Should the Endangered Species Act be strengthened?

1. ESA is reactive in nature, meaning that we wait until a species is at risk of extinction before we do anything about it. 2. There isn't enough funding for original status assessments (there is a list of several "candidate" species without enough research to determine population status), adequate research (it's difficult and expensive to perform empirical research to determine best management strategies, life history traits, and population dynamics), or management (there isn't enough funding or government interest to initiate adaptive management strategies, or pay for adequate habitat improvements). When it comes to writing about funding, I suggest looking at the U.S. budget. This chart is a couple years old, but the trends are still the same: http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3270/2874167136_c3340128e3.jpg 3. Although ESA authorizes management of species on private lands, that management isn't effective because although we know ~2/3 of threatened and endangered species reside on private land, we have no way to determine the specific species on any given parcel, and no one wants to deal with the elephant in the room: managing private lands. It creates distrust of the government, fish & wildlife service, forest service, etc. For example, we routinely recieve death threats and experience vandalism in MI when the forest service does controlled burns of hundreds of acres of jack pine to provide early-successional habitat for species such as the Kirtland's Warbler.