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Snail Darters and Pork Barrels Revisited 67 courts have ruled that the agency sufficiently complied with the ESA even though some harm to the species might result.'$ That the scope of litigated disputes is widening illustrates the growing impact of the ESA. Perhaps the most significant is the Minnesota Wolf decision, in which the Eighth Circuit Court out- lawed asport hunting season on that threatened species.19 That opinion should have augured well for the grizzly bear-another predator under relentless attack by development in general and human predators in particular. But that has not yet been the, case. In the Sunrise Hunting,20 Steel Shot,21 and Strychnine22 cases, federal agencies had to take their general regulatory poli- cies back to the drawing board because they had neglected to ascertain or take adequate account of the effect of the regula- tions on endangered or threatened species 23 In the Nebraska v. REA24 and Riverside Irrigation District25 cases, the courts held that the ESA protected the stopover habitat of endangered birds many miles downstream from the projects at issue. In the Stam- pede Dam lawsuit,26 the court agreed that the Interior Depart- ment must protect the spawning grounds of endangered fish from water diversions. A new wave of litigation promises to affect natural resources management on federal lands in even more drastic ways. The red-cockaded woodpecker and northern spotted owl disputes threaten to turn Forest Service (and BLM) timber production programs inside out. A federal district court has already en- joined clear-cutting and road use within 1,000 meters of wood- pecker colonies in several national forests?' Environmental organizations in the Pacific Northwest may succeed in obtaining broader-and economically more devastating-protection for declining spotted owl populations from old-growth timber har- vests.28 Acourt in early 1989 ordered the FWS to reinstitute listing proceedings,29 which threw the BLM and Forest Service programmed timber harvests into an uproar and provoked a spirited struggle in Congress (Public Land News, Sept. 14, 1989). The four main commands of the Endangered Species Act-to conserve listed species, to avoid jeopardization, to avoid de- struction of critical habitat, and to avoid taking-are now firmly entrenched in public natural resources law. The federal agencies realize that the presence of a listed species dramati- cally alters the management equation. But federal agencies are