For three decades, one piece of legislation has been responsible more than any other for protecting land that serves as a habitat for threatened species of plants and animals in the United States. The 1973 Endangered Species Act sought to help ensure the survival of diminishing species by preserving their habitat and aiding the development of science-based ‘recovery plans’ for their survival. Since its enactment, the act has created and maintained unprecedented natural laboratories for ecologists, and has become a widely admired model for conservation laws worldwide.

As Congress convenes this week, an effort will be made, under the guise of ‘reform’, to weaken the act. In the final two years of George Bush's presidency, with Republican majorities in the House and Senate, parties that have sought for years to weaken the act — including the mining, oil and logging industries, and property developers — see this as their best chance.

Drafts have been circulating of a proposed revision to the act that would give political appointees in the Department of the Interior far more discretion than they currently enjoy over how the act is exercised. Republican supporters of the bill seek to have it introduced by a Democrat so that the measure will appear bipartisan. But what is really needed is a show of bipartisan support for the existing law.

Scientific societies and universities need to become involved in this debate now, before the progress that has been made in conservation biology under the act is itself endangered.

If the ivory-billed woodpecker has indeed re-emerged, it has done so in large part because of the Endangered Species Act.

The recent apparent rediscovery of the ivory-billed woodpecker in remnants of an old hardwood forest in Arkansas (see Ornithology: A wing and a prayer ) has amply demonstrated the value of the current law. As much as sixty years ago, ecologists were urging the protection of a forest in Louisiana, where what were thought to be the last of the statuesque woodpeckers were known to survive. But the calls were ignored, the forest was chopped, and the ivory-billed woodpeckers disappeared. Such an event would probably have been prevented by the Endangered Species Act. If the ivory-billed woodpecker has indeed re-emerged, it has done so in large part because the act protected the habitat of other threatened species.

Everyone loves a rare exotic bird, and the Bush administration has directed some $10 million specifically towards the habitat and recovery of the ivory-billed woodpecker. But the best way of ensuring the survival of threatened species is through the solid legislative framework that the Endangered Species Act provides, not through single-species projects generated at the whim of politicians. The best outcome for ecology is that the current law be left alone.