Photo Credit: Noppadol Paothong
WildEarth Guardians Endangered Species Act win – breaking the “listing logjam” for hundreds of species
Candidate Settlement Milestone
In May 2011, we entered into a historic and sweeping settlement agreement with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which ended years—and sometimes decades—of waiting for many imperiled species on the candidate list.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service designates species as “candidates” for protection under the Endangered Species Act when listing them as “threatened” or “endangered” is precluded by higher priorities. Some candidate species waited on the candidate list for decades with no protection under the Act. When actual listings slowed to a near-standstill, even as the threats to imperiled species grew more urgent and severe, Guardians acted by crafting an agreement with the Service to break the “listing logjam.”
The five-year agreement, entered into in 2011, required the Service to make final decisions on whether or not to protect 252 candidate species that the agency had already acknowledged needed protections under the Act. Nearly 70 percent of the candidate species in the settlement are now protected. 2,713,154,7 acres of land (an area larger than Yellowstone National Park) and 6,380.4 stream and river miles were also protected as habitat critical to those species’ survival and recovery.
Of the 252 candidate species included in the agreement, 174 were proposed for listing or were listed, and 193 species were granted full protections under the Endangered Species Act. These include the New Mexico meadow jumping mouse, the Gunnison sage-grouse, the Jemez Mountains salamander, and the yellow-billed cuckoo.
Hope for Endangered Species Act Candidates
We are currently in the midst of the sixth mass extinction. One species is responsible: our own. Thanks to humans, hundreds of animals and plants risk disappearing from our planet forever. But there is hope, thanks to WildEarth Guardians and a historic Endangered Species Act settlement we engineered.
Recent Stories From Wildlife
Guardians calls for wildlife and public lands restoration economic stimulus
Bold investments in the restoration of public lands, waters, and fish and wildlife habitat will create jobs and stimulate the economy
New opportunities with a Biden administration
WildEarth Guardians will demand action on our Vision for the Wild
New opportunities with a Biden administration
WildEarth Guardians will demand action on our Vision for the Wild
New opportunities with a Biden administration
WildEarth Guardians will demand action on our Vision for the Wild
Wildlife Press
Trump’s Parting Gift to the NRA
While our attention rightfully has been focused on the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, the Trump administration has quietly been attacking our country on another front. On January 13, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service agreed to assist the National Rifle Association to recruit and train hunters to shoot wildlife.
Read more >Red Cliffs Desert Reserve acquires a new patch of desert tortoise habitat while the Northern Corridor Highway moves forward
The Utah Division of Wildlife Resources announced this week its acquisition of just under 53 acres of land within the Red Cliffs Desert Reserve that had been privately owned but will now be managed by the state for the benefit of the Mojave desert tortoise, a federally threatened species that thrives in this type of habitat.
Read more >
info@wildearthguardians.org | © 2020 WildEarth Guardians | Historical Archives | Privacy Policy | Log In
