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7O REFLECTIONS ON THE ACT overriding need for economic development. With the aid of the local Audubon people, a compromise was worked out whereby some trees were saved and some restrictions imposed on mall use in the wintering season. Alast-minute lawsuit to save the trees was summarily dismissed on procedural grounds.31 The police brought coffee and doughnuts to the diehards who perched in the tree while the chainsaws waited patiently. The protesters were arrested-vely, very gently-and undoubtedly will receive little punishment for their forlorn, peaceful vigil. The trees came down. The mall, like the road, will be built. Whether the eagles will suffer, or to what extent, cannot be known until the event. The point is that the law forced all concerned to turn their attention from profit to birds, because unless they could devise a plan to minimize the conflict, the birds would win; and the humans knew it. REFLECTIOI~iS Reflections on the true meaning and impact of the ESA after more than fifteen years lead to mixed conclusions. On the nega- tive side of the ledger,32 the act apparently is too little and too late in many cases. Biologically, the California condor was sim- ply too far gone from both genetic and human-related causes. Worse, thousands if not millions of species worldwide are doomed in any event; many will disappear through human- caused habitat destruction without ever having been identified or classified. Economically, endangered species protection is expensive, an inevitable concommittant of remediation instead of prevention. Politically, it is too easy for federal agencies to water down legal requirements in freshets of high-sounding phrases. Legally, the ESA remains a limited remedy in spite of its strictness. It is too narrow, focusing primarily on single spe- cies in single situations. It does not kick in until the population level of a species is at the danger point, and politics can obstruct listing even when the danger is clear: A general federal wildlife protection law or a general "ecosys- tem" approach may not be a panacea either. But if we are to transform our noble (quixotic?) legislative goal into reality, some broader form of protection seems necessary. Human land