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try captive breeding.Because no female sparrows had been known to exist after 1976, his approach called for breeding the remaining males with females from a closely related subspecies.Continuing this process would mean the sixth generation would be 98.4 percent pure.After successfully breeding a first generation of healthy, fertile hybrids, Kale contacted the service for permission to proceed with his breeding project.’A new legal opinion said that the Endangered Species Act covered pure species only, and that federal money therefore could not be spent on hybrids.Several years elapsed without federal approval, but Kale remained dedicated to his task of saving the dusky.He arranged to work with curators at Walt Disney World’s Discovery Island, with Disney picking up the tab.Finally, after two years of bureaucratic delays, another legal opinion allowed Kale to proceed.Unfortunately, nothing went right.Old age, incompatible pairings, failed nesting, and a series of accidents led to extinction of the sparrow.Kale was bitter about the precious time that the project had lost due to bureaucratic bungling and lack of dedication.The service had paid lots of money for habitat that it had not managed properly.Such a position ignores the importance of entrepreneurship in generating new approaches to problems.Unfortunately, the Fish and Wildlife Service hampered the innovative effort of Herbert Kale to save the dusky seaside sparrow.Given the fiscal constraints on federal agencies, some environmental entrepreneurship is certainly called for.To make matters worse, government subsidies provide another source of perverse incentives.These