7749

• UCREFRP Catalog Number: 7749
• Author: Kohm, K. A., ed.
• Title: Editor
• USFW Year: Series
• USFW - Doc Type: 1991
• Copyright Material: YES

Life in Jeopardy on Private Property 57
but its roots historically go back across millennia, long before
the land was owned, long before this nation existed. Recent
possession conveys no right to destroy species and with it the
future. A species is not personal property. The appropriate rela-
tion is that of caretaker to a trust rather than property owner to
his property.
Indeed, the state is only their recent trustee. The concept of
ownership even by the state of wild fauna and flora has gradu-
ally eroded and been replaced by a nonpossessive concept of
their value and significance, something like trusteeship. This is
legally and ethically correct; wild species are not the possession
of anyone. This is essentially what "wild" means: outside the
possession, control, management, and ownership of humans. In
this light, an act of Congress to extirpate a species is outside its
legitimate authority. The high-level committee that can permit
destruction of species is called the God Committee in a mixture
of jest and theological insight. Some things belong to Caesar,
and some do not.
In an environmental ethic, there really is no reason to think
biologically or philosophically that the flora are more or less
part of the land than the fauna. Both are entwined with the
landscape. A species is what it is where it is. Only legally have we
separated the two in the past. While this makes some sense
dealing with individual plants and animals, we now must think
in terms of species, bringing law into line with biology and
ethics.
Respect for life is tacit in the Endangered Species Act but
needs to be made more explicit. Several billion years of creative
toil and several million species of teeming life have been handed
over to the care of this late-coming human species in which
mind has flowered and morals have emerged. If we are to be true
to our specific epithet, ought not Homo sapiens value this host of
species as something with a claim to care in its own right? A
nation and its people have resolved to form an adequate concern
for these species that are endangered by human economic
growth and development. For a landowner to assume the right
to destroy a species hardly seems biologically informed, much
less ethically adequate. Nor will the law of the land be legally
adequate until the nation makes it clear that property rights on
this land do not override a species that is right for life. Land-