New CFACT Report: ESA Implementation Is Severely Flawed

From CFACT

By Christina Norman

The Endangered Species Act was created with a worthy goal: protecting species at risk of extinction. But more than 50 years later, its implementation has strayed far from that original purpose.

A new CFACT policy report, “Endangered Species Act Implementation Is Severely Flawed,” by David Wojick, Ph.D., examines several major problems with the way the ESA is administered today — from extraordinarily expensive permitting requirements to questionable federal spending priorities and ongoing legal battles over recovered species such as the gray wolf.

Among the report’s findings, a Florida landowner seeking to build a home on five acres faced an ESA-related fee of $139,440, while federal ESA expenditures totaled more than $1.1 billion in the most recent year examined.

The report argues that protecting endangered species remains a worthy objective, but that the ESA’s implementation needs significant reform to better respect property rights, sound science and responsible government.

Read the full report below.

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18 Comments
Phillip Chalmers
September 5, 2026 1:30 am

Y’all voted people into power who have invented this monstrosity.
More evidence to me that the experiment has failed, time for a real liberation movement to start a revolution

Scarecrow Repair
Reply to  Phillip Chalmers
September 5, 2026 1:48 am

No, we’all did not vote people into power who invented this monstrosity.

The system is rigged. At its most basic, it only attracts the power hungry control freaks. The old saying is true, that anyone who wants to be in power should be disqualified.

The choice of two, rarely three, crony choices in an election is not a choice at all.

The problem is that governments like ours and almost all others (I know of no exceptions, but I also don’t know them all) is that the politicians and bureaucrats control the choices, and government legislators and judges define what their own and their employer’s and their colleague’s power is.

The most basic fix would be for We, the People, to have a veto over all government laws, regulations, and actions, over which government exercises no control whatsoever. My basic example is that anyone should be able to hire a jury of 12 random competent adults, put them in separate rooms with a pad of paper and a pen (no erasers or trash cans) and the law in question, and tell them to write down their interpretation of what that law does. Then compare them.

If more than 1 or 2 disagree, then the law is voided.Everything they write down on those pads goes into the record, and no subsequent court can interpret that law contrary to those citizen opinions.No appeals to government courts. No lawyers arguing about what they want the jurors to think.

Of course, as described, it has lots of holes. But the point remains, that without some kind of citizens veto free of government involvement, government will grow without bound and destroy society.

Reply to  Scarecrow Repair
September 5, 2026 5:28 am

In America’s early days, it was indeed shameful for anyone to run for office. You were supposed to wait until society almost begged you to take the job. And you weren’t supposed to think of being a politician as a career.

Phillip Chalmers
Reply to  Phillip Chalmers
September 5, 2026 2:19 am

I was addressing the Americans, I have absolutely no idea if this sort of state tyranny is practised anywhere else in the free world.

David Wojick
Reply to  Phillip Chalmers
September 5, 2026 2:42 am

In this case it is the implementation of the law by unelected regulators that is the problem.

September 5, 2026 3:59 am

“..to better respect property rights, sound science and responsible government.”

Good luck with that.

September 5, 2026 4:12 am

Almost like cfact doesn’t care about animals and the only whales they protect are Koch and Excon.

David Wojick
Reply to  MyUsernameReloaded
September 5, 2026 7:51 am
Reply to  David Wojick
September 5, 2026 8:15 am

I’m not saying it’s an attack, I say they just don’t care about them. And if they stand in the way of their whales…too bad.

From your link:

Here is their special warning with respect to wind power development:

Strange how they only care when it comes to wind power development. I have yet to see them arguing against offshore drilling, shipping, plastic pollutiom, net entaglement, habitat loss because of mining or road construction, environmental contamination.

Dead silence on that front, as nothing of that threatens THEIR whales.

David Wojick
Reply to  MyUsernameReloaded
September 5, 2026 9:19 am

My focus on wind is because it is worse than useless making the damage it causes truly evil. The other things you list such as fuel, shipping, fishing and mining are essential. I have explained this to you at least 5 maybe 10 times which is interesting in itself. Like a bot you do not learn from prior conversations, you just repeat yourself.

Reply to  David Wojick
September 5, 2026 9:44 am

Truly evil to the bank accounts of your whales I guess. Hope it pays well for you, too.

No matter how much explaining you do, it won’t change reality.

MarkW
Reply to  David Wojick
September 5, 2026 8:58 am

You are trying to use logic on someone who has explicitly rejected the use of logic.

David Wojick
Reply to  MarkW
September 5, 2026 9:21 am

Yes but it is important to make that point as often as possible.

MarkW
Reply to  MyUsernameReloaded
September 5, 2026 8:57 am

And here we have the typical socialist response to every over reach by their government agents.

Any complaint about government means you want there to be no government.

September 5, 2026 5:26 am

Several years ago here in Wokeachusetts, there was a disease spreading among certain bat species. So, the state shut down most logging to save the bats. Of course that was nonsense. The bats aren’t everywhere and cutting trees has little bearing on the bat disease problem. But the state decided where they MIGHT be and wouldn’t allow logging in those areas. This happens because the enviros HATE logging and will use every excuse to stop it. Of course they live in nice wood homes with nice wood furniture and tons of paper products.

MarkW
Reply to  Joseph Zorzin
September 5, 2026 9:00 am

The primary purpose of all environmental regulations is to restrict people.
If animals are helped in the meantime, that is an unintended consequence.

September 5, 2026 6:32 am

I live in eastern France, not far from Alsace, whose most representative bird is the stork. Thanks to conservation measures, a tremendous increase in the number of storks has been observed throughout Alsace. It is not unusual to see a dozen of them in the fields alongside the roads. They look for whatever they find appealing: insects, lizards, slow worms, rodents… They also go on raids against ground-nesting birds, such as the little bustard, for example. Herons have roughly the same diet. They too are doing very well, at the expense of the rest of biodiversity. There are even cormorants in Franche-Comté (also in eastern France)! Fish farmers are very unhappy about these large birds emptying their fish farms. I would be too in their place.

Put a few storks in a field teeming with insects, rodents, and reptiles, and they will turn it into a veritable desert in no time. These birds are going to have to be regulated without delay. It is simply a matter of common sense. But lizards and rats are less likely to inspire wonder than majestic storks! Which I can understand quite easily. But conservation biology cares absolutely nothing about aesthetic considerations.

MarkW
September 5, 2026 8:54 am

The primary purpose of the ESA was never to protect animals, it was always to restrict development.