Legislations that Save Animals

September 20th, 2011

The most crucial of all concerns today are the protection of endangered species. Many animal species are now on the verge of getting extinct because of changing climate, over hunting, cutting down of forest, urbanization and similar human activities.  The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has calculated the percentage of endangered species as 40 percent of all organisms based on the sample of species that have been evaluated through 2006.

The need was felt, although pretty late, and a number of legislations were passed for the protection of endangered species. One such legislation which was passed for the protection of endangered species was the Endangered Species Preservation Act, 1966. According to this law the Departments of Interior, Agriculture, and Defence were required “to seek to protect only native animal species, and insofar as consistent with their primary purposes, preserve the habitats of such species allowed listing of species as endangered and provided limited means for the protection of species so listed.”

After only three years, one more legislation was passed in 1969 known as The Endangered Species Conservation Act, 1969. This was passed with the aim of providing additional protection to species in danger of “worldwide extinction”. According to this law, importation and subsequent sale of any listed endangered species was prohibited within the U.S.

In 1973, Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) was signed in Washington that put a restriction on the trade and commerce of those plant and animal species that were believed to be harmed by the trade activities. In the same year the Endangered Species Act, 1973 was passed. ESA is administered by the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) under regulations found in 50 Code of Federal Regulations and is considered to be one of the most effective laws protecting and governing the endangered species. The act classifies species as either endangered or threatened. It defines an endangered species as one “in danger of extinction throughout all or a significant portion of its range”. A threatened species is one that is “likely to become an endangered species within the foreseeable future throughout all or a significant portion of its range”. A very recent and detailed list of endangered and threatened animal and plant species is provided in the Code of Federal Regulations. The code listed approximately 1,260 endangered and threatened species (up from 1,000 in 1996) when it was last checked in 2003. But this law broke some new grounds and between the years of 1995 and 2002, 12 species were removed from the list.

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