Endangered Species Act

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The Endangered Species Act (7 U.S.C. § 136, 16 U.S.C. § 1531 et seq.) of 1973 or ESA was the most wide-ranging of dozens of United States environmental laws passed in the 1970s in an attempt to halt or reverse the degradation of the environment. The act is designed to protect critically imperiled species from extinction due to "the consequences of economic growth and development untempered by adequate concern and conservation.

Contents

[edit] History

The United States Congress passed its first legislation to protect endangered vertebrates in 1966 and expanded the law again in 1969.

In 1973 Congress expanded both the scope and power of species protection by creating the Endangered Species Act. The stated purpose of the Act is not only to protect species, but also "the ecosystems upon which they depend." The Act protects all imperiled plants and animals, while previously laws protected only vertebrates. It forbids Federal Agencies from authorizing, funding or carrying out actions which may jeopardize endangered species. It forbids any government agency, corporation, or citizen from taking (i.e. harming or killing) endangered animals without a permit. At the ecosystem level, the Act requires that endangered species be granted "critical habitats" which encompass all areas necessary for their recovery. Federal agencies are forbidden from authorizing, funding, or carrying out any action which "destroys or adversely modifies" a critical habitat area.

ESA is administered by two federal agencies, the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) and NOAA Fisheries (formerly the National Marine Fisheries Service NMFS). NOAA Fisheries handles marine species, and the FWS has responsibility over freshwater fish and all other species. Species that occur in both habitats (e.g. sea turtles and Atlantic sturgeon) are jointly managed.

The Act was passed in the wake of a 1973 conference in Washington DC that led to the signing of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), which restricted international commerce in plant and animal species believed to be actually or potentially harmed by trade.

The Act contains a citizen suit clause, which allows citizens to sue the government to enforce the law. The first major legal challenge was over the Tennessee Valley Authority's Tellico Dam and Tellico Reservoir, which threatened to extirpate the snail darter fish. See snail darter controversy for more information.

[edit] Listing

A species can be listed in two ways. The first is for the FWS or NOAA Fisheries to take the initiative and directly list the species. The second is via individual or organizational petition which prompts FWS or NMFS to conduct a scientific review. There are two categories on the list, endangered and threatened. Endangered species are closer to extinction than threatened species. A third status is that of "candidate species". Under this status, the FWS has concluded that listing is warranted but immediate listing is precluded due to other priorities (limited time, perhaps political pressure to delay listing). Candidate species are afforded no protection under the ESA.

The annual rate of listing (i.e. classifying species as "threatened" or "endangered") increased steadily from the Ford administration (15) through Carter (31), Reagan (32), Bush I (59), and Clinton (65), but declined under Bush II (8 per year as of 12/31/05). [1] The rate of listing is strongly correlated with citizen involvement and mandatory timelines: as agency discretion decreases and citizen involvement increases (i.e. filing of petitions and lawsuits) the rate of listing increases. [1] The recent decline in the listing rate has likely harmed species since the longer species are listed, the more likely they are to be classifed as recovering by the FWS. [2]

Many species have become extinct while on the candidate list or otherwise under consideration for listing; very few have become extinct while listed as threatened or endangered. [1]

[edit] Recovery Plans

FWS and NMFS are required to create a Recovery Plan outlining the goals, tasks required, likely costs, and estimated timeline to recover endangered species (i.e. increase their numbers and improve their management to the point where they can be removed from the endangered list).[3] The ESA does not specify when a recovery plan must be completed. The FWS has a policy specifying completion within three years of the species being listed, but the average time to completion is approximately six years. [1] The annual rate of recovery plan completion increased steadily from the Ford administration (4) through Carter (9), Reagan (30), Bush I (44), and Clinton (72), but declined under Bush II (16 per year as of 9/1/06).[1]

Recovery plans benefit species as indicated by the fact that the longer species have recovery plans, the more likely they are to be classified as improving.[2] The benefit, however, appears to be limited to single-species oriented plans; large multi-species, ecosystem-based plans are not correlated with improving status; perhaps due to their lack of specificity.[2]

[edit] How Well Does it Work?

There is debate on the effectiveness of the ESA. Defenders of the ESA argue that it has been enormously successful at preventing extinctions. Some argue that between 98-99% of species protected by the law have been preserved from extinction and that the United States would have experienced an order of magnitude more extinctions but for the protective provisions of the Endangered Species Act.

Critics of the ESA argue that the Act has not accomplished its stated goal--the recovery of endangered species. Since 1973, only 33 species have been delisted [citation needed], seven because they went extinct[citation needed] and 12 more because they should not have been listed in the first place [citation needed]. Six more may be cases of data error, which is certainly the case with the gray whale and American alligator. [citation needed] The brown pelican's and Arctic peregrine falcon's recoveries have far more to do with the ban on the insecticide DDT than with the Endangered Species Act [citation needed].

Critics of the ESA further contend that while The Endangered Species Act has not been a failure, it certainly has not been a success either. If ESA worked as intended, preservation should eventually demote those species on Endangered list to Threatened list, and eventually off Threatened list too. That, however, has not been the case.

One view on the performance of the ESA has been that private citizens often have to carry undue cost of protecting endangered species. When ESA was initially passed in 1970s, legislators felt that cost or revenue potential should not be a concern for preservation of endangered species. In essence, this meant that, if an endangered species was found in one's private land, one would not be able to use that land no matter how much revenues could be generated from using the land, for using the land destroys the habitat of an endangered species. Thus, ESA gives incentives to people to kill the endangered species if they find it on their land, before anybody else does. Commonly called the 'shoot, shovel and shutup' method. Therefore, Threatened species are usually escalated to Endangered list, and occasionally -- but fortunately, not often -- some are removed from Endangered list altogether because they become extinct[1].

Since the late 1980s and early 1990s, this phenomenon has been increasingly accepted by legislature [citation needed]. Changes to ESA, however, have not been made yet. A few natural resource economists have proposed that the government offer financial assistance to people whose land is a habitat of an endangered species. Such financial assistance is meant to compensate these individuals opportunity cost, for forgoing money they could have made by using the land, and thus to share the financial burden for preservation among many people[2]. Another option is to re-create equally habitable place for the species somewhere else if land is to be used. However, such reclamation of habitats are often opposed by environmentalists because any disturbance to a species' habitat is a threat to its livelihood.

[edit] See Also

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b c d e Greenwald, Noah, K. Suckling and M. Taylor (2006). “Factors affecting the rate and taxonomy of species listings under the U.S. Endangered Species Act”, D.D Goble, J.M. Scott and F.W. Davis: hundred-Conservation/dp/1597260096/sr=1-5/qid=1157181165/ref=sr_1_5/002-7239923-7571237?ie=UTF8&s=books The Endangered Species Act at 30: Vol. 1: Renewing the Conservation Promise. Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 50-67.
  2. ^ a b c Taylor, M. T., K. S. Suckling, and R. R. Rachlinski (2005). "The effectiveness of the Endangered Species Act: A quantitative analysis". BioScience 55 (4): 360-367.
  3. ^ The ESA does allow FWS and NMFS to forgoe a recovery plan by declaring it will not benefit the species, but this provision has rarely been invoked. It was most famously used to deny a recovery plan to the Northern spotted owl in 1991, but in 2006 the FWS changed course and announced it would complete a plan for the species.

[edit] External links

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