Brian Seasholes, NCPA E-Team adjunct scholar and author of our forthcoming study on the environmental and personal perils of the endangered species act has a good piece http://www.reason.com/news/show/121066.html on the coming delisting of the Bald Eagle. To many the Bald Eagle is both a stirring symbol of American freedom and a success story for the Endangered Species Act. Brian argues that the reality is rather different. The eagle should have been delisted years ago, but was not because special interests wanted to continue to use it as a blunt tool to control private property.

As we at the NCPA have long argued (and, of course, we aren’t the only ones) the ESA is many years overdue for reform: a radical reform that would end the perverse incentives contained in the act that make endangered species the enemies of private property owners.