Push to Weaken U.S. Endangered Species Act Runs into Roadblocks
I&#x27;m going to live a little dangerously here, partly because I have a job in mining, partly because of who I am.<p>I don&#x27;t have the foggiest idea why it is important to protect endangered species in and of itself, and I don&#x27;t think there is a good reasons to.<p>Famously, pretty much every species that has ever existed has gone extinct. Every organisation, formation, species or what have you will, statistically, some day no longer be. The nature of time is to bring change. We can&#x27;t preserve everything anyway, and there is nothing to be proud of in keeping a dying species in the world.<p>I can understand requiring extractive companies to restore land after they use it to something that isn&#x27;t hostile to life, but I don&#x27;t understand why the fact that the near-extinct colour-crested-hopping-possum is endangered should impede human progress. We need to face up to the fact that human endeavor is more important than animals and that being rare does not make a species somehow important. It certainly shouldn&#x27;t be a cover for NIMBY types to shut down mining activity.