A POLITICAL, moral and biological debate has been raging in the US about the fate of the endangered flower-loving fly found in the dunes of Delhi sands in Colton, California. Saving the fly would effectively mean halting progress, loss of money and jobs. The fast shrinking habitat of the fly is slated to become an industrial enterprise and is already surrounded by a cement quarry, a petroleum tank farm and a sewage plant.

Pro-development groups in Congress have been lobbying hard to get the Endangered Species Act diluted. But conservationists like Michael Bean, head of the wildlife programme for the Environmental Defense Fund in Washington, feel that "those who want to weaken the act have long looked for a situation to pit a species with little popular appeal against some worthy project".