The Endangered Species Act…

The Endangered Species Act was/is weak, it is a pay to play system with no real protection for any species. If you have the money to compensate you can do what you want. Real protection/common sense is needed. I've seen developments put up were they destroy habitat and compensate right across the street and try to create suitable habitat. Why would they have not just built across the street where they would of needed no compensation....this is not isolated situation, i am a biologist and I deal with this everyday.
Other than the lack of teeth the act is fine, the problem is it is constricting to development so super unpopular among the rich. More restrictions are needed for the super sensitive species (ginseng....habitat destruction ...rare plant) while less is needed for others (butternut....uncontrollable fungus....abundant plant) which I find they have balanced very well. I would just leave it, any changes that are proposed only favor developers and people will recognize that and not like it. I've have never actually seen any project stopped by any species, so using economic development as a tool to try and argue to lighten some rules seams crazy, it is just making it cheaper for the rich to get richer.
So in conclusion i guess the only thing that can be done is to make it even more expensive to eliminate species, so even the rich won't (I know still a pay to play system), and add know species locations to official plans so during early planning they can be identified to better lessen the economic impact (you got a developer looking for land you can now direct him to land that may be better suited with less regulations). Or better yet save us all some money and don't touch it, unless you abolishing the entire act, a review and a few changes won't bring in any savings. Probably just bring us some kind of terrible re branding program like the liberals did (when was forestry not part of natural resources?)