Endangered Species Act Essay

The Endangered Species Act, enacted in 1973, was put into place to protect the world’s wildlife, however it was built on the scientific knowledge of species from back then. With advancing technology and understanding, the Endangered Species Act, while it was great basis for protection for many years, it is time for it to be updated to fit the ever-changing world. As more research is conducted, it is being shown that keeping genetic diversity is more important to a species then just population size. Through genetic and ancestry sequencing a species and its hybrids may be defined and protected.
The Endangered Species Act was enacted in 1973 to protect the diminishing populations of certain wildlife. The document outlines five factors that could recognize a species as endangered, these include: Damage or destruction of habitat, disease or predation, the lack of existing protection, overuse of species for humanity’s progress, and any other natural factors that affect the continuation of the species. The government keeps a list of candidate species that have the possibility of needing protection, however, with the increasing number of species on that list only very severe cases make
This study shows how even though Red and Eastern wolves are their own species, due to genetic testing there is viable evidence of admixture and hybridization. Admixture is part of ecological and evolutionary process and allows for genetic variation through out species. Preservation of single species over another such as the Eastern Wolf and the Gray Wolf, is more detrimental because it does not allow for evolutionary process because it bottle necks species, which causes them to lose genetic variance. Endangered Species Act should allow for evolution and natural selection to work so that species may adapt to the ever-encroaching invasion of