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I never said that there was zero extinction. I said that environmentalists had greatly exaggerated the problem. Many environmentalists had claimed that we were losing 40,000 species a year.
It turned out that they got their number from a guy who said, in 1975, that we would lose a million species over the next 25 years. He had picked the number out of thin air, with no scietific basis to back it up. The doomsayers swallowed it up.
The Endangered Species Act hasn't saved more than a few spcies, if even that. Most species that were saved were saved because of private attempts at preservation by private grups like the Nature Conservancy, doing it on their own private land.
In fact, the Endangered Species Act has been harmful. If a landowner finds an endangered animal on his land, then, because he doesn't want the government to take control of his land, he will often kill the animal, and bury it.
If you do a google search of the following, you will see many stories of the unintended consequences of the Engangered Species Act:
endangered species act shoot shovel shut up
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=endangered+species+act+ shoot+shovel+shut+up&btnG=Google+Search
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