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Life in Jeopardy on Private Property 51 ingly, it seems Congress is concerned about taking plants on private as well as public lands. Moreover, in the 1988 amend- ments to the act Congress directed the Fish and Wildlife Service to develop recovery plans without, regard to taxonomic classi- fication,indicating aconcern for plants equal to that for animals. Loss or Gain? If the public is gaining a good, government ought to compen- sate; but if government is protecting from harm, it can prohibit without compensation.13 People have a duty not to harm regard- less. This duty can be legally enforced. Courts can stop a land- owner from "engaging in conduct which he ought, as a well socialized adult, to have recognized as unduly harmful to others" (Ackerman, 1977, p. 102). This agrees with a general moral rule that injunctions against malevolence are binding in a strong sense, whereas injunctions to benevolence are weaker. Positive rights to be helped are often optional in a way that negative rights not to be harmed are not. I must not injure a stranger who begs on the streets, but no law requires that I benefit him with a handout. When the law enjoins landowners to protect listed plants on their property, is government protecting against harm or is the public gaining a good? Answering such a question requires us to mix economic and noneconomic values, humanistic and natural values, and politics, biology, and ethics in ways we are only now beginning to explore.. In the title of the act itself, the term "endangered" over- shadows everything to follow. The first two opening clauses lament the irretrievable extinction of many species and threat- enedloss of many more: Section 7, with its "no jeopardy" clause, instructs all federal departments and agencies to take whatever action is necessary "to insure that actions authorized, funded, or carried out by them do not jeopardize the continued existence of such endangered species or threatened species or result in the destruction or modification of habitats of such species which is determined ... to be critical." All- this language suggests a per- spective of harming, and we regularly use police power and "protective regulations" against jeopardy, threat, danger, and destruction.