Listed

Front Cover
Harvard University Press, Sep 15, 2011 - Nature - 360 pages
Main description: The first listed species to make headlines after the Endangered Species Act was passed in 1973 was the snail darter, a three-inch fish that stood in the way of a massive dam on the Little Tennessee River. When the Supreme Court sided with the darter, Congress changed the rules. The dam was built, the river stopped flowing, and the snail darter went extinct on the Little Tennessee, though it survived in other waterways. A young Al Gore voted for the dam; freshman congressman Newt Gingrich voted for the fish. A lot has changed since the 1970s, and Joe Roman helps us understand why we should all be happy that this sweeping law is alive and well today. More than a general history of endangered species protection, Listed is a tale of threatened species in the wild-from the whooping crane and North Atlantic right whale to the purple bankclimber, a freshwater mussel tangled up in a water war with Atlanta-and the people working to save them. Employing methods from the new field of ecological economics, Roman challenges the widely held belief that protecting biodiversity is too costly. And with engaging directness, he explains how preserving biodiversity can help economies and communities thrive. Above all, he shows why the extinction of species matters to us personally-to our health and safety, our prosperity, and our joy in nature.
 

Contents

Boiling Spring
1
1 In the Name of the Darter
5
2 The Class of 67
16
3 Notes from the Vortex
24
4 The Endangered Species Act
49
5 A Handy Handle
63
6 Natural Capital
77
7 Magical Thinking
91
13 Raising Whales
194
14 Questing
211
15 The Hundred Acre Wood
234
16 In Which We Upset the Ethnobotanists
246
17 Water Wars
260
18 The Most Beautiful Sound
281
19 The Platinum Blonde and the Farm Girl
291
Extinctions in the House
312

8 Grand Experiments
100
9 The Panthers New Genes
117
10 Safe Harbor
138
11 Crying Wolves
152
12 Skating over Thin Ice
180
Notes
319
Acknowledgments
347
Index
349
Copyright

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About the author (2011)

Roman Joe : Joe Roman is a researcher at the University of Vermont, the author of Whale, and senior editor of the journal Solutions.