John Roberts' Dissent Regarding ESA Ruling

In his short term serving on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, John Roberts took a position on one ruling that makes me believe that he may be more reasonable than some liberals might make him out to be. In this particular case, Roberts wrote a dissent suggesting that the Endangered Species Act, at least as applied in a case concerning a California development project, was unconstitutional.
The ESA (Endangered Species Act) was put into law during the 1970's by Richard Nixon. That fact alone should lead one to believe there is more to the act than meets the eye. In reality, the ESA has little to do with the government trying to protect endangered species. It serves basically as a trump card for the government over private landowners concerning the use of their land.
Picture this. There is a river, and on both sides of the river there are spotted owls. Now, on one side of the river, owls are prevalent, outnumbering the owls from the opposite side of the river 10 to 1. On the other side of that river, where there are hardly any owls at all in comparison, the owls would be protected under the ESA. But on the side where owls are prevalent, no protection would exist. The owl would only be considered endangered on the one side of the river where there are fewer owls. So basically, the ESA protects the areas in which a species does not like to inhabit, but not the areas in which the species do like to inhabit. The Act has nothing to do with the general population of any species, just the population of the species in any one given area, whose size is not defined.
If a person were to buy a piece of land and any species protected by the ESA was found to inhabit that land, the federal government would be able to overrule any local zoning enabling that person to build anything on that land.
Half of the species protected under the ESA are not even consedered to be endangered by the scientific community. The ESA in general is a complete farce. Roberts' writing a dissent regarding this issue suggests that he isn't afraid to speak out on behalf of the average citizen when the law of the land violates his or her rights. (This particular case involved a real estate development company and not an individual citizen, but his dissent would apply to both.)