After helping prevent extinctions for 50 years, the Endangered Species Act itself may be in peril

[douglas9]

Source: AP

SHARON TOWNSHIP, Mich. (AP) — Biologist Ashley Wilson carefully disentangled a bat from netting above a tree-lined river and examined the wriggling, furry mammal in her headlamp’s glow. “Another big brown,” she said with a sigh.

It was a common type, one of many Wilson and colleagues had snagged on summer nights in the southern Michigan countryside. They were looking for increasingly scarce Indiana and northern long-eared bats, which historically migrated there for birthing season, sheltering behind peeling bark of dead trees.

The scientists had yet to spot either species this year as they embarked on a netting mission.

“It’s a bad suggestion if we do not catch one. It doesn’t look good,” said Allen Kurta, an Eastern Michigan University professor who has studied bats for more than 40 years.

The two bat varieties are designated as imperiled under the Endangered Species Act, the bedrock U.S. law intended to keep animal and plant types from dying out. Enacted in 1973 amid fear for iconic creatures such as the bald eagle, grizzly bear and gray wolf, it extends legal protection to 1,683 domestic species.

More than 99% of those listed as “endangered” — on the verge of extinction — or the less severe “threatened” have survived.

“The Endangered Species Act has been very successful,” Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said in an Associated Press interview. “And I believe very strongly that we’re in a better place for it.”





Read more: https://apnews.com/article/endangered-species-eagle-wolf-biden-trump-12d1a8ef6d453ad8f6d4c2b6edb567e8

[SouthernDem4ever]

1. Balance of nature continues to become more unbalanced

thanks to the endangered part of the human species - people with common sense, like magats.

[2naSalit]

2. +1

[2naSalit]

3. More

Fifty years after the law took effect, environmental advocates and scientists say it’s as essential as ever. Habitat loss, pollution, climate change and disease are putting an estimated 1 million species worldwide at risk.

Yet the law has become so controversial that Congress hasn’t updated it since 1992 — and some worry it won’t last another half-century.

Conservative administrations and lawmakers have stepped up efforts to weaken it, backed by landowner and industry groups that contend the act s tifles property rights and economic growth. Members of Congress try increasingly to overrule government experts on protecting individual species.

The act is “well-intentioned but entirely outdated ... twisted and morphed by radical litigants into a political firefight rather than an important piece of conservation law,” said Bruce Westerman, an Arkansas Republican and chairman of the House Committee on Natural Resources, who in July announced a group of GOP lawmakers would propose changes.

Environmentalists accuse regulators of slow-walking new listings to appease critics and say Congress provides too little funding to fulfill the act’s mission.

“Its biggest challenge is it’s starving,” said Jamie Rappaport Clark, president of the advocacy group Defenders of Wildlife.

[2naSalit]

4. ANd more...

Rappaport Clark, who headed the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service under President Bill Clinton, said there were still enough GOP moderates to help Democrats fend off sweeping changes sought by hardline congressional Republicans.

“Fast-forward to today, and support has declined pretty dramatically,” she said. “The atmosphere is incredibly partisan. A slim Democratic majority in the Senate is the difference between keeping the law on life support and blowing it up.”

The Trump administration ended blanket protection for animals newly deemed threatened. It let federal authorities consider economic costs of protecting species and disregard habitat impacts from climate change.

A federal judge blocked some of Trump’s moves. The Biden administration repealed or announced plans to rewrite others.

But with a couple of Democratic defections, the Senate voted narrowly this spring to undo protections for a rare grouse known as the lesser prairie chicken as well as the northern long-eared bat. The House did likewise in July.

President Joe Biden threatened vetoes. But to wildlife advocates, the votes illustrate the act’s vulnerability — if not to repeal, then to sapping its strength through legislative, agency or court actions.

One pending bill would prohibit additional listings expected to cause “significant” economic harm. Another would remove most gray wolves and grizzly bears — subjects of decades-old legal and political struggles — from the protected list and bar courts from returning them.

“Science is supposed to be the fundamental principle of managing endangered species,” said Mike Leahy, a senior director of the National Wildlife Federation. “It’s getting increasingly overruled by politics. This is every wildlife conservationist’s worst nightmare.”

[Evolve Dammit]

12. great post. Thanks

[NoMoreRepugs]

5. The richest nation on Earth by a mile is worried about economic growth.

[KPN]

8. and the ability of the richer and richest to get richer.

F'ing ugly ...

[2naSalit]

6. Keeping the ESA intact is crucial...

People need to get this and never let go of the concept. It is what has helped to keep us from seeing the climate issues we see today from happening decades ago.

