7749

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

78 COMPONENTS OF THE FEDERAL ENDANGERED SPECIES PROGRAM
bright chattering flocks of parakeets, committed men and
women were using that tragedy to generate support for increas-
ing efforts to stem the tide of extinctions that appeared ready to
engulf America's prominent wildlife species.
During that era there were no official lists of endangered wild-
life. Afew books and magazine articles presented terse descrip-
tions of vanished species and listed those deemed likely to follow
the pigeon and several other members of our wildlife heritage to
the abyss of extinction. (See, for example, Hornaday, 1913.)
THE OFFICIAL LISTS
When the first Endangered Species Act (ESA) was passed in
1966,' the secretary of the interior was directed, after consulta-
tion with affected states and scientific groups having expertise
in the matter, to "publish in the Federal Register the names of
the species of native fish- and wildlife found to be threatened
with extinction." This congressional directive to create the first
official U.S. endangered species list postdated the July 1966 Red
Data Book, published by the International Union for the Conser-
vation ofNature, containing lists of rare and endangered species
around the world. Significantly, when the first ESA passed, the
expressed intent was to protect thirty-five or so species of native
mammals and thirty to forty species of native birds believed to
be near extinction (Congressional Quarterly Almanac, 1966).
Through the 1969 Endangered Species Protection Act,? Con-
gress institutionalized the global scope of the listing process by
authorizing the interior secretary to list wildlife "threatened
with worldwide extinction" and to prohibit the importation of
such species into the United States except under specified condi-
tions. The decision to list a species required consultation with
the states that might be affected and, in the case of foreign
species, with the nations where the species is normally found. In
contrast to the earlier, somewhat informal process for listing,
the 1969 act intended that listing decisions comply with the
Administrative Procedures Act (Bean, 1983, p. 323).
With the enactment of Public Law 93-205 on December 28,
1973, and subsequent amendments, the ESA became the most
far-reaching wildlife statute ever adopted by any nation. Under