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.Snail Darters and Pork Barrels Revisited 71 use is the main cause of habitat destruction, and habitat de- struction is the main cause of wildlife endangerment. The hard choice is unavoidable: Saving wildlife means more restrictions on what we can do to the natural environment. Conceding that the present ESA mechanism is not perfect, the other side of the coin is that endangered species protection in the United States since 1973 has been far more successful than the act's sponsors could have hoped. Those sponsors evidently did not foresee the range of species to which the act would apply or the kind of land-use conflicts that would arise. In spite of political opposition and administrative disinclination in the 1980s, the list of protected species continues to grow. When agencies ignore or downplay the welfare of listed species, courts in the main have forced them back on the path of legal recti- tude. Although the presence of an endangered species by itself rarely blocks a proposed land development, it is now accepted that developers must alter their proposals and mitigate conse- quences. In an imperfect world, perhaps this is the best that the only self-consciously anthropocentric species can do. It is, in any event, far preferable to the state of affairs before 1973. Nearly a decade after arriving at the cautious conclusion that began this essay, I had recent occasion to revisit the subject in a less theoretical context. From the viewpoint of species in dan- ger, my conclusion today is more hopeful: The keys to the puzzle are mitigation and, accommodation. Law- yers should inform developers or user clients that their preferred use is subservient to the listed species' welfare, and that their projects or uses must be designed to obviate the likely harms to protected species that they might otherwise cause. The courts are not prone to outlaw all human uses that might conflict with some endangered wildlife if they are convinced that the agency and promoter have made good-faith efforts to observe the spirit as well as the letter of the ESA. As Thomas, Conner, and Sierra Club v. Lyng illustrate, however, apparent attempts to circumvent ESA stric- tures are prescriptions for litigative failure and the delay, expense, and frustration that inevitably ensue.ss Notes I apologize for the overabundance of citations to my own books and articles. This, however, is a personal essay, not an objective evaluation,