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resource development, for example, is likely to be at least comparably affected by Indian water rights, designation of wilderness areas, and NEPA, to name only three. A more important question would be concerned with the cumulative impact of the array of environmental and other restrictions. Even so, the Endangered Species Act has been justly criticized for being inefficient because it subordinates all other objectives to the goal of endan- gered species protection. But stating that tradeoffs among competing objec- tives should be made is considerably easier than showing how they should be made, and quite difficult to make. Economic analysis is not very helpful here. However, there are other ways that economics can inform policy choices, and these suggest that the conflict between endangered species protection and at least water resource development can be made much more manageable than it now appears. In the first place, opportun~t~es may exist for the substitution of wild- life management al ternatives for the regulation of developments, and in fact there are some indications that the Dickey-Lincoln controversy may be settled in just this manner. * Nonetheless, as discussed in Sec. A, there is reason for skepticism regarding whether such techniques will ever be widely accepted as substitutes. A more significant use of economics would be to apply it more rigorously to projects before the hard questions involving endangered species protection even emerge. At present, criteria of economic efficiency are frequently dis- regarded in water resource development. Two of the most important cases in which the Endangered Spec ies Act had been involved (Dickey-Lincoln Dams and Maramec Park Dam) made President Carter's 1977 "hit list" a careful selection of the least economically justifiable and most environmentally destructive of all pork barrel projects.** Furthermore, there is every indication that Tel1ico could have been eligible had its construction not been so far along at the time. A staff report to the Endangered Species Committee (1979) compared completion of the project with the alternative of dismantling part of the al- ready constructed dam to maintain the river in its free-flowing state. This report estimated that the net economic benefits of the two alternatives were *Endangered Species Technical Bulletin, v. 3 no. 7 (July 1978). **Congressional Quarterly, Inc., "Weekly Report," v. 35 no. 9 (February 26, 1977). 24