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48 REFLECTIONS ON THE ACT private land. Plants on public land can certainly be protected by federal and state law, since the government owns (or is responsi- ble to the people for) those plants-but what about plants on private land? The pine trees in a southern swamp belong to the landowner, but how about the plants of Rhododendron cleapmanii, a listed species? Individual plants, we have always thought, are part of the property; but we face a new question when a few individual plants constitute a natural kind. Ownership of a species has never been part of the explicit bundle of property rights. Who owns a species? This question has remained tacit with wildlife because landowners do not own the individual animals, much less the species. But with plants the question comes into sharper focus. Taking Property and Taking Species In our efforts to implement the Endangered Species Act, we are confronted with a double use of "take"-where the "taking" of life and species is set against the "taking" of property. In strug- gling toward resolution, our moral and legal convictions about the institution of private property and its economic value are evolving in the encounter with the biology and ecology of endan- geredspecies. First, we should try to appreciate how things look from the perspective of the landowner. Some landowners are excited to have endangered species on their property, as long as it does not conflict with their use of the land. Other landowners, finding a conflict between their preferred uses and preservation, think it a misfortune. One of three known populations of the San Diego mesa mint, a tiny endangered plant, was deliberately destroyed by a private developer to ensure that subsequent re- quests for federal construction grants would not be delayed (Carlton, 1986). This is not an isolated occurrence. Bruce Mac- Bryde (1980, p. 33), a botanist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, found that several candidate endangered plants on pri- vate lands have been intentionally destroyed in the last few years. The Endangered Species Act sets untempered economic growth against adequate care and concern for aesthetic, ecologi-