The Jemez Mountains salamander: 28 years. The New Mexico meadow jumping mouse: 26
years. The lesser prairie chicken: 13 years.
That’s how long these three species have been awaiting
potential listing under the Endangered Species Act; there are 248 other species
in the Act’s virtual antechamber too, and half have been languishing there for
more than 20 years.
The nocturnal Jemez Mountains salamander, found in only a small area of New Mexico, has been awaiting listing since 1983.
Photo courtesy NPS
Over the
past four years, frustrated conservation groups like WildEarth Guardians have filed more
than a thousand petitions to force the federal Fish and Wildlife Service to
consider listing specific species, and pursued dozens of lawsuits when the
agency missed deadlines. This tide of litigation has overwhelmed
agency staffers and swallowed a big chunk of the budget;
finally the Service, in its 2012 budget request, asked Congress to cap the number of petitions it had to
consider each year. The beleaguered agency wrote, “The many requests for species petitions has
inundated the listing program’s domestic species listing capabilities.”
Now, a historic settlement between the Interior Department
and WildEarth Guardians means that FWS will make a final determination on all those
candidate species by September 2016. Over the next two years, it will also
consider a host of citizen petitions for listing that it hasn’t yet gotten to. In
exchange, the environmental group will hold off on filing any more lawsuits
until March 2017, and it won’t submit more than 10 new listing petitions each year. The Washington Post reports:
Currently,
the service has identified 251 species, including Gunnison’s prairie dog and
the Pacific walrus, that face the risk of extinction but cannot receive federal
protection because the government lacks the money to implement conservation
measures such as identifying critical habitat for them. The agency estimates
that it will be able to make final listing decisions within a year — which is
mandated by law — on just 4 percent of the flora and fauna that deserve to make
it on the endangered list.“We’re happy
to see the Interior Department taking care of this long-standing problem,” said
John Kostyak, vice president of wildlife conservation for the National Wildlife
Federation. “The focus should be getting species protected and avoiding
unnecessary resources being devoted to the courtroom.”
U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan is expected to approve
the plan later today.
“For the first time in years, this work plan will give
the wildlife professionals of the Fish and Wildlife Service the opportunity to
put the needs of species first and extend that safety net to those truly in
need of protection,” said Interior Deputy Secretary David Hayes in a press release,
“rather than having our workload
driven by the courts.”
Optimistic words, but the settlement applies only to WildEarth Guardians, and there’s still the Center for Biological Diversity to be reckoned with. One of the nation’s most militant environmental groups, CBD has filed more than 600 lawsuits and petitions with FWS, resulting in the listing of 380 species. One of the group’s founders, Kieran Suckling, told HCN in a 2009 interview,
(Lawsuits) are one tool in a larger campaign, but we use lawsuits to help
shift the balance of power from industry and government agencies, toward
protecting endangered species. That plays out on many levels. At its
simplest, by obtaining an injunction to shut down logging or prevent the
filling of a dam, the power shifts to our hands. The Forest Service
needs our agreement to get back to work, and we are in the position of
being able to powerfully negotiate the terms of releasing the
injunction.New injunctions, new species listings and new bad press take a terrible
toll on agency morale. When we stop the same timber sale three or four
times running, the timber planners want to tear their hair out. They
feel like their careers are being mocked and destroyed — and they are.
So they become much more willing to play by our rules and at least get
something done. Psychological warfare is a very underappreciated aspect
of environmental campaigning.
Jodi Peterson is HCN‘s managing editor.
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