Katrina Wyman has penned a bold, provocative, and innovative critique of the capability of the Endangered Species Act (ESA or Act) to meet the challenges of an increasingly human-dominated world. Bold because the ESA, perhaps more than any other environmental law, has impassioned champions who disfavor dissent. It is no easy task to critique a law with the truly noble mission to preserve life other than our own, particularly when the law's basic premise is that the mission's success is critically dependent on abundant and altruistic actions by us. Provocative because the author asks us to acknowledge that we cannot achieve that lofty mission through the ESA in its present form. Innovative because the author asks us to consider recasting that mission in terms both more modest (reduce automatic goal of recovery for each listed species) and more ample (protect biodiversity, not just specific species) and explore novel ways to contribute to the mission's success both within and beyond the confines of the ESA.

Anyone who assumes such a difficult task will surely draw doubts from kibitzers. Here is one such kibitzer and a few such doubts.

To summarize this Comment, I believe that Wyman has provided the right diagnosis, but not necessarily the right remedies. Our expectations for the ESA must be reduced even as we pursue biodiversity protection, but once reduced may be accommodated in large measure without the radical surgery on, and search for new legal authority beyond, the ESA suggested by the author. Indeed, certain remedies drawn largely from the existing text of the ESA may be more politically palatable and less costly, and therefore more achievable, even if they do not accomplish the degree of biodiversity protection most desired.