WASHINGTON - The Obama administration has denied Endangered Species Act protection to 251 plants and animals that government scientists have said need those protections to avoid extinction. Instead, the administration has placed them indefinitely on a list of “candidate” species, where many have already languished for years without help.
“The Obama administration has no sense of urgency when it comes to protecting imperiled plants and animals,” said Kieran Suckling, executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity. “With extinction looming, imperiled species need more than promises of hope and change. They need real protection, and they need it now.”
So far, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service under the Obama administration has provided Endangered Species Act protection to just 51 plants and animals, and only one of those occurs in the continental United States. By comparison, the Clinton administration protected 522 species; the George H.W. Bush administration protected 231. The average annual rate for the Obama administration is 26, while for the Clinton administration it was 65 and for the first Bush administration it was 58.
“The Obama administration has been abysmal when it comes to protecting our most vulnerable plants and animals,” Suckling said. “The Endangered Species Act can save these 251 species, but only if they are granted protection.”
Many of the “candidate” species have been waiting for protection for decades, including the white fringeless orchid, which has been on the waiting list for 30 years, and the eastern massasauga rattlesnake, which has been a candidate for 25 years.
Delays have real consequences. At least 24 species have gone extinct after being designated a candidate for protection, including the Louisiana prairie vole, Tacoma pocket gopher, San Gabriel Mountains blue butterfly, Sangre de Cristo peaclam from New Mexico and numerous Hawaiian invertebrates.
The Center and other groups have an active lawsuit in Washington, D.C., showing that continued delays in protecting the 251 candidate species is illegal because the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is not making expeditious progress listing species as required by the Endangered Species Act.
Background on the Candidate Species
The 251 candidates include a wide variety of species, from shorebirds such as the red knot, which migrates along the Atlantic Coast during one of the longest migrations in the animal world, to the aboriginal pricklyapple, a cactus found in Florida, to the Pacific fisher, a relative of the mink and otter that is dependent on old-growth forests on the West Coast. Being designated as a candidate does not provide any formal protection to the 251 species, a number of which have been waiting for protection for almost as long as the Endangered Species Act has existed. On average, the candidates have been waiting 20 years for protection.
The current review includes five new species since the last review: the Kentucky arrow darter, a fish in danger of extinction due to surface coal mining and gas exploration in eastern Kentucky; the Rosemont talus snail, a highly endangered snail that occurs only in the footprint of a proposed copper mine outside Tucson, Ariz.; the Kenk’s amphipod, a crustacean threatened by urban sprawl around Washington, D.C.; Packard’s milk vetch, a plant in Idaho threatened by off-road vehicle use and invasive plants; and the Vandenberg monkeyflower, a plant threatened by development in Santa Barbara, Calif.
Each of the candidates are given a priority number ranging from 1 to 12 based on their taxonomic rank (e.g. species, subspecies or population) and magnitude and immediacy of threats, with lower numbers indicating higher priority. The majority of candidates are rated as either priority 2 or 3, meaning they are in immediate danger of extinction.
Source: Center for Biological Diversity
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