Transcript TAKS Remediation Lesson #1

Supporting standards comprise
35% of the U. S. History Test
14 (B)
Supporting Standard (14)
The student understands the relationship between
population growth & modernization on the
physical environment.
The Student is expected to:
(B) Identify the roles of governmental entities &
private citizens in managing the environment
such as the establishment of the National Park
System, the Environmental Protection Agency
(EPA), & the Endangered Species Act
Supporting Standard (14)
The student understands the relationship between
population growth & modernization on the
physical environment.
The Student is expected to:
(B) 1 Identify the roles of governmental entities
& private citizens in managing the environment
such as the establishment of the National Park
System
The National Park Service (NPS) is an agency of the
U. S. federal government that manages all national
parks, many national monuments, and other
conservation and historical properties with various
title designations. It was created on August 25, 1916,
by Congress through the National Park Service
Organic Act. It is an agency of the Department of
Interior. Most of the direct management of the NPS
is delegated by the Secretary of the Interior to the
National Park Service Director, who must be
confirmed by the Senate. The 21,989 employees of
the NPS oversee 401 units, of which 59 are
designated national parks.
In 1916, a portfolio of nine major parks was
published to generate interest. Printed on each
brochure was a map showing the parks and
principal railroad connections. On August 25, 1916,
President Woodrow Wilson signed a bill that
mandated the agency “to conserve the scenery and
the natural and historic objects and wildlife therein,
and to provide for the enjoyment of the same in
such manner and by such means as will leave them
unimpaired for the enjoyment of future
generations.” Mather became the first director of
the newly formed NPS.
On March 3, 1933, President Hoover signed the
Reorganization Act of 1933. The act would allow the
President to reorganize the executive branch of the United
States government. It wasn’t until later that summer when
the new President, Franklin Roosevelt, made use of this
power. Deputy Director Horace M. Albright had suggested
to President Roosevelt that the historic sites from the
American Civil War should be managed by the National
Park Service, rather than the War Department. President
Roosevelt agreed and issued two Executive orders to make
it happen. These two executive orders not only transferred
to the National Park Service all the War Department
historic sites, but also the national monuments managed by
the Department of Agriculture and the parks in and
around the capital, which had been run by an independent
office.
In 1951, Conrad Wirth became director of the
National Park Service and went to work on
bringing park facilities up to the standards that the
public expected. The demand for parks after the
end of the World War II had left the parks
overburdened with demands that could not be met.
In 1952, with the support of President Eisenhower,
he began Mission 66, a ten-year effort to upgrade
and expand park facilities for the 50th anniversary
of the Park Service. New parks were added to
preserve unique resources and existing park
facilities were upgraded and expanded.
In 1966, as the Park Service turned 50 years old, emphasis
began to turn from just saving great and wonderful scenery
and unique natural features to making parks accessible to
the public. By the end of the Twentieth Century, numerous
National Heritage Areas were spread across the nation,
preserving local parks for local people. Since its inception
in 1916, the National Park Service has managed each of the
United States’ national parks, which have grown in number
over the years to 59. Yellowstone National Park was the
first national park in the United States. In 1872, there was
no state government to manage it, so the federal
government assumed direct control. Yosemite National
Park began as a state park; the land for the park was
donated by the federal government to the state of
California in 1864 for perpetual conservation. Yosemite
was later returned to federal ownership.
A potential park should meet all four
of the following standards:
1. It is an outstanding example of a particular type
of resource.
2. It possesses exceptional value or quality in
illustrating or interpreting the natural or cultural
themes of our Nation’s heritage.
3. It offers superlative opportunities for recreation,
for public use and enjoyment, or for scientific study.
4. It retains a high degree of integrity as a true,
accurate, and relatively unspoiled example of the
resource.
Supporting Standard (14)
The student understands the relationship between
population growth & modernization on the
physical environment.
The Student is expected to:
(B) 2 Identify the roles of governmental entities
& private citizens in managing the environment
such as the establishment of the Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA)
The United States Environmental Protection Agency
(EPA or sometimes USEPA) is an agency of the U.S.
federal government which was created for the purpose
of protecting human health and the environment by
writing and enforcing regulations based on laws passed
by Congress. The EPA was proposed by President
Richard Nixon and began operation on December 2,
1970, after Nixon signed an executive order. The order
establishing the EPA was ratified by committee
hearings in the House and Senate. The agency is led by
its Administrator, who is appointed by the president
and approved by Congress. The current administrator
is Gina McCarthy. The EPA is not a Cabinet
department, but the administrator is normally given
cabinet rank.
