>> I have been thinking a lot about the successes of the
>>Endangered Species Act lately. Specifically, I've wondered what
>>the overall impact of the ban on DDT is.

>Someone help me here... I thought that DDT had been banned by Executive
>Order (during the Nixon administration?) and was *not* a result of the ESA.

> Jon. Anderson

Which ESA? The first was passed in 1966, and of course there was
a separate Eagle Protection Act which preceeded the 1973 improved
ESA.

Having said that, I think you're right that the DDT ban preceeded
any formal ESA stuff, and indeed it was the history of the DDT situation
that provided some motivation for passage of a strong ESA. DDT
awakened a lot of people to the fact that pesticide use can have
very subtle side effects, in ways that no one would ever think
of testing for (who'd have thought that a pesticide could interfere
with a bird's ovary's ability to coat an egg with calcium?)


-Don Baccus-