We are beyond the tipping point with so many biospheric declines that we are endangered ourselves, though the planet could do with a loss of a good 50% of our species. I don't say that to be cruel, it's fact.

The ESA is my gig, I have taken specific courses about it and given countless presentations on the Act and species protected by it. The Act has been under political attack for at least the last forty years that I can recall and it has been altered, sometimes not for good, numerous times.


The Endangered Species Act is the first actionable attempt, in this country, of our species to recognize and protect other species that are suffering the threat of extinction mostly due to human activity. If is one of the most important regulations we have in this country regarding our chances at not polluting ourselves into extinction too. Habitat loss due to human activity is the number one threat to species listed as threatened or endangered.

When I used to give talks I often began by asking my audience if they have ever heard of the Act, all raise hands. Then I ask who knows what it says, all but maybe two out of sometimes a couple hundred, hands drop.

So I give a one minute primer.

Essentially the Act has three mandates:

1. Identification - We have, under this Act, as a people, agreed to identify species, flora and fauna, who are threatened with extinction using the best available science to determine their identity and status in order to protect them from extinction.

2. Critical Habitat - We have, under this Act, as a people, agreed to identify and assign habitat in which such identified species can thrive without human assistance. Such Critical habitat is to be protected in concert with the identified species.

3. Recovery - We have, under this Act, as a people, agreed to develop recovery plans, using the best available science, to protect identified species and their habitat by engaging in recovery actions when necessary and possible to assist in retention of species in habitat they were removed from by human activity. (Like the grey wolves returned to the US Rocky Mountain region for ONE example.)

All of this is to be conducted using the best available science and any dispute is to be resolved in federal court. The Act is all of 45 pages long and much of the first couple pages is definition of terms. Everyone should review it, it is one of the more important Acts of the 20th century.

Big money and developers usually litigate the Critical Habitat portion but the Chapter 4, sec. 10(j) has been changed so many times I have lost count. It is the part that defines just who can kill (and how) a protected plant or animal without legal consequence.

All Congress critters but one Senator from my state are trying to kill this important law, please help us keep it intact.

[Duppers]

10. Thank you!

[LeftInTX]

11. Thanks for the synopsis!

We had a highway interchange rebuilt not far from my home
During excavation, they discovered a new species of a blind cave spider: Bracken Cave Meshweaver

I believe only one spider was discovered.

Everything came to a halt.
A conversation plan was developed and the interchange ballooned in cost from $14 million to $44 million

After about five years, (the interchange was already completed ) and DNA studies, it was determined that the Bracken Cave spider was actually another endangered cave spider, the Madla Cave Meshweaver

(I live near lots of sink holes and aquifer recharge and I guess they're caves, but they're more sink holes than living caves)

Anyway the Madla Meshweaver is found about five miles away, so they didn't think the new spider was the Madla Meshweaver because I think the geology doesn't show the "caves" as connected or something like that.

Anyway the Bracken Cave spider was removed from the ESA because it was actually a Madla Cave Spider


Oh boy!
The media messed it up and just said the "Spider was removed from the ESA"..
However, the media didn't do a good job of explaining it.

The explanation was too complicated for the media.

Conservatives are still in an uproar and they poke fun of the project
They complain about how much it cost and how it was for a spider which wasn't on the ESL.

Here is the delisting from FWS: https://ecos.fws.gov/ecp/species/7900

SAN ANTONIO (AP) — A San Antonio highway project stalled for two years after discovery of an endangered spider is about to start moving forward again with a new design.

An underpass originally planned is being replaced with an overpass to accommodate the spider known as the Braken Bat Cave meshweaver.

The San Antonio Express-News reports the price tag for the overpass will balloon to $44 million, nearly three times the original cost.

https://tylerpaper.com/news/texas/san-antonio-highway-redesign-accommodates-endangered-spider/article_fcc1ce5f-3620-5b79-8ca6-1e2490df59f3.html

This all happened during the Obama administration, so it also gives conservatives more fodder. However, the meshweaver that was discovered was endangered and deserved protection.

[flamingdem]

14. Thanks for the info!

[2naSalit]

7. This is a very important article...

Please read the whole thing!

[Bayard]

9. Big K&R

Like so many things in Congress, its all about following the money. Who is lining who's pockets?

So many species have already disappeared, and others will be gone soon, either because of short-sightedness and disinterest, or greed.

[hunter]

13. It might be easier to keep a "Not Endangered" list and consider everything else endangered.

Especially as the world gets hotter.

That was just a quip I made in another thread but now I'm thinking there might be something to it.

[2naSalit]

15. Sad to admit...

You could be right.