the ESA is moral. Lynn Greenwalt, the first Secretary of the Fish and Wildlife Service responsible for the ESA, observed that in its determination to accord every species value the Act adopts a moral foundation.5 It sets up a moral obligation encumbant upon us as humans through an image of the proper relationship we should have with the rest of God's creatures. The current Secretary of Interior, Bruce Babbitt, has expressed a similar perspective. After citing some of the benefits we have derived from the yew and periwinkle, he remarks:

Consider the image of Noah and the ark in Judeo-Christian tradition. My view of that story is that it is an argument for preservation of God's creation, for it says that even in the time of a deluge there is a mandate to preserve every species on earth. Ultimately there is a spiritual or ethical implication in this question: Is it really possible for the human race to live lightly on the land? Or are we simply going to continue to metastasize with our industrial civilization, to the point where we have shredded the tapestry and made ourselves poorer and more lonely in the process?6

As the authors argue, Babbit's reference to Noah's ark tellingly points in the direction not of prudence but of piety. The most basic reason for the preservation of species, and for the support of the ESA, is not self-interest, but the ultimately religious understanding that we as God's human creatures are called, like Noah, to preserve God's non-human creatures. Noah's job is not done.

This should come as no surprise for Christians. Informed and inspired by scripture Christians know that care for creation lies at the very heart of biblical Christian spirituality. We care for sandhill cranes, chinook salmon, and snakeroot because such care is a fitting expression of what it means to worship the God who creates and sustains all things. We take on Noah's task because it fits who we are as keepers with God of this blue-green earth. As Joseph Sittler articulately puts it:

When we turn the attention of the church to a definition of the Christian relationship with the natural world, we are not stepping away from grave and proper theological ideas; we are stepping right into the middle of them. There is a deeply rooted, genuinely Christian motivation for attention to God's creation, despite the fact that many church people consider ecology to be a secular concern.7

Notes (The note number is linked to the text location that first references this note.)

1"Red-Cockaded Woodpecker Protection and Habitat Management on Private Lands: A Regional Society of American Foresters Position Statement,"Journal of Forestry 90 (August 1992): 39.

2Ibid

3 Angermeier, Paul L. and Jack E. Williams, "Conservation of Imperiled Species and Reauthorization of the Endangered Species Act of 1973," Fisheries vol. 18, no. 7, (July 1993): 34.

4Judy Jacobs, "New Hope for the Peters Mountain Mallow," Endangered Species Technical Bulletin XVIII no.3 (1993): 13.

5Lynn A. Greenwalt, "The Power and Potential of the Act," in Balancing on the Brink of Extinction, ed. Kathryn A. Kohm (Washington D.C.: Island Press, 1991), 31.

6Bruce Babbitt, "The Future Environmental Agenda for the United States," University of Colorado Law Review 64 (1993): 517.

7Joseph Sittler, Gravity and Grace (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1986),15.

Please mail any comments to Dr. Mark Lassiter.