The EPA has its headquarters in Washington, D.C.,
regional offices for each of the agency’s ten regions,
and 27 laboratories. The agency conducts
environmental assessment, research, and education. It
has the responsibility of maintaining and enforcing
national standards under a variety of environmental
laws, in consultation with state, tribal, and local
governments. It delegates some permitting, monitoring,
and enforcement responsibility to U.S. states and the
federal recognized tribes. EPA enforcement powers
include fines, sanctions, and other measures. The
agency also works with industries and all levels of
government in a wide variety of voluntary pollution
prevention programs and energy conservation efforts.
The agency has approximately 17,000
full-time employees and engages
many more people on a contractual
basis. More than half of EPA human
resources are engineers, scientists,
and environmental protection
specialists; other groups include legal,
public affairs, financial, and
information technologists.
Beginning in the late 1950s and through the 1960s, Congress
reacted to increasing public concern about the impact that
human activity could have on the environment. A key legislative
option to address this concern was the declaration of a national
environmental policy. Advocates of this approach argued that
without a specific policy, federal agencies were neither able nor
inclined to consider the environmental impacts of their actions
in fulfilling the agency’s mission. The statute that ultimately
addressed this issue was the National Environmental Policy Act
of 1969. In 1970, President Richard Nixon proposed an
executive reorganization that would consolidate many of the
federal government’s environmental responsibilities under one
agency, a new Environmental Protection Agency. That
reorganization proposal was reviewed and passed by the House
and Senate.
The EPA began regulating greenhouse
gases (GHGs) from mobile and stationary
sources of air pollution under the Clean Air
Act (CAA) for the first time on January 2,
2011. Standards for mobile sources have
been established pursuant to Section 202 of
the CAA, and GHGs from stationary
sources are controlled under the authority
of Part C of Title I of the Act. See the page
Regulation of Greenhouse Gases Under the
Clean Air Act for further information.
Supporting Standard (14)
The student understands the relationship between
population growth & modernization on the
physical environment.
The Student is expected to:
(B) 3 Identify the roles of governmental entities
& private citizens in managing the environment
such as the establishment of the Endangered
Species Act
The Endangered Species Act of 1973 is one of the
dozens of U. S. environmental laws passed in the 1970s.
Signed into law by President Nixon on December 28,
1973, it was designed to protect critically imperiled
species from extinction as a “consequence of economic
growth and development untempered by adequate
concern and conservation.” The
The Supreme
Supreme Court
Court found
found
that “the plain intent of Congress in enacting” the ESA
halt and
and reverse
reverse the
the trend
trend toward
toward species
species
“was to halt
extinction, whatever
whatever the
the cost.”
cost.” The Act is administered
extinction,
by two federal agencies, the U. S. Fish & Wildlife
Service (FWS) and the National Oceanic &
Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
The ESA’s primary goal is to
prevent the extinction of
imperiled plant and animal life,
and secondly, to recover and
maintain those populations by
removing or lessening threats to
their survival.
Listing status and its
abbreviations used in
Federal Register and
by federal agencies
like FWS:
E = endangered—any species which is in danger of extinction throughout all or a significant
portion of its range other than a species of the Class Insecta determined by the Secretary to
constitute a pest.
T = threatened—any species which is likely to become an endangered species within the
foreseeable future throughout all or a significant portion of its range
Other categories:
C = candidate—a species under consideration for official listing
E(S/A), T(S/A)—endangered or threatened due to similarity of appearance—a species not
endangered or threatened, but so closely resembles in appearance a species which has been
listed as endangered or threatened, that enforcement personnel would have substantial
difficulty in attempting to differentiate between the listed and unlisted species.
XE, XN = experimental essential or non-essential population—any population (including
eggs, propagules, or individuals) of an endangered species or a threatened species released
outside the current range under authorization of the Secretary. Experimental, nonessential
populations of endangered species are treated as threatened species on public land, for
consultation purposes, and as species proposed for listing on private land.
The near-extinction of the bison and the
disappearance of the passenger pigeon
helped drive the call for wildlife
conservation starting in the 1900s.
Ornithologist George Bird Grinnell wrote
articles on the subject in the magazine
Forest and Stream, while Joel Asaph Allen,
founder of the American Ornithologists’
Union, hammered away in the popular
press. The public was introduced to a new
concept: extinction.
