Good insight into the Endangered Species Act and how humans are affected by species richness lose.

I had this book for a conservation class and this was the first required, or recommended, book for a class that I have had and enjoyed. it is interesting and I learned a lot about political background behind conservation and endangered species. we used it to have a lot of discussions about the topics. I could see myself reading this again in the future.

This book is a great read for anyone!

A strong beginning with many interesting examples of the wins and losses in the implementation of the endangered species act. About 3/4 of the way through, there is a transition to the discovery and use of bacteria for developing medicines. A strange transition that I had some trouble following. And considering that human over-population it the root cause of species depletion, a focus on saving human lives seems particularly out of place.

The title of this review sumerizes the four stars I give it and it's great on background detail....BUT, I found it's sollutions offered for preventing extinction and it's critique of the law, as written and "functioning" and suggestion for improving it either disappointing and unimaginative or completely lacking...While it gives great insight into the pollitically basturdizing process through which even laws with th best of intentions are strained, I really expected the author to at least try proposing ammendments that might better pollish the enablement process...expectation unfullfilled...And the "what to do" list was disappointingly incomplete and non-inclusive, being primarily focused on the governmental and academeic and zoological refuge/zoo-exclusive repopulation aproaches, and totally ignoring how to envolve the interested public, lay-hobbyist and private/captive breeders who could take up the professional understaffing and funding shortfalls and fluctuations caused by political ignorance, greed, special-interest and expedient short-sightedness.This book IS good, as far as it went...it just didn't live up to all I'd hoped to see it address in terms of innovatively citizen-involving solutions...