While histories of the Endangered Species Act of 1973 are abundant, there is little discussion concerning the role of science in the construction of the Act and particularly the contributions of the Committee on Rare and Endangered Wildlife Species. The Committee, by virtue of the organizational structure of the US Bureau of Sports Fisheries and Wildlife, was designated as the scientific authority on endangered wildlife and used that authority to develop endangered species science that was translated into policy culminating in the Act. This project explores this understudied and critical piece of science-policy and environmental history. The Committee's central role in developing the science of the Act is demonstrated by the committee's development of the criteria for listing that shaped the endangered species lists used in the implementation of the Act. The Committee was also involved in writing draft legislation of the Act and its predecessors.
This history of science project is largely intellectual, drawing on archival materials to trace the conceptual approach used by the Committee to create endangered species science and policy. However, the range of conceptual approaches open for discussion was importantly constrained by the institutional organization of the federal government at the time. This project offers a richer understanding of the historical development of an important and still highly influential piece of environmental legislation, particularly as it relates to the use of science in the development of policy. Furthermore, the current debates concerned with the role of biodiversity science in the creation of environmental policy represent a modern version of the science-policy interaction as it relates to species and extinction. The episode to be explored is a rich area of study for providing important insights concerning the ongoing interactions between science and society.
The Committee on Rare and Endangered Wildlife Species (CREWS) of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) made important and lasting contributions to one of the most significant pieces of environmental legislation in U.S. history: the Endangered Species Act of 1973 (ESA). CREWS was a prominent science-advisory body within the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) in the 1960s and 1970s, responsible for advising on the development of federal endangered-wildlife policy. The Committee took full advantage of its scientific and political authority by identifying a particular object of conservation—used in the development of the first U.S. list of endangered species—and establishing captive breeding as a primary conservation practice, both of which were written into the ESA and are employed in endangered-species listing and recovery to this day. Despite these important contributions to federal endangered-species practice and policy, CREWS has received little attention from historians of science or policy scholars. This project provides a detailed history of CREWS that draws on primary sources from the Smithsonian Institution (SI) Archives and a detailed analysis of the U.S. congressional record. The SI sources (including the records of the Bird and Mammal Laboratory, an FWS staffed research group stationed at the Smithsonian Institution) reveal the technical and political details of CREWS’s advisory work. The congressional record provides evidence showing significant contributions of CREWS and its advisors and supervisors to the legislative process that resulted in the inclusion of key CREWS-inspired concepts and practices in the ESA. The foundational concepts and practices of the CREWS’s research program drew from a number of areas currently of interest to several sub-disciplines that investigate the complex relationship between science and society. Among them are migratory bird conservation, systematics/taxonomy inspired by the synthesis between Darwinan biology and genetics, species-focused ecology, captive breeding, reintroduction, and species transplantation. This project describes the role played by CREWS in drawing these various threads together and codifying them as endangered-species policy in the ESA. In addition to these findings, this project provided a number of broader impacts including graduate training, undergraduate teaching modules presented as part of ASU's Center for Biology and Society science and society courses, and K-12 educational outreach materials avalible at http://askabiologist.asu.edu/explore/making-list.
