01:00 AM EDT on Monday, July 4, 2005

The U.S. Endangered Species Act, a key to wildlife protection, did not come into being to save the magnificent ivory-billed woodpecker -- although its enactment memorialized that and all other species believed to be extinct. In 1973, when President Nixon signed the act, the ivory-bill was thought to have met the fate of the passenger pigeon and the dodo; the last ivory-bill sightings had been in the '30s.

This year's sighting of the huge and brilliant woodpecker -- a dramatic resurrection -- makes clear the value of efforts to preserve endangered species. The presumed-extinct ivory-bill appeared in an Arkansas swamp that had been protected from logging as a designated bird habitat.

The Endangered Species Act honors the interconnectedness of all life: It condemns the human destruction of plant and animal species not only as aesthetically and morally wrong, but also as dangerous to the human species. The act has effectively defended all species under threat -- including the Algodones sand jewel beetle and the Shivwits milk vetch, lacking though they may the splendor of the ivory-billed bird.

The strength of the law is its basis in science. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and associated scientists observe plants and animals in the field to determine whether their species are threatened, and, if they are, what to do to save them from extinction. These peer-reviewed data form the policies to protect species.

Yet the law has its detractors. Remember the snail darter and spotted owl, made figures of fun by Endangered Species Act foes? Animals and plants are threatened by development, resource extraction and many other human activities -- not to mention pollution -- but these activities have their advocates in Congress. To weaken the law, these legislators seek to interject economic and political criteria into the scientific ones that are used to formulate Endangered Species Act policy.

Now new legislation -- the protective-sounding Threatened and Endangered Species Recovery Act, of 2005 -- would impose a bureaucratic overlay to reduce the effectiveness of the Endangered Species Act.

The chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Fisheries, Wildlife and Water is Lincoln Chafee, with one of the strongest pro-environment voting records. But he will be under pressure to produce a "compromise" bill. He should resist all such pressure.

To defend America's wildlife, the Endangered Species Act must stand.