76-16-A7
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Endangered Species[edit]
Transcript[edit]How much do you miss dinosaurs? Would your life be richer if a giant prehistoric flying lizard occasionally settled on your front lawn? I'll be right back. Since the beginning of life on this planet, thousands of species, plant and animal, have disappeared every century as part of the evolutionary process in an ever-changing world. We as humans share a feeling of guilt because as our numbers have increased, we've contributed to the disappearance of some species by destroying their habitat or hunting them down for food, fur and feathers, and sometimes our guilt makes us forget those thousands of species that simply cease to exist before man ever appeared in the primeval swamp. Today we're trying to halt, as best we can, our contribution to or hastening of the disappearance of existing plant and animal life. We've identified endangered species and passed laws preventing any act by man which might reduce their numbers and I'm sure there's general agreement with this policy. But shouldn't we now and then remember nature's part in the elimination of some species and separate the serious from the silly in our own policy? Up in Maine, a mammoth hydroelectric generating facility was scheduled to be constructed in a part of America, the Northeast, where power is in short supply. The Dickey-Lincoln dam site was key to this $1.3 billion project on the St. John River. Many factors were taken into consideration and a great deal of study went into planning such an expensive project, as you can well imagine. Then, about a year ago, someone discovered a clump of wild flowers, about 200 in all, in the area to be flooded with the building of the dam. They were a species of snapdragon thought to be extinct called the Furbish Lousewart. The 1.3 billion Dickey-Lincoln generating facility is now halted, stopped dead in its tracks by the Endangered Species Act of 1973. I'm not a botanist but isn't it possible those plants could be transplanted? I've transplanted wildflowers on the ranch with little or no trouble at all. I've even gathered seeds and helped the spread of some types to other parts of the ranch. And can anyone really say there aren't other clumps of Furbish Lousewart hidden in the woods of Maine, as this clump was hidden, until humans invaded the area to build a dam? Down on the Little Tennessee River, the Tennessee Valley Authority has been building a dam to produce electricity for about two hundred thousand homes and I don't know how many industries providing jobs for people in those homes. This project has been going on for about ten years so far. A 116 million dollars have been spent and the huge Teleco Dam is ninety five percent complete. Apparently that's as far as it'll get. A federal court has stopped construction because a three-inch fish called the snail darter has been found to spawn in the waters of the Little Tennessee River. This particular snail darter is an endangered species even though it differs only slightly from the 77 other kinds of darters found in the rivers of Tennessee. To date, more than 200 projects have been halted to protect among other things: an inedible clam, some crayfish and freshwater snails. And the Fish and Wildlife Service announces it is now going to classify, as endangered, some seventeen hundred species of plants. It is time to ask if some environmentalists, and I do mean some, aren't using the Endangered Species Act of 1973 simply to halt construction of projects they don't like. Which is too bad because most of the billions of dollars I've mentioned would be in paychecks. This is Ronald Reagan. Thanks for listening. |
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