Rising 3L Max Hayashi will soon publish an article in Volume 10 of the Texas A&M Law Review on “Extinction or Bust: Improving Species Recovery Under the Endangered Species Act By Amending the Funding Allocation and Recovery Planning Processes.” The article focuses on the Endangered Species Act and draws inspiration from Hayashi’s converging interests in wildlife conservation and environmental law.
Hayashi, a member of the Texas A&M Law Review, is particularly interested in environmental law, real estate law, and business law. Prior to law school, Hayashi attended Baylor University and worked for two years as a post-baccalaureate fellow at the National Institutes of Health where he researched protein biochemistry.
The article is still in the pre-publication process, with Professor Brian Larson serving as Hayashi’s faculty advisor. The current abstract follows:
ABSTRACT
The Endangered Species Act of 1973 (“ESA”) is perhaps the most powerful environmental statute passed in U.S. history and serves as a blueprint for government-sanctioned conservation efforts globally. At its core, the ESA serves to protect listed plant and animal species by prohibiting actions that harm their chances of survival. While the ESA has generally been successful in pursuing this goal as implemented, it has also led to a host of problems that undermine its effectiveness and generated widespread discontent among conflicting, disparate stakeholders including environmentalists, industry groups, government agencies, and private landowners. Criticisms of the ESA generally focus on several issues including its procedural inconsistency and the perceived indiscriminate harshness of its land-use restrictions. However, the greatest shortcoming of the ESA underpins all these concerns: its failure to achieve its stated objective of widespread and efficient species recovery. As climate change, habitat destruction, and other major, anthropogenic threats to biodiversity continue to mount on a global scale, the need to preserve biodiversity for present and future generations, as well as the attendant ecological, economic, and cultural benefits, is greater than ever.
This Comment contends that the ESA is a critical statute whose failure to achieve species recovery is not only its greatest weakness but also its greatest opportunity for reform. The Comment begins by exploring why the ESA has thus far failed to achieve widespread species recovery, in particular the issues of insufficient funding and the legal unenforceability of recovery plans. The Comment next argues that the ESA can achieve higher rates of species recovery through basic, common-sense changes to the present ESA. These measures include (1) establishing a recovery budgeting committee that analyzes effectiveness of prescribed management actions and recommends allocation of funding based on a comprehensive framework, and (2) amending the ESA to make adherence to management actions in recovery plans binding on the acting agency, with procedures for revising management actions in the face of new information. The Comment concludes by contending that, in strengthening the ESA’s commitment to recovery, the Act may function more efficiently despite limited resources while addressing criticisms raised by juxtaposed stakeholders.