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Online Readings:

For class meeting on 3/16/04:

The Endangered Species Act and Its Critics

Note: No reaction paper this week, but the abstract and bibliography for your research paper is due! Several of these readings were handed out in class on 2 March 2004.

Steven Lewis Yaffee, "Why Preservation?," excerpt from Prohibitive Policy: Implementing the Endangered Species Act (1982), 17-31 [handout in class].
Charles C. Mann and Mark L. Plummer, "The Buttefly Problem," Atlantic Monthly (January 1992) [online reading]
T. H. Watkins, "What's Wrong with the Endangered Species Act?: Not Much--and Here's Why," Audubon 98 (January-February 1996), 38-40 [handout in class].
Bryan G. Norton, "The Moral Case for Saving Species," Defenders 73 (Summer 1998): 6-15 [handout in class].
Ernie Niemi and Ed Whitlaw with Elizabeth Grossman, "Bird of Doom. . . Or Was It?," The Amicus Journal 22 (Fall 2000): 19-25 [online reading]

For class meeting on 1/26/04:

We will be reading drafts from the first few chapters of my book, tentatively titled "The Specter of Extinction: A Deep History of the Endangered Species Act." This book provides a sweeping history of how naturalists have attempted to grapple with the problem of rare, vanshing, and lost species from the Age of Jefferson to the passage of the Endangered Species Acts of the 1960s and 1970s. We will be discussing the general ideas presented in the chapter in class. Remember--these are just first drafts of chapters for an ongoing project--so don't be afraid to read with a critical eye. I would be delighted to get your feedback about how well the narrative flows, how clear the writing is, and other things you notice as you read. I should also tell you that in the actual book, these three chapters will be preceeded by a general introduction.

The chapters and bibliography are stored below as PDF files, so you will need to download a copy of the Adobe Reader if you don't already have a copy on your computer. They are fairly large files, so they may take some time to download if you don't have a broadband connection. If you have trouble downloading them, I have also placed a copy on reserve that you can check out for two hour blocks. I should also tell you that the notes were created using EndNote, and I have not yet merged the chapter files with the bibliography, which accounts for the strange citation forms in the notes.

Below are the chapter links. Don't forget that the user I.D. and the password for accessing these chapters are printed near the top of the hard copy of your sylllabus that I passed out in the class. I look forward to our discussion!