A Tale of Two Cranes: Lessons Learned from 50 Years of the Endangered Species Act

The Endangered Species Act was passed in 1973 to start a conservation revolution, but many recovery efforts are failing or stagnating. The Fish and Wildlife Service is at a crossroads, with two case studies of cranes showing different approaches: habitat protection in the US and direct population survival in Japan. The Japanese approach has been more successful, but challenges such as budget constraints, public inattention, and setbacks will test traditional thinking on endangered species management.

Format: Hardback
Length: 288 pages
Publication date: 15 October 2023
Publisher: Prometheus Books

Fifty years have passed since the United States attempted a conservation revolution with the passage of the Endangered Species Act in 1973. Now, fifty years later, the Fish and Wildlife Service finds itself at a crossroads: some recovery efforts are succeeding, but too many are either failing or stuck in neutral, even after decades of work.

Take, for example, the story of two cranes, the whooping crane of southeastern Texas and the red-crowned crane of northern Japan. Both were pushed to the brink of extinction by the early 1900s, with surviving populations numbering as few as 20 to 40 individuals, and are now the subjects of concerted recovery efforts led by advanced national governments. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has focused mainly on habitat protection, while at Japan's Ministry of the Environment, conservation authorities have leaned most heavily on direct population survival via a long-standing winter feeding program. These two case studies provide a template for comparing different approaches towards endangered species: habitat management vs. population management. Thus far, the Japanese approach has proved more successful, but the story is not over yet. What can these lessons teach us about managing other endangered species? Can species rehabilitation be standardized, or must each effort be designed and implemented on a case-by-case basis?

A Tale of Two Cranes will serve as a launching pad for better understanding the progress and pitfalls inherent in endangered species management, through fifty years of lessons learned since the landmark Endangered Species Act was enacted by the United States Congress in December 1973. Also considering its success stories, like the Attwaters prairie chicken, the ESA has had an enormous impact on conservation theory and practice.

Weight: 676g
Dimension: 231 x 159 x 27 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781633887626