Once you finish reading Lowell Baier’s monumental new book The Codex of the Endangered Species Act; Volume I – The First Fifty Years, you’ll likely have found yourself completely caught-up in the story and will be asking “But what happens next?” Fear not, my intrepid conservation history reader, for unlike many popular works that leave their readers begging for the sequel to make its appearance, Mr. Baier and his publisher Rowman & Littlefield have already brought out the next volume: The Codex of the Endangered Species Act; Volume II – The Next Fifty Years.
In this forward-looking continuation of the comprehensive history and evaluation of the Act, the focus turns toward what comes next. Joining Mr. Baier as a co-editor is Prof. John F. Organ, Chief of the Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Units and Senior Science Advisor for Cooperative Research for the U.S. Geological Survey. Together they gathered a multi-disciplinary team of some of the top people across multiple fields in order to “interpret and propose legislative and administrative changes to prepare the ESA for future challenges [and] explore regulations on avoiding harm to and producing benefits for species, cooperation between state and federal agencies, scientific analyses, and the necessary politics to enact their ideas.”
It should go without saying that anyone who has read the first volume owes it to him or herself to plunge into this second one in order to discover what the future could hold for the Act in the face of the demands expected to be made upon it. Furthermore, it should also not need to be said that taken together this two volume set should be de rigueur reading for all who possess a professional standing or at least a serious interest in the subjects of wildlife or plant conservation, environmental law, wildlife management, or conservation biology.
