An outdoors enthusiast and broadcaster comes to Iowa today (Tuesday) to plug the Endangered Species Act. Tony Dean’s host of a regional outdoor TV program, and says the law aimed at protecting rare birds and animals is no barrier to hunting and fishing.

Dean says hunters have always been conservationists. He says there’s a threat today to the Endangered Species Act signed back in 1972 by President Nixon. and says the fact that some wildlife is endangered signals that even today there’s “something missing out there.”

A revised edition Dean says “essentially guts the Endangered Species Act” has made its way through the house, though he doesn’t think it’ll make it through the U.S. Senate. He wants Iowans to contact their lawmakers in Washington and tell them we need the Endangered Species Act in place.

Dean says everything in the outdoors is related, and gives as an example the black-footed ferret, native to his home state of South Dakota. The ferret eats prairie dogs. Dean says there’s “immense pressure” to get rid of all the prairie dogs, but he points out a lot of things depend on the little animals as food, including coyotes and the once-threatened swift fox and bird predators. “Everything in the outdoors is related,” he says, “and if you remove any of those pieces, the rest fall like dominoes.”

Savings endangered species isn’t just about people, or hunters, or saving a place for hunting, he says, “It’s about saving a natural world
for our kids and our grandkids.” Dean appears in Des Moines (at 11 AM at the Hotel Fort Des Moines) today (Tuesday) to talk about protecting species, habitat and a way of life in the Midwest.