One species in particular received widespread
attention—the Whooping Crane. The species' historical
range extended from central Canada south to Mexico,
and from Utah to the Atlantic coast. Unregulated
hunting and habitat loss contributed to a steady decline
in the Whooping Crane population until, by 1890, it
had disappeared from its primary breeding range in
the north central United States. It would be another
eight years before the first national law regulating
wildlife commerce was signed, and another two years
before the first version of the endangered species act
was passed. The Whooping Crane population by 1941
was estimated at about only 16 birds still in the wild.
The predecessor of the ESA was the Endangered Species
Preservation Act of 1966. Passed by Congress, this act
permitted the listing of native U.S animal species as
endangered and for limited protections upon those animals.
It authorized the Secretary of the Interior to list
endangered domestic fish and wildlife and allowed the
United States Fish and Wildlife Service to spend up to $15
million per year to buy habitats for listed species. It also
directed federal land agencies to preserve habitat on their
lands. The Act also consolidated and even expanded
authority for the Secretary of the Interior to manage and
administer the National Wildlife Refuge System. Other
public agencies were encouraged, but not required, to
protect species. The act did not address the commerce in
endangered species and parts.
The Endangered Species Conservation Act, passed
in December 1969, amended the original law to
provide additional protection to species in danger of
“worldwide extinction” by
by prohibiting
prohibiting their
their
importation and subsequent sale in the United
States. It expanded the Lacey Act’s ban on
interstate commerce to include mammals, reptiles,
amphibians, mollusks and crustaceans. Reptiles
were added mainly to reduce the rampant poaching
of alligators and crocodiles. This law was the first
time that invertebrates were included for
protection.
President Nixon declared current species conservation
efforts to be inadequate and called on the 93rd U. S.
Congress to pass comprehensive endangered species
legislation. Congress responded with a completely rewritten
law, the Endangered Species Act of 1973 which was signed
by Nixon on December 28, 1973. It was written by a team
of lawyers and scientists, including the first appointed head
of the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ),an
outgrowth of NEPA (The “National Environmental Policy
Act of 1969”). The stated purpose
purpose of
of the
the Endangered
Endangered
Species Act is to protect species and also “the ecosystems
upon which they depend.” California
California historian
historian Kevin
Kevin Starr
Starr
was more emphatic when he said: “The Endangered
Endangered
Species Act of 1982 is the Magna Carta of the
environmental movement.”
environmental
movement.”
Effectiveness
As of September 2012, fifty-six species have been
delisted; twenty-eight due to recovery, ten due to
extinction (seven of which are believed to have been
extinct prior to being listed), ten due to changes in
taxonomic classification practices, six due to
discovery of new populations, one due to an error in
the listing rule, and one due to an amendment to the
Endangered Species Act specifically requiring the
species delisting. Twenty-five others have been
down listed from “endangered” to “threatened”
status.
Appendix—Endangered
animals
Species which increased in population size since being placed on the
endangered list include:
Bald Eagle (increased from 417 to 11,040 pairs between 1963 and 2007);
removed from list 2007
Whooping Crane (increased from 54 to 436 birds between 1967 and 2003)
Kirtland's Warbler (increased from 210 to 1,415 pairs between 1971 and
2005)
Peregrine Falcon (increased from 324 to 1,700 pairs between 1975 and
2000); removed from list
Gray Wolf (populations increased dramatically in the Northern Rockies,
Southwest, and Great Lakes)
Gray Whale (increased from 13,095 to 26,635 whales between 1968 and
1998); removed from list (Debated because whaling was banned before the
ESA was set in place and that the ESA had nothing to do with the natural
population increase since the cease of massive whaling [excluding Native
American tribal whaling])
Appendix—Endangered
animals (ctd.)
Grizzly bear (increased from about 271 to over 580 bears in the
Yellowstone area between 1975 and 2005); removed from list 3/22/07
California’s Southern Sea Otter (increased from 1,789 in 1976 to
2,735 in 2005)
San Clemente Indian Paintbrush (increased from 500 plants in 1979
to more than 3,500 in 1997)
Red Wolf (increased from 17 in 1980 to 257 in 2003)
Florida's Key Deer (increased from 200 in 1971 to 750 in 2001)
Big Bend Gambusia (increased from a couple dozen to a population
of over 50,000)
Hawaiian Goose (increased from 400 birds in 1980 to 1,275 in 2003)
Virginia Big-Eared Bat (increased from 3,500 in 1979 to 18,442 in
2004)
Black-Footed Ferret (increased from 18 in 1986 to 600 in 2006)
Fini