Protecting Wild Animal Abundance
Americans today encounter billions fewer wild animals than their grandparents did. These ongoing losses affect an enormous array of interests, including billions of dollars in costs to agriculture, tourism, and land management, as well as lost wildlife encounters.
Dramatic declines in wild animal abundance reveal a blind spot in American law: In general, environmental law does not aim to protect the “supply” of wild animals we think of as common. Because scientists have only recently begun to appreciate the scale of common animal loss, the phenomenon has received comparatively little attention from legal scholars.
This article sets forth the problem of diminishing wild animal abundance. It documents the phenomenon’s scope and magnitude and argues that the law should seek to combat such losses. Losing common animals thwarts the goals underlying myriad environmental statutes. Wild animal abundance serves economic, cultural, and aesthetic interests. Moreover, valuing abundance aligns with emerging movements that assign intrinsic value to nature and individual animals.
Having established that the law should change to protect wild animal abundance, this article next tackles how. In the near term, legislative and regulatory changes to the operation of statutes such as the Endangered Species Act, Migratory Bird Treaty Act, and National Environmental Policy Act could serve to protect wild animal abundance. In the long term, the law must change to better monitor wildlife, reconceptualize human-occupied areas as multispecies spaces, and enable positive interventions in nature.
About the Public Law Workshop
Michigan’s Public Law Workshop provides an opportunity for faculty and students from across the University to enjoy weekly presentations by leading scholars producing current work on topics ranging from constitutional law and administrative law to international law, statutory interpretation and beyond. Professors Julian Mortenson and Rachel Rothschild organize the workshop. If you would like to receive workshop announcements, please contact Jenny Rickard ([email protected]) and ask to have your name added to the workshop’s email list.