(S 2899). The original Act prohibited any federal project from destroying the last remaining habitat of an endangered species. The vote is on the Stennis amendment to exempt from the Act any federal projects that was begun before the Act passed In 1973, or was now more than 50% complete. The amendment also gave the heads of federal agencies the authority to exempt their own projects. Environmentalists charged that this was like "putting the fox in charge of the hen house" and considered Stennis the key weakening amendment to the bill. They would have preferred to see no changes in the Act at all, but accepted the Culver-Baker Committee bill as offering a fair amount of protection for endangered species. The extinction of species has accelerated from one every 100 years in 1600, to one to twenty species lost each year in the 1970s. The Administration opposed the Stennis amendment. Rejected 22-76. July 18, 1978. No is the correct